This board brings bold colours, fun textures, and a bright message to the children’s section, and I’m pretty pleased with it.

In this space since early March had been a version of the Guess Who display. It’s a fun, interactive display. But there’s a problem with it. Kids love to reach up and trace their favourite character. This is fine during normal times. During a pandemic… not so much.

Even though Guess Who only had a couple weeks of time in public, it was time for a change. I had planned to change the board to a huge, lush floral display in April. In my plan there would be tons of big, 3D flowers clustered together making a border at the top of the board. Paper vines would be woven throughout giving it a wild feel. Everything would pop right off the board and evoke the feeling of escaping into a more beautiful place. Posters for our Spring season of library events would cover the rest of the board like usual. I got to work making flowers.

Midway through creating my marvelous jungle of flowers in March, Covid hit. From March to July I was working from home, and my floral vision was long gone.

Cut to this week. My library is open for curbside, and I am at the branch everyday. When I was asked to create a Welcome Back board, I knew I had to use the flowers. Even if it’s not spring anymore. Even if it’s a much toned-down version of my initial plan. I still love it.

I made almost every part of this display with the Circut. The font is Amatic from Font Squirrel. There are many templates for big paper flowers here: Free Templates & Tutorials for Making Paper Flowers with a Cricut. And a resource that I admire but did not have time to use is: 12 Free Rolled Flower SVG Templates

I definitely didn’t want my display to have anything to do with Covid. I don’t like the idea of cutesifying a deadly virus, and I don’t think kids need any more of that in their life. However, I am okay with the message of “welcome back!” Transitioning back to being in public will be scary for some kids – especially young children who don’t understand the reason for all the huge changes to their routine. It’s scary for adults too. And as nervous as I am, I still want the library to be a welcoming, beautiful environment. I still want kids to build those formative moments in our space. I want kids to fall in love with books and become lifelong library users.

For a lot of kids, the reopening of the library will mean the difference between having books to read and having nothing. When they come back, I want them to be careful and I want them to be safe. But I also want them to be happy about the endless possibilities of books available to them.

Have you changed over any bulletin boards during the lockdown?