So I wanted to do something different than just a Summer Reading I Spy game for a passive program this summer. So I did a Wacky Week. I got the idea from the library in Washington that I used to work at (shout out to all my WA friends!) and thought I would bring it here to see how the people in Utah would like it.

Basically what I did was make about 13 things a little “wacky” around the kids area. Then if a kid told people at the information desk about three of the wacky things, then they would get a prize (a choice of one of three book marks). Here were some of our “wacky” things:

1. We hung Captain Underpants from a light.

2. We put a row of cereal boxes in the JNF.

3. We hung a clothes line along our hanging puzzle pieces of art. (And there are Captain Underpants’ underpants.)

4. We hung some fly swatters on the kids sign.

5. We put a jar of balls on top of a kids book display tower.

6. We put some beach pails and a shovel on the shelf where people put books they don’t want to check out.

7. We put up some pool noodles in the kids DVD section.

8. We “set” on of the tables in the kids area with plates and cups.

9. We dressed up our tiger with a straw hat and a cup and straw (I think he wanted to be on the beach).

10. We turned all the books on one of our kids displays upside down (and had to constantly fix them when our wonderful patrons kept turning them right-side up again).

11. We turned the naked mole rats on our window display upside down. I will say this was the hardest thing for kids to find!

12. We turned our LEGO poster upside down.

13. We put up some Valentine’s Day decorations.

We didn’t really advertise Wacky Week…but we got a great turnout. We did put up this sign on our main children’s display that people see as they come in…

And this was the display were all the books were upside down. And we also had it announced on the front board that people see as they come in. Plus, to make counting easy I just opened three brand new packs of book marks that we bought. Then we counted how many book marks were left…and we found out we had over 200 kids that found “wacky” things in the library. And if the kids found all the wacky things (okay, I only made them find 10) wacky items then they got a packet of fun dip as well.

And I will say that people were very excited to see the wacky things…though some kids finally noticed some of our summer reading decorations and thought that those were the wacky things. But all in all it was a great success. I think we will do some wacky library things again!