On Receiving Lovely Gifts - A Visual Essay

Storytime. Something happened the other day that was entirely unexpected. As such, I've decided to tell it to you in an equally unexpected manner. To aid me is my lovely assistant Fatima.

And here she is. Fatima will now reenact the situation that occured in the order in which it happened. On Wednesday of this week I received a package.

This, in and of itself, was not entirely peculiar. After all, I receive packages all the time. But this one was in a poster tube. Even more odd, was the address as show here...

As you can see (and I don't mean that literally so you needn't squint) the tube was addressed to my library but at the bottom it said ATTN: Fuse #8. Well, as you can imagine I was curious. My blog, as you may have noted, does not contain my name. It would be pretty easy to figure it out (for example, you could e-mail me a message reading, "Hey. What's your name?") but it's not readily apparent. Also, while my immediately colleagues know that I'm a blogger, the rest of the building does not. Fortunately the person sending the package had the wherewithal to include the words "Central Children's Room" on the label. Clever dickens.

I shook the tube, much as Fatima is doing here. No sound.



I smelled the tube. No smell.



Finally I attempted an extrication of the object from within the tube. This worked far far better.



And here it is! A poster of When the Library Lights Go Out signed by the author Megan McDonald AND the illustrator Katherine Tillotson. In fact, it was Ms. Tillotson herself who sent me the poster in the first place. So a hearty thank you to the two of them. I felt that this would be the most creative way to do so.