Welcome to ...

Plattekill Public Library, in Modena, NY and the Gibsonburg Branch in Ohio!

Welcome to...

Birchard Public Library and the Woodville and Green Springs branches, Bellevue Public Library, Portsmouth Public Library, Lima Public Library, Mary Lou Johnson-Hardin County District Library in Kenton, OH,  and all our new friends from Ohio! It's an Ohio day! 

Welcome to ...

Mary Voors, our Indiana Rep. and Trista Kunkel, our Ohio Rep.! We're so glad to have you!

Welcome to...!

Carol Sexton, our new Kentucky Rep. and Cen Campbell, our new California Rep. We are SO thrilled to have both of you representating your states and sharing Take Your Child to the Library Day with libraries in your communities.

Welcome to...

Just in! The William K. Sanford Town Library of Colonie, NY is excited to participate for the first time this year! www.colonielibrary.org/ys

Welcome to...

California State Library, California Library Literacy Services, and the Glen Cove Public Library (NY). Thanks also to Cen from Bookboard.com and LittleeLit.com for her shoutouts on our behalf!
We're glad to have all of you as participants.

Welcome to...

Easton Library in Connecticut, and welcome back to Mystic & Noank Library for its third year! Thanks for the emails, everyone!

Promotional Materials!

Hi, everyone! If you want to order promotional materials for Take Your Child to the Library Day, the correct link is: http://upstartpromotions.com/upstart/pages/take_child_library - sorry about any mis-direction!

Welcome!

Welcome to Plum Borough and Dewitt libraries! If your library is not listed on the events page, please let me know so I can add you!

Welcome to our new state reps!

Welcome to Michele, Linda, Jody, and Kimber, representing Illinois (Michele and Kimber), Pennsylvania, and Ontario respectively! We thrilled to have you on board representing your regions.

State Reps page - update

By request, I updated the State Reps page so that at the bottom, you can see a current list of reps. Welcome to Lisa, our Arkansas rep!

State/Region/Country Reps - new page!

Hi, everyone,
You'll see that I added a new page on State/Region/Country reps. It just gathers together some thoughts on that position. So, if you are a rep., please check it out. I can add any additional resources there any time upon your request! And, if you see that your state does not yet have a rep (See Events page for state by state listings), also check it out! Then ... volunteer to be one! It's not a big time commitment, and we're a fun group of people. If you were local, I would offer sprinkle donuts as bribery... (This is possibly the result of reading Flora & Ulysses today).

Thanks to you all!
Caitlin

Take Your Child to the Library Day 2014!

Hi, everyone!
We're starting some of our initial planning for 2014, and we're so excited for another wonderful year (without snow!). If you have ideas for the day, or you plan to participate, please let us know here, on our Facebook page, or by email at caugusta [at] stratfordlibrary [dot] org. This nice fall weather has me thinking about all the families we will welcome to our library this year!

Take Your Child to the Library Day's photostream

Take Your Child to the Library Day's photostream on Flickr.

The photos are coming in! Thanks to Public Library of New London, Wallingford Public Library, and Bourbon Public Library for posting photos on Flickr. Now add yours! For help, visit the "Photos" tabl!

The Governor of Connecticut Says ...

You guessed it ... Take Your Child to the Library!

Governor Dannel Malloy signs official Take Your Child to the Library Day Proclamation! 

Now ... what are you waiting for!!!

Welcome to ...

The Maine Library Association/Youth Services Section, and libraries in New York, Ohio, Connecticut, and Indiana to name a few!

Raffle Winners!

RAFFLE WINNERS! 

Here are the 11 raffle winners. I will mail your prize to you tomorrow; I hope it will arrive by Feb. 2, but if not, it's on its way for your next event! Manchester Public Library, CT, Children's Resource Center Branch, New Orleans, LA, Edith Wheeler Memorial Library, CT, Nederland Library, Colorado, Portland Library, CT, Mansfield Free Public Library, PA, New Canaan Library, CT, Pembroke Town Library, NH, Guilford Free Library, CT, Harrison Village Library, ME, and Roynon School Library, CA. 

CONGRATULATIONS to everyone! I had a request in for more prizes, and if they come through I will pick more winners.

Welcome to ...

a bunch of new libraries in states as diverse! as New Jersey, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maine, and Connecticut. Thanks for updating us with your events, too. We librarians love nothing so well as great program ideas ... that we can then borrow for our own libraries!

Welcome to ...

Utah, bringing us to 34 states! Welcome also to our new friends in Minnesota and Vermont. We're glad you are all participating.

2nd Annual Prize Drawing

Okay, I am almost afraid to see what happens after I post this, but here goes. I am hereby announcing our official Take Your Child to the Library Day Prize Drawing. To win a prize for your library that I will mail to you, you need to do two, relatively painless things.

1. Post (on our Facebook page, preferably) a link to a website that publicizes your library's TYCTTLD events ... so we know how awesome you are! If you don't have Facebook, skip this step, because it's harder to see comments on the blog.
2. Fill out this Google Form so I know where to send your prize:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dERnQ0k3bnBLZEZoOGNoZ1ppLUFxM1E6MQ

The due date for entries is Sunday, January 27 at midnight. I will put everyone's entries into a library tote bag and pick as many winners as I can find prizes. I know I have some music CDs at least. If you have items you want to donate as prizes, PLEASE, message me on the blog http://takeyourchildtothelibrary.blogspot.com/

Welcome to State Representatives

Welcome to Heather, Janis, and Jennifer, state representatives from North Carolina, New Hampshire, and South Carolina respectively!

Graphic for Flyers

Nancy Elizabeth Wallace's wonderful graphic, as well as information about its use, are now online at our official landing page at the Connecticut Library Consortium.

The logo and guidelines, as well as other helpful "Take Your Child to the Library" information, are now up on the "Take Your Child to the Library" page on CLC's web site. Look in the "Resources and Links" section:

http://www.ctlibrarians.org/takeyourchildtothelibrary

Welcome, Kansas

our 32nd state, if my count serves right, and to Heather, our new North Carolina Representative!

Willkommen Germany!

Oh, please forgive my terrible German, but how WONDERFUL to welcome our first participant from Germany! 3 countries and counting!

Cool Things of Today

First, Upstart should be sending Nancy Elizabeth Wallace's images for all of you to use on your flyer. I hope to have those as soon as possible.

Second, just to feature one of our participants, Windham Library in Maine will be encouraging patrons to read a book from the year they were born (1938-2013). I thought that was so nifty I would mention it here :) Please send a photo of the room!

Welcome to ...

Delaware! 31 states and counting.

As far as school libraries, that's a really nice idea, and super duper if you are able to be open on Saturday. If you are a school library that wishes to participate and you can NOT  be open on a Saturday, please keep in mind that Take Your Child to the Library Day can be scheduled to any day in February (and may have to be if the weather doesn't cooperate!) so please feel free to schedule a weekday celebration.

All that said, please let me know if you are a school library and I will make a special designation for you in our list of participants indicating you are a school library.

Welcome!

to more libraries from New York, North Carolina, Illinois and Indiana! We seem to be adding Midwest libraries in greater numbers, thanks so much for spreading the word!

Don't forget, if you want to order posters or bookmarks (or bags or card holders), you can do so from Demco Upstart:
http://tinyurl.com/bxkc3od 
A portion of the proceeds goes to support literacy initiatives :) We continue to thank author Nancy Elizabeth Wallace for donating the artwork. We love her so much xoxo 

30 states!

Welcome to Virginia and Nevada!

Welcome!

to Samantha, our new state representative for Maine!

Thanks to ...

Balkin Buddies for the shout-out http://balkinbuddies.blogspot.com/2013/01/take-your-child-to-library-grows-to.html 

Even though we are jealous of how warm it is down in Florida (Hey, we had sun today!), we still are super-duper grateful for the post :)

28 States!

Welcome to Florida, New Hampshire, and Arkansas!
Welcome also to Angie, our state representative for Minnesota!

State Representatives

So many new states are joining us, I just wanted to remind everyone that we are always looking for people to serve as state representatives.

A state representative is a librarian/library assistant from a particular state who agrees to post information about Take Your Child to the Library Day on your state listserv or website and encourage other libraries to join and/or provide us with names of participating libraries.

It is basically a cheerleader position (and how many of us would like the opportunity to go back in time and be a cheerleader!), and we will give you that official title and recognize you on our Events page. So, if anyone is interested in being one of our state representatives, please let us know! It's a pretty low-stress job, but it helps connect libraries within a state and gives you a sense of regional community :) Caitlin

Thank you!

We just reached 200 libraries, thanks to Stillwater and Wahoo Public Library! Ask, and you shall receive!

Just 2 more!

We're at 198 libraries right now. Just 2 more and we'll be at 200! Send a quick email to the library in the next town and invite them to join!