Don’t forget the kiddos!

Because I spend the bulk of my time in Adult Services, I was determined to reacquaint myself with an electronic resource for kids for this week’s entry. I played around with several interactive children’s resources and finally decided on the TumbleBook Library. Why, you ask? Well, here’s the deal:  TumbleBook Library is easy!

It’s like thisTabs-edited

And like this:

Read-Edit

And BAM! The kid is like this:

kid-jumping

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a librarian, I love the search capabilities of OverDrive, but sometimes our patrons don’t need that. They don’t always have time to login, search, evaluate, and borrow a title for their close-to-melting-down child. What that child needs is story time, and since libraries don’t offer story time 24/7, TumbleBook Library is the next best thing.

TumbleBook Library offers multiple genres and story time features. Kids can follow along with the story, they can read it themselves with an interactive screen, or they can just sit back and enjoy a virtual story time. While it can’t offer all the same benefits of one-on-one story time, TumbleBook Library is a close second. Patrons can utilize the “playlist” feature for theme-based book packs or build their own specific to a child’s preferences. And, when the kids get tired of reading (does one get tired of reading?) there are games based on books in the TumbleBook Library. Again, it’s so simple, even a child can do it!

At the risk of sounding like the anti-librarian, I think we forget that sometimes. We offer complex resources with the ability to drill down to a single item when we only have a nugget of information. But, that isn’t always what our patrons need. Frequently, they are looking for a quick library fix. Yeah, we’ve got that too!

–Alexis Rittenberger, Northland Public Library