Our Library Mouse

It has been such a great start to the year in our library!  Certainly part of my confidence and optimism is due to the fact that it's my second year in the library...but that's not all. I think some of the success goes to this little guy...

What is a mouse doing in a library?  Great question!

A couple of days before school started, I was straightening books in the 800s (Literature) section of the library. A title caught my eye...What Writers Do. I started thinking about what a great theme that would be for our year -- exploring books through the lens of what the authors did to create the literature and text.

Imagine the possibilities!

That led to my thinking about the book Library Mouse, by Daniel Kirk. It's a picture book of a mouse who lives in the library and begins writing his own books. Eventually, he inspires the kids to begin writing and to see themselves as authors.

Well, you can imagine what happened next...I jumped in my car and zoomed over to the pet store to find our own library mouse.

Once school started, I began introducing the theme and the mouse to our students. As you can guess, they were enthralled. I read mouse picture books (If You Take a Mouse to School, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Library Mouse) to our K-2 students, and had our 3r-5th graders vote on read-alouds featuring a mouse as the main character. The Tale of Desperaux, The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail, and The Mouse and the Motorcycle were the clear favorites.

I developed resources around the mouse theme, such as a library introduction unit for our K-2 students. Mouse theme signs and posters decorate the library this year.

A Mouse at the Library

I had the kids vote on a name for the mouse. First, each student submitted a potential name. Then, with the help of my library volunteers, we narrowed 600 names down to eleven. Then I had each student vote. At the end of the week, the students had selected "Nibbles" as our library mouse's name.

In my next post, I'll tell you about how we are exploring the theme of what writers do. I am so excited to share what the kids are doing!