It's hard to believe that we have to plan summer programs already. It's only March but I feel like summer is right around the corner since we have to be creative and think up fun activities for all the teens. I love going through the teen nonfiction collection for program ideas--especially the craft books. Many of our past crafts have started from one of those books. For example, DIY Beauty? From a book called DIY that the library no longer owns unfortunately. Our quick cooking programs (Cheap Thrills and this summer's Sweet Shoppe 101)? From cookbooks of course! Duct Tape Wallets and D.T. Roses? From a cool books called Got Tape? .

So you can see that we librarians steal ideas from books to use in our programs. We may tweak the idea a bit, but really we're not that creative to come up with the ideas all on our own! Or at least, I'm not. I shouldn't out all the other librarians out there in denial about their creativity...

Anyway, this past fall we bought a book called Cute Book byAranzi Aronzo. Actually it's created by two different people if I remember correctly. Anyway, when it got to the library I immediately said that this would be a great program and voila! that's why I'm doing a program this summer called Kawaii Felt Animals (on June 23rd). I'm a thief. Completely. But, hey! They published this book for people to make these great mascots.

The book has 19 different character patterns and instructions on how to make these felt mascots. There's the adorable bunny, cats, dogs, pandas--both cuddly ones and robot styled ones, and even some less friendly looking mascots like Bad Guy, liar, and alien. Some of the characters show up in Aronzo's graphic novel The Bad Book.

I'm a huge sucker for all things cute from Japan, so it's no surprise I adore Aronzo's books. But I hope you all will enjoy them too!