Celebrating Gay Pride With Teens: Rainbow Mobiles

Everyone loves a rainbow. And everyone loves a mobile. Mobiles are a cheap, easy craft that can be accomplished within an hour and taken in a variety of directions.

The best thing about using the rainbow mobile to celebrate Gay Pride is you can go both general:

Or incorporate the full meaning of the Rainbow Flag into your mobile craft:

A Book Review Starring "I Was Here" by Gayle Forman

The short version:
When Cody's estranged best friend kills herself, Cody agrees to collect her things from college and comes to discover her best friend in ways she wasn't aware through her roommates, her computer and the life she'd created for herself.

The long version:
Engrossing from the start. Cody, as conceived by Forman, is a complex main character for young adult (in my opinion) in that she's not likeable or relatable from the start. And it doesn't help that the start is a dark place in which Cody is embodying a range of complex and unpleasant emotions in response to her friend's suicide. Resentment, detachment, confusion, these are the qualities that Cody first expresses when we meet her as she's processing her emotions.

One of Forman's strengths is her ability to write involving, subtle, relatively complex two-person drama in which the relationship is messy, filled with competing interests and emotions and the characters and their journeys are very human and, I'll say it again, messy. It's what I loved best about her two books "Just One Day" and "Just One Year", both of which I thought represented a leap in maturity and growth from her big (now) blockbuster "If I Stay" and follow-up "Where I Went".

You may not love Cody from the start, but you understand and identify with her as the book progresses, your heart aches for her as she processes not only her friend's reality but her own reality too. And in her male counterpart Ben McCallister, you get an equally complicated character who isn't all he appears to be and is refreshing when he's not the YA-Fantasy-Boyfriend material that I find in a fair amount of young adult fiction.

The book also continues a great trend in young adult literature focusing on 18+ characters and the post-high school experience. For years I've been excited to see the evolution of "Young Adult Literature" expand to include not only an audience that's over eighteen but characters and stories about those post-high school years told in thoughtful, contemplative ways that serve as that gray area between traditional YA and Adult Literature where books are getting longer and incorporating more complexity and/or mature themes.

That segment of literature that focuses on the 18-22 year old experience has been automatically shelved in Adult Fiction until recently. When we have started to see books with 18-25 year old protagonists appear on Young Adult shelves, many of those that have made an appearance are perceived or labeled as "New Adult", which in my mind are more romance-laden melodramas that may or may not contain more explicit sexual content. "New Adult" is tricky, not universally accepted genre in my opinion, and certainly not a division found on our library shelves. In my mind, "New Adult" is a genre and not an audience classification the way we segment our audiences between Children-Young Adult-Adult.

In seeing the audience for Young Adult expand beyond the long-assumed 12-18 year old audience, it seems natural that the content of YA has now begun to fill that gap with stories that both redefine Young Adult Literature and tell those stories in fresh, new ways. I Was Here is the epitome of that transformation within YA and I devoured it.

Celebrating Gay Pride With Teens: Rainbow Loom Gay Pride Rainbow Bracelets

If you've given it some thoughts and floss Friendship Bracelets are just too much for you, consider the Rainbow Loom Gay Pride Rainbow Bracelet. Rainbow Loom is still popular, the double fishtail-style bracelet is super easy to make and teach and the program is attractive to kids and teens alike.

Still super cheap.

A pack of 600 rubber bands with 24 C-clips are $2.99/each at Michael's, you'd need to purchase six bags to complete the colors of a rainbow. 

And the best part is you can make rainbow looms and hooks for free using basic library components:

-book donations that won't fit into your collection and are sure not to sell in the book sale

-pushpins

-a hammer

-paper clips

Hammer two pushpins into the edge of an unloved book one inch apart:

Then you'll break a paper clip to use as your hook (like I needed to show you):

Easiest bracelet ever! YouTube double fishtail rainbow loom instructions. The whole program can be done in under an hour.

Celebrating Gay Pride with Teens: Pride Rainbow Friendship Bracelets

Creating and executing craft programming for teens can be hard for some of us librarians.

You have to find a project you not only think you can do but also be able to teach to teens and pre-teens from ages 12ish-18ish. Add to that (the mistaken, in my opinion) belief that you have to complete this craft project in an hour. 

My feeling on the subject is that if you provide participants with detailed instructions for how to complete a craft project and it's clear and relatively attainable, you not only don't have to abide by the strict one hour rule but you're giving them the information to recreate and perfect upon that project again after the program is long over. Otherwise, it's just one-off entertainment that, more often than not, winds up in the trash shortly thereafter. I have a seven year old who attends library programs, so I feel I can say that with some authority.

Hence, the Pride Rainbow Friendship Bracelet!

Believe me, I know, friendship bracelets are hard. I've printed out and given up on countless friendship bracelet patterns for just that reason. Which is why I ALWAYS return to the chevron bracelet. There must be a reason why it's the only one I can competently do and so can you!

The best thing about Rainbow Bracelets is that they're universally loved and open to interpretation. Gay Pride. Pretty bauble. They're for everyone! And they're cheap! All you need are packets of floss which can be found at Michael's for $3.99/pack.

In the spirit of information sharing, here is a jpeg of my directions for making Pride Rainbow Friendship Bracelets.

AND if that's still too much. Consider variations on the Pride Rainbow Friendship Bracelets using the Rainbow Loom. You can make a loom for the double fishtail bracelets seen here with a few pushpins in cardboard, nails into discarded wood, or even plastic forks with the middle tongs bent in.

Project Runway: Unconventional Library Materials

Our library's potential participation in Los Angeles' Gay Pride Parade inspired me to imagine how we could celebrate libraries within the context of a rocking, flamboyant parade loaded with pageantry and humor.

Maybe I was in the midst of watching a Project Runway season at that moment but I thought what better way to embrace libraries than melding them with one of today's most iconic television shows that has a huge gay following and its signature Unconventional Challenge that makes an appearance every season challenging contestants to utilize on materials found in a hardware store or a candy store or construction sites for the components to design their creations with.

Only in this case I could be using ALL THOSE BOOK DONATIONS that never make it onto the shelves or don't sell at the book sales!

Sometimes my revelations are really only revelations to me. This may be one of those times. At first, the thought inspired me to troll Pinterest for examples of book page fashion. And what did I find!

Here are some of my favorites:

Between now and June I've made it my goal to start small and create simple, fun wearable creations using book materials from our big mountain of donations.

Unconventionally Library Challenge #1: Art Book Top Hat

A Book Review Starring "Bone Gap" by Laura Ruby

The short version:
Set in the rural farm town of Bone Gap, Illinois where the mysterious Polish Roza disappears from Bone Gap just as curiously as she arrived leaving 16 year old Finn feeling responsible for letting her leave with a strange man. While the people of Bone Gap including his older brother Sean don't believe him and feel certain she ran away, Finn must cope with his feelings of guilt over the knowledge that he allowed her to be kidnapped and becomes determined to find her.

The long version:
The best young adult novel I've read this year (granted the year is early, but still, I feel strongly on this subject).

What an original voice with a gorgeous sense of nature-inspired, highly visual imagery and thoughtful, layered characters. Ruby is a master at creating suspense both in terms of plot and character revelations. The writing is assured, absent of wasteful language or plotting.

She's able to create a realistic work of literary fiction and infuse it with elements of magical realism by being careful and measured with the fantasy elements. She plants the seeds slowly, convincingly, so that when it all comes out you're both prepared and engrossed and it doesn't come off as jarring or nonsensical or silly.

Ruby has done her homework on all sorts of subjects, from beekeeping and botany, to small farm town culture and life in rural Poland. That eye for detail creates rich settings, transporting the reader to places both real and fantastical. Yet she exercises restraint incorporating her knowledge into the plot and characters.

Stunning in its originality. I kept wondering about her potential influences (Alice Hoffman, Twin Peaks) yet still found her work to be entirely her own. I would be happy recommending this book to teens and adults alike.

Celebrating Gay Pride With Teens In the Library

In Los Angeles Gay Pride Month is in June. It's also the first month of most library Summer Reading Clubs (or as we here now call it "Summer Fun" so as to not alienate the not-so-gungho-readers from the other fun stuff happening in the branches) which makes it the perfect time to introduce an LGBTQ-themed craft or program for teens.

And what better way to do it than with RAINBOWS!

The Rainbow Flag has become synonymous with gay pride, diversity and equality for everyone. Aren't you glad such a universal symbol of smiles and happiness was usurped when it came time to plan LGBTQ-themed programming?

When I couldn't find a flyer or online resource I liked, I created a Rainbow Flag flyer that describes the history of the flag and the meaning of the colors using age-appropriate language. It looks exactly like this:

Now came the easy part. RAINBOW PROGRAMMING!

You don't need me to tell you about all the fun things you can do with rainbows. But in the event you adore me and am curious about some of the things I'm contemplating, check out my LGBTQ Teen Programming board on Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/hillaryesta/lgbtq-kid-teen-programming/

More to come on some of the fun stuff I've got in mind to celebrate Gay Pride!