In Which I Do a Family Library Program on THE BEATLES and Tell You How to Do It, Too
So back when I was trying to come up with themes for this semester's library programs, it occurred to me that this winter is the 50th anniversary of Beatlemania hitting the United States. So thrilled was I that I immediately scheduled a Beatlemania Family Night story time for our very first week back after winter break,* tonight, even though after the fact I realized that while January 9 sounded perfect in my head, I'd actually been thinking of FEBRUARY 9 as an actual significant date, but oh well, we're still close enough, and this way all of YOU still have a whole month to plan your proper 50th Anniversary programs, yourselves!
Here's our calendar description: "It's the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first tour of America. How does this old rock band that broke up over 40 years ago keep gaining more rabid fans in every new generation? We'll learn about the most influential rock band of all time tonight, make our own psychedelic album covers, and YES, there will DEFINITELY be music!"
I mention the "rabid fans in every new generation" part as justification against those people-- you know they're out there-- who say "I'm not from that generation/kids don't know who these old bands are/it's nice to see you remembering these bands from My Day/yadda yadda yadda." Because yes, it's been 50 years. My dad was one of the original U.S. Beatles fanatics (I can't quite call him a Beatlemaniac. That would imply he used to scream and throw himself at police barricades to get through and stuff, wouldn't it). I wasn't BORN until 8 years after they broke up, but I'm an utter Beatles GEEK-- and so are more than a few of my same-generation friends. My kids' 17-year-old babysitter and bunches of HER friends are Beatles nuts. And my kids-- NATURALLY my kids-- they were identifying Beatles songs on the radio not long after they could TALK.
It may be the Yellow Submarine cartoon that gets kids first. My kids still prefer songs-that-were-in-the-movie to other Beatles songs, with the exception maybe of "Here Comes the Sun," because they know that's my favorite and love to point it out to me whenever it's on. I got them a Yellow Submarine Lego set-- no, K'Nex, not Lego, so you don't get confused futilely searching the Lego site-- for Christmas, even. I did not bring it to the library tonight though because it's in pieces again. Some of the Beatles themselves are missing entire limbs.
So what DID I do at the library? I'm glad you asked.
First order of business was a soundtrack. Rather than using any particular album, I made a mix CD of the most Kid-Friendly Beatles songs, with my own kids' picks. Since what they picked only totalled about 15 minutes (they DO get stuck on the Yellow Submarine songs), I added my own ideas of what counted as Kid-Friendly-- everything from "She Loves You" to "Octopus's Garden," and then narrowed it down to what would fit on an 80 minute CD. This step excited me, so I did it as soon as I finally finished all the stuff I had to do around here for Christmas.
Now, what SOME people would CONSIDER the first order of business when it comes to a library program, the second step was rounding up a book selection. I borrowed some books from other libraries in our county system to get a little more variety in my display-of-related-books-you-can-check-out. They were mostly chapter books and longer. For story time PROPER, I was pretty much limited to The Beatles Were Fab (and They Were Funny), by Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer.** It's a little long for a Story Time read, but the only other semi-related picture book we had in our entire system was John's Secret Dreams, which is just too John-centric, obviously. Somewhere out there in the world there are apparently picture books of Yellow Submarine, and it looks like there's a picture book of "Octopus's Garden" due out next month. Also this, due in March, which looks like it COULD possibly manage to be short enough for a story time, as well, maybe?***
It worked, even though it was long. The group I got was pretty enrapt. They laughed a lot, too.
So next up, activities. Had a hard time coming up with them at first. Found a Yellow Submarine coloring sheet. Then I stumbled upon this: it turns out Mr. Harrison of Dan Gutman's Weirder School's Mr. Harrison is Embarrassin'! is actually named GEORGE, and the whole book is FULL of Beatles jokes. Whodathunk. So that was a pretty good kid-appropriate activity, too.
THEN I hit on the winner: Make Your Own Sgt. Pepper-esque Album Covers. This was so fun and took up so much time (it's technically a one-hour program. Most of the group stayed longer) that we didn't need anything else, after all.
Pulled a bunch of toy instruments, including a broken "Rock Band" guitar (which disappointed quite a few teenagers on my way into the library with it: "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD 'GUITAR HERO' HERE!!!!" "Um, actually, we don't. This is just a broken Rock Band guitar I'm using as a prop."), then as many costumes from the library's costume stash that looked even REMOTELY rock and roll. I set the crowds loose on these to put together a LOOK for themselves, then they gathered in groups-- or BANDS-- to pose for a picture like so:
Once I had a picture of everyone, I scootched off to print them. First I cropped and edited the backgrounds out. I don't have any particularly fancy photoshop software, and I'm not talented enough to accomplish this in Paint, but did you know you can actually do this in Microsoft Word? Just paste your picture into a Word document, click "Picture Tools," and then "Remove Background." Then you have to fiddle with it to get it to keep what you want. Anything in purple will be cut. Takes some practice to get it, and it still wasn't perfect, but it's workable:
Meanwhile, the crowd was sorting through lots of old celebrity magazines (we had People, Time, Sports Illustrated, J-14****, and one special Beatles edition of Rolling Stone), cutting out pictures of people they liked (or at least thought looked cool). When I'd printed out a copy of each "band" picture for each person in it (and one grandmother who wanted an extra for her fridge), everyone took the band picture and all their magazine clips and a blank Sgt Pepper bass drum that they could add their own title to, and pasted them on a 12"x12" hunk of cardboard, so we end up with this:
We had a fun variety. This kid brought his own hat, only to discover it somehow exactly matched this vest from the library's costume stash:
The other Weavle went for a much simpler cover design:
Note the title, "Weavles for Sale." Like "Beatles for Sale." These two kids MAY be the biggest Beatlemaniacs of their generation I have ever met, speaking of kids continuing to get obsessed generation after generation
I kind of like the Bonus Dork Diaries Advertisement that this one became:
But not as much as I love the crowd scene in this one. The crowd HAD been watching Tiger Woods, but really, they look just thrilled to be listening to this duo instead:
As we were finishing up, a worn-looking grandmother on a ventilator who'd been sitting disinterestedly in the corner suddenly perked up and said, "I saw the Beatles in concert, in Cleveland."
Suddenly everyone took notice. "Did you hear any of the music over the screaming?" I asked.
She smiled, then said, "I was screaming." Everyone laughed. It was a perfect capper.
___
*we're a public library, not an academic library. We just run programs on a rather semester-like schedule.
**when looking up this link, Google autosuggested "the Beatles were overrated." Seriously, who SEARCHES something like that? And WHY, Google, would you ever suppose I would be searching that?! It's like you don't know me AT ALL!!!
***This is also coming out next month, and while it is definitely too long and complex for story time, we're getting it from Junior Library Guild and I am KIND OF EXCITED ABOUT IT, thank you.
****I'm pretty sure One Direction has been on the cover of J-14 for the ENTIRE PAST YEAR.
Here's our calendar description: "It's the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first tour of America. How does this old rock band that broke up over 40 years ago keep gaining more rabid fans in every new generation? We'll learn about the most influential rock band of all time tonight, make our own psychedelic album covers, and YES, there will DEFINITELY be music!"
I mention the "rabid fans in every new generation" part as justification against those people-- you know they're out there-- who say "I'm not from that generation/kids don't know who these old bands are/it's nice to see you remembering these bands from My Day/yadda yadda yadda." Because yes, it's been 50 years. My dad was one of the original U.S. Beatles fanatics (I can't quite call him a Beatlemaniac. That would imply he used to scream and throw himself at police barricades to get through and stuff, wouldn't it). I wasn't BORN until 8 years after they broke up, but I'm an utter Beatles GEEK-- and so are more than a few of my same-generation friends. My kids' 17-year-old babysitter and bunches of HER friends are Beatles nuts. And my kids-- NATURALLY my kids-- they were identifying Beatles songs on the radio not long after they could TALK.
It may be the Yellow Submarine cartoon that gets kids first. My kids still prefer songs-that-were-in-the-movie to other Beatles songs, with the exception maybe of "Here Comes the Sun," because they know that's my favorite and love to point it out to me whenever it's on. I got them a Yellow Submarine Lego set-- no, K'Nex, not Lego, so you don't get confused futilely searching the Lego site-- for Christmas, even. I did not bring it to the library tonight though because it's in pieces again. Some of the Beatles themselves are missing entire limbs.
So what DID I do at the library? I'm glad you asked.
First order of business was a soundtrack. Rather than using any particular album, I made a mix CD of the most Kid-Friendly Beatles songs, with my own kids' picks. Since what they picked only totalled about 15 minutes (they DO get stuck on the Yellow Submarine songs), I added my own ideas of what counted as Kid-Friendly-- everything from "She Loves You" to "Octopus's Garden," and then narrowed it down to what would fit on an 80 minute CD. This step excited me, so I did it as soon as I finally finished all the stuff I had to do around here for Christmas.
Now, what SOME people would CONSIDER the first order of business when it comes to a library program, the second step was rounding up a book selection. I borrowed some books from other libraries in our county system to get a little more variety in my display-of-related-books-you-can-check-out. They were mostly chapter books and longer. For story time PROPER, I was pretty much limited to The Beatles Were Fab (and They Were Funny), by Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer.** It's a little long for a Story Time read, but the only other semi-related picture book we had in our entire system was John's Secret Dreams, which is just too John-centric, obviously. Somewhere out there in the world there are apparently picture books of Yellow Submarine, and it looks like there's a picture book of "Octopus's Garden" due out next month. Also this, due in March, which looks like it COULD possibly manage to be short enough for a story time, as well, maybe?***
It worked, even though it was long. The group I got was pretty enrapt. They laughed a lot, too.
So next up, activities. Had a hard time coming up with them at first. Found a Yellow Submarine coloring sheet. Then I stumbled upon this: it turns out Mr. Harrison of Dan Gutman's Weirder School's Mr. Harrison is Embarrassin'! is actually named GEORGE, and the whole book is FULL of Beatles jokes. Whodathunk. So that was a pretty good kid-appropriate activity, too.
THEN I hit on the winner: Make Your Own Sgt. Pepper-esque Album Covers. This was so fun and took up so much time (it's technically a one-hour program. Most of the group stayed longer) that we didn't need anything else, after all.
Pulled a bunch of toy instruments, including a broken "Rock Band" guitar (which disappointed quite a few teenagers on my way into the library with it: "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD 'GUITAR HERO' HERE!!!!" "Um, actually, we don't. This is just a broken Rock Band guitar I'm using as a prop."), then as many costumes from the library's costume stash that looked even REMOTELY rock and roll. I set the crowds loose on these to put together a LOOK for themselves, then they gathered in groups-- or BANDS-- to pose for a picture like so:
Once I had a picture of everyone, I scootched off to print them. First I cropped and edited the backgrounds out. I don't have any particularly fancy photoshop software, and I'm not talented enough to accomplish this in Paint, but did you know you can actually do this in Microsoft Word? Just paste your picture into a Word document, click "Picture Tools," and then "Remove Background." Then you have to fiddle with it to get it to keep what you want. Anything in purple will be cut. Takes some practice to get it, and it still wasn't perfect, but it's workable:
Meanwhile, the crowd was sorting through lots of old celebrity magazines (we had People, Time, Sports Illustrated, J-14****, and one special Beatles edition of Rolling Stone), cutting out pictures of people they liked (or at least thought looked cool). When I'd printed out a copy of each "band" picture for each person in it (and one grandmother who wanted an extra for her fridge), everyone took the band picture and all their magazine clips and a blank Sgt Pepper bass drum that they could add their own title to, and pasted them on a 12"x12" hunk of cardboard, so we end up with this:
We had a fun variety. This kid brought his own hat, only to discover it somehow exactly matched this vest from the library's costume stash:
The other Weavle went for a much simpler cover design:
Note the title, "Weavles for Sale." Like "Beatles for Sale." These two kids MAY be the biggest Beatlemaniacs of their generation I have ever met, speaking of kids continuing to get obsessed generation after generation
I kind of like the Bonus Dork Diaries Advertisement that this one became:
But not as much as I love the crowd scene in this one. The crowd HAD been watching Tiger Woods, but really, they look just thrilled to be listening to this duo instead:
As we were finishing up, a worn-looking grandmother on a ventilator who'd been sitting disinterestedly in the corner suddenly perked up and said, "I saw the Beatles in concert, in Cleveland."
Suddenly everyone took notice. "Did you hear any of the music over the screaming?" I asked.
She smiled, then said, "I was screaming." Everyone laughed. It was a perfect capper.
___
*we're a public library, not an academic library. We just run programs on a rather semester-like schedule.
**when looking up this link, Google autosuggested "the Beatles were overrated." Seriously, who SEARCHES something like that? And WHY, Google, would you ever suppose I would be searching that?! It's like you don't know me AT ALL!!!
***This is also coming out next month, and while it is definitely too long and complex for story time, we're getting it from Junior Library Guild and I am KIND OF EXCITED ABOUT IT, thank you.
****I'm pretty sure One Direction has been on the cover of J-14 for the ENTIRE PAST YEAR.