Minecraft IRL
Eep! I’ve had to let the blogging slide a bit since things in my life and at work have been…interesting. Yes. We’ll say interesting.
But we’ve had some great themes that I’ve been dying to share with y’all, so let’s get back to it.
Back in September we had a big crossover celebration of Minecraft at both library locations, with the teens playing a big part.
The focus on this particular game was because we were launching our own server that kids/teens could register for and interact with other library patrons:
The above video was created by our new Young Adult Librarian Dustan. The server was his brainchild, and his enthusiasm for the project was infectious. Actually, his enthusiasm for everything in the library is infectious – he’s been a joyous addition to our team.
It wasn’t until I was writing this that I realized that I never did get a picture of the completed front windows. It’s one of those things that apparently fell through the cracks, and I’m a bit bummed. But I think y’all get the gist of what it looked like.
All of us were exhausted after a very dramatic and tense summer, and so Dustan offered to have the members of our TAB decorate the Children’s Library for us. They took over the Children’s Library for a few hours during a day that that location was closed. Minecraft mashup songs were played, snacks were snacked upon, and lots and lots of construction paper squares were taped onto windows.
I’m not that much into Minecraft, but I understand its appeal. But OH MY LORD the number of kids who were wildly excited about the characters in the windows. I think some parents of younger kids were shocked that they knew who and what all of the characters were.
The teens also helped me with my experimental origami clouds. Basically, large pieces of white craft paper that we folded into half of a box. Later, we hung them from the ceiling to try and make them look like pixelated clouds. On a scale from bad to success – they fell somewhere in the middle – more of an eh.
Our newest team member Natasia (who holds a degree in art) was given the daunting task of creating a 3D Minecraft flying chicken. Seriously, it was the first thing I asked her to do after completing training. Considering none of us have attempted something like this before, she really rocked it.
And only one wing fell off once – right at closing so no one got hit by an errant chicken wing. It was fixed the next morning, and the rest of the chicken’s limbs were reinforced.
Did you notice the clouds? Yeah, I didn’t think so – they’re just…eh. But the chicken wins the show. I call her Sir Clucksalot, and loved her so much that I had her hung above my desk. The view from my chair:
Another one of our newer employees (a former teen summer intern for us) Shelby made a scavenger hunt focused on finding small versions of the various characters.
Normally it’s parents who have to help their kids on the scavenger hunt – this time around it was more likely the parents who would need the kids to show them what they were looking for. Heh.
For the prize, I made a special bookmark featuring our dragon mascot drawn all Minecraft-like:
The whole time that I worked on him I kept singing to myself Libraries for nuthin’ and your books for free. I want my, I want my, I want my li-brar-y.
Feel free to curse my name for getting that stuck in your head. Or, if you don’t know the Dire Straits song, then do not look it up and be grateful to avoid an insidious earworm.
Besides the opening of our library’s Minecraft server, the other big event of the month was a Minecraft In Real Life event that was a collaboration between our Children’s and Young Adult Librarians. It was pretty awesome on many levels.
Before I end this post, I thought there were a few things you might enjoy knowing and/or using. The top photo on this post I created using these cubees and this font (which I made more true-to-the-original by using Photoshop). Please feel free to click on that image for a higher-res version that you can use for your own programming.
And as always, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions about this!
Dustan took some bottle poppers that I donated (after realizing that my kitty would never forgive me if we popped them inside our new home) and he wrapped them with a Minecraft TNT paper.
I loved these so much! I think that the empty bottles were kept as souvenirs by everyone.
They were used for the finale of the event where Dustan dressed up as a Minecraft skeleton and the kids chased him outside, surrounded him, and set off their poppers. And yes, he told the kids afterwards that he knew that the skeleton would have burst into flames by going outside into the sun, but there was no way we were gonna set off poppers inside the library.
