Profiles in Collaboration:
The Merrimack Valley Traveling Pants
By Alissa Lauzon, Young Adult/Reference Librarian, Haverhill Public Library

The Merrimack Valley Traveling Pants came from a program idea that I saw on the YALSA-YAAC listserv: a large city was having a pair of jeans that would be traveling amongst its branch libraries during the summer. I knew that the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie following the release of Girls in Pants would increase the Sisterhood hype among teenage girls in the summer. I had planned a "Create Your Own Traveling Pants" program for my library the day before the movie release date to celebrate the film. The more that I thought about it, the more I thought that it would be really cool to have an actual traveling pair of traveling pants. I contacted several young adult librarians from my consortium that I had been in touch with through various NMRLS programs to see if they would be interested in doing something like this with their teens. As it turned out, Margie Walker from Amesbury, Donna Childs from Newburyport, Beth Brassel from Lowell, and Kimberly Lynn from Andover all enthusiastically responded.

It was very easy to plan, I created a "schedule" for the pants where each library received the pants twice over the summer- once in the beginning for a program of their choice and once again at the end of the summer so that the pants could be displayed and the teens could see the finished product. I also thought that it would be neat to create a set of "rules" that would govern the pants (like the girls did in the book). Rather than create the rules myself, I had the teens at my program come up with two rules, which were written on a sheet of paper and sent along with the pants to the next library, where the idea was that their teens would come up with additional rules and add them to the list. By the end of the summer there were three pairs of traveling pants, seven "rules" and lots of fun.

And the Merrimack Valley Traveling Pants were born!