Board Games & Picture Books: Not Just Kid Stuff

Board games and picture books - what do these two things have in common? For one thing, you can find them both at the library. For another, they’re both entertaining for all ages. Engaging with a picture book or playing a game with friends and family members can surprise and delight us with the kind of screen-free joy that many of us don’t get enough of but definitely need. In this episode, Hannah and Matt take you on a journey of exploration into the worlds of picture books and board games, respectively.

Transcript

Michael Pierry: Hello and welcome to the Hamden Library Podcast. I am your host, Michael Pierry, and in today's episode, we will be exploring two different topics, picture books and board games. What do these two things have in common? For one thing, you can find them both at the library. For another, they're both fun. 
 
 

Engaging with a picture book or playing a game with friends and family members can surprise and delight us with the kind of screen free joy that many of us don't get enough of, but definitely need. First, Hannah talks to us about picture books: what makes them so special and important, and why they can be just as fun for adults as for kids. 
 
 

After that, Matt takes us on a deep dive into the world of board games. I actually make a cameo appearance in this section talking about one of my favorite games, Ticket to Ride. Anyway, this is a really fun episode, but I'll let Hannah and Matt take over from here. See you on the other side, dear listeners. 
 
 

Hannah Tyce: Hello, this is Hannah and today I am presenting "Reading Picture Books: or, What I Learned, Then Relearned from Picture Books". This month is National Picture Book Month, so I set out to read picture books. I'm not a children's librarian and I don't consider myself particularly skilled at art or at visual analysis, but I am a reader and someone who can appreciate methodologies, so this seemed appropriate. 
 
 

I began in the Miller Library's children's department, took a few from the Caldecott section since those are awarded for artwork. I read a few of them to myself while I was going over the words, and then the pictures, I can feel a part of my brain activate, which I hadn't felt in a while. Some notes I took while looking at the art include "engrossing" and "the wonder of it all". 
 
 

Books like Babes in the Woods, illustrated by Randolph Caldecott himself in 1897 showed older English ways of dressing and kept much of the language of the adapted source story. It has a very clear, on the nose, anti greed and anti cruelty message, which I found interesting compared to the usual subtlety of our more modern picture books. 
 
 

It was a type of preservation that I wasn't necessarily expecting, but I was glad to be exposed to. Other books like Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey in 1948 and The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward in 1952, show more rural settings and the quotation lives of the subjects. Both are set in a monochrome blue and gray respectively. Both feature a bear interacting with a human child and the consequences for both subjects. 
 
 

 In The Biggest Bear there is a would-be shooting scene in which the child is tasked with his presumed own gun to take care of the bear that won't stop coming back. A child can read the faces of all the humans in involved, both the frustration of the adults in the town whose food is being stolen, and the boy given such a heavy task. 
 
 

The bear is blissfully unaware of what is set to happen. There's a happy ending for the bear, though I can't imagine a solution like that in a contemporary picture book, but like in Babes in the Woods, it is a type of preservation. In Blueberries for Sal, we see two young beings with their mothers all collecting blueberries for winter: the bears for immediate fat storage, and the humans for canning to eat later. Throughout, it shows parallels between species, such as going up opposite sides of the same hill on the hunt for blueberries, and a child can read the surprise expressions of Sal's mother and the Bear's mother. 
 
 

Picture books use layers in the illustrations to tell the story as the words are telling, the pictures are showing, and young readers and listeners are able to absorb both. This helps with analysis and learning to recognize patterns. Consider the Pigeon in Mo Willems's series. In each iteration, there's a spread where the pigeon absolutely loses it. Going on an eight part tirade shown in eight boxes, the whites of eyes turn yellow and red. The text is in a bold black crayon in an intense, messy typeface. 
 
 

After the pigeon says his piece, the reader turns the page physically ending the tirade. He is shown on the next page with his arms crossed, a black squiggle above his head as he cools down. It is a wordless page, but the reader can understand what he's feeling. Additionally, consider how a wordless story like Flotsam by David Wisener is able to show the story of a camera that is pulled from the waves. 
 
 

The camera is carried by the current snapping photos by accident of under sea happenings, such as octopi reading and aliens visiting seahorses and showing creatures such as mechanical fish and merpeople. After the boy has the photos developed, he's able to see the long history of the camera being used by children on other beaches, each taking a photo in succession. 
 
 

Then he knowingly throws the camera back into the ocean. As he realizes this is a required part of the camera's journey. It is not his to keep, just to use for a time. 
 
 

When I reopened Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, I was shocked at how I remembered all the words. It's not a wordy book, but the rhyming schematics helped me recall what was on the next page. 
 
 

I also noticed how the room grew progressively darker as the pages turned, showing the young rabbit getting sleepier and more relaxed as he settled into bed. We have so many books and so many styles. We have books with lines. We have books without lines. There are some that use only primary colors. 
 
 

Others use earth tones. Some use vibrant rainbows. Others are in pastels. We have human protagonists, some animal protagonists. Sylvester turns from a donkey into a pebble. I remember feeling so helpless for him. Mike Mulligan has a steam shovel that is more the main character than he is. 
 
 

We have multiracial family books, queer family books, and non-traditional family books. You can see the colors of the holiday Dwali, spin a dreidel, or experience Lunar New Year through a number of cultures. The Every Child Ready to Read initiative has listed practices and skills that model early literacy developments. 
 
 

The story time sessions at the library employ these practice strategies using picture books that aid in skill development. The practices are to read, write, talk, sing, and play. The skills are vocabulary, print motivation, print awareness, narrative skills, phonological awareness and letter knowledge. Story time is more than children sitting on a rug listening to a librarian read a story. 
 
 

We employ singing movement, a felt board for play in touch and exploration. Reading skills can be picked up from picture books. There are ways in which you read a story aloud that support these awarenesses and strategies. For example, if a character is clearly excited for their birthday, but you read "today is my birthday" all blase, you can ask the child if the tone matches. 
 
 

"No, of course not! You can see this cat is very excited for their birthday. They would say it like this." 
 
 

Or to build tension, you can change the pace of the words and the page turning. Consider the difference between saying "faster and faster" or "faster-and-faster!" 
 
 

These tips and many more can be found in Reading Picture Books with Children by Megan Dowd Lambert available within our system. She introduces the whole book approach in which you can use every element of a book to discuss the story. I learned a lot of book vocabulary from it as well. 
 
 

In this method, consider the over the top narration of The Monster at the End of This Book. Our lovable, furry old Grover, stars being terrified of the monster at the end. he implores the reader to stop reading the book. He tries games roping off the next page and begging and pleading. The word bubbles involve colors, and various font sizes, and other print awareness practices. 
 
 

Stars and lightning bolts erupt from a storm cloud shaped word bubble. And the word bubbles encourage a back and forth from the reader to come up with original dialogue, participating with Grover and trudging ever on. Then the plot twist. 
 
 

Our children's department has several different sections of concept books that help with reading skills, with books categorized as wordless, ABCs, 123s, prepositions, shapes, colors, and more. We also have an Easy Reader section, which are picture books with more words, usually for emergent readers, with options to help with skills such as phonological awareness. Titles like Ell as in Well, or Ag as in Flag. The Hamden Public Library offers story times at Miller on three mornings each week. 
 
 

By age group, we have Wonderful Ones on Monday, Time for Twos on Tuesday, and Preschool Story Time on Thursday. About once a month there is a family evening at each The Whitneyville and Brundage Community branches that may include a story time. Our programs page can be found on our website, HamdenLibrary.org. 
 
 

Each month at the Brundage Community branch, you can pick up a themed grab and go activity bag to complete at home. Included are a packet of printed activities and a list of picture book titles related to the monthly theme available in our Hamden Library system. Our Brundage and Whitneyville branches have their own children's collections, sometimes overlapping with Miller's titles and sometimes offering unique ones. 
 
 

Whitneyville has an excellent graphic novel collection. The Brundage branch has a moderate Spanish language picture book collection. You can also find some more classic picture books there, like the original Magic School Bus series, Curious George and Mark Brown's Arthur books. All branches also have a Parent Resource section located in or near the children's department. 
 
 

Miller has books for parents on a plethora of topics such as baby sign language, breastfeeding, and homeschool. There are also books donated by the special education PTA of Hamden on topics like ADHD, autism, parental advocacy, and an IEP guide. There are more books in the adult nonfiction section that a librarian can help you locate. 
 
 

This resource section also includes picture books on topics like bodies, a new baby in the family, death and grief, bullying and individuality. We offer parent packs with a few titles on topics such as potty training and moving. Across the system, our children's departments offer some books in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, plus introductory language learning books in French, German, Vietnamese, and more. 
 
 

You can search for language specific titles on our World Language Collections webpage. We recently added some Wonder Books, which are picture books with an attached audiobook component. The reader can follow along with the story, either independently or with an adult. 
 
 

Each year, the Connecticut Library Association and the Connecticut Association of School Librarians vote on books to receive the Nutmeg Awards. These are titles selected to encourage quality literature reading across four age groups, elementary, intermediate, middle school, and high school. The children's department and teen section have these titles on display. 
 
 

What is so great about having a library card in Connecticut is that every public library honors the cards from every other public library. That's right. You can use your Hamden public library card at any public library in the state. If we don't have a specific title or enough books on the topic you're looking for, you can see if another library does. 
 
 

You may need to bring your photo ID with proof of residency to a library the first time you visit, but after they enter you into their system, you will only need to bring your Hamden library card, complimentarily. 
 
 

You can use our website or ask a librarian to place a hold for you to be picked up in Hamden or any other library. You may return any book to any library in Connecticut, and we'll get it where it needs to go. 
 
 

If there is a title you would like to borrow but Hamden doesn't own, you can submit a Please Purchase request form. The librarian in charge of the section will review the request and may purchase the title for the collection. This applies to the entire library, not just the children's department. 
 
 

Also include it with your card is access to our online resources. You can access children's eBooks on Hoopla, including picture books in Spanish. We also provide access to the language learning website, Transparent Language, which offers lessons for children in some languages, including learning English. The International Children's Digital Library through the University of Maryland has e-picture book offerings in 76 languages that can be found at ChildrensLibrary.org. 
 
 

We offer museum passes, including to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts. 
 
 

Also through our website, you can submit a request for a children's book bundle. You answer a questionnaire about topics and author your child likes or does not like how many books you would like, and you can select which branch to pick up your bundle. 
 
 

A librarian will go through the collection and find titles for you. We recently expanded the recommendation service for non-child patrons as well. Called [book recommendations], also on the website. 
 
 

Picture books can be a great foray into different topics, even for adult readers. We of course, see a lot of relevant titles go out as holidays pass and the seasons change, but picture books can present an expose into lives. We personally won't be living books like The Oxcart Man Show, A 19th century New England farming family packing their year's worth of goods for the father to bring to the city to sell, including the cart and the ox, and the father returning with some new goods before the winter starts in the countryside. 
 
 

We can also live through characters who save coins to buy a chair for their mother or go to Where the Wild Things Are, or listen to jazz play in the neighborhood on Saturday. We can even start listening to jazz on Saturdays. We can experience what it's like to exist in a city while blind, like in Song in the City, or learn how the analogy of being hard of hearing is like trying to understand a conversation with our ears underwater. 
 
 

Like in Sound Switch Wonder. Children can go to a bathhouse with their Korean grandmother, be exposed to different ways of eating with halal hot dogs, or start life as a rubber duck on a shipping container. As an adult, I like the picture books and juvenile nonfiction sections because they offer me just enough information into a topic without having to commit too much time. 
 
 

I just recently learned about worm poop and soil health through a picture book. This is not the breadth of titles. I remember from my childhood. There's a picture book for everyone.  
 
 

My main takeaway from this research endeavor was that I was indeed learning more from picture books than I realized as a kid. 
 
 

Picture books help provide a necessary part of early childhood. I was not simply listening to a story. I was absorbing and retaining information about language, phonics, and socialization, and applying these lessons in my preschool days. You learn, oh my gosh, do you learn. It sounds like a cliche in a so often repeated, but reading with a child is truly one of the best gifts you can give them, and it is so important for imparting more than just a love of reading. 
 
 

It was truly a marvelous thing to experience picture books, again, both in the context of being able to recite Goodnight Moon and then looking at them as a medium for teaching. It's not that I look down upon picture book artists, but it is with adult eyes and knowledge of teaching reading practices that I'm able to recognize how much of a skill the profession requires. 
 
 

I thought this dive may be just about art methods and the types of stories told. I considered reporting a history of the content, like the rural lives lived by Sal and her mother to the addition of non-white main characters like in The Snowy Day, but the more I looked, the more I saw. The more I talked to the children's librarians, the more I understood. 
 
 

I didn't know what I didn't know, and I relearned an incredible amount. From picture books, I highly recommend checking out a few titles to see for yourself and share with any children or other adults in your life.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: When I say board game, for many, it will conjure images of Monopoly, Risk, or Clue. Some of you may think of chess. 
 
 

Those of you with kids or grandkids might think of Candy Land or Snakes and Ladders. However, if that's all you know of board games, you're missing out. We are in the middle of a board game explosion and have been for 30 years, but the history of board games goes much farther back, and the present of board games goes much farther forward than you can imagine. 
 
 

The earliest artifacts we have of board games are dice. If you've ever rolled them bones, you're participating in tradition that stretches back 7,000 years to when the first dice were carved from knuckles. The oldest recorded board game is the ancient Egyptian game Senet from around 3000 BCE, though the rules have been lost at time. 
 
 

The oldest game that we have the rules for is the royal game of Ur from 2650 BCE. Backgammon has its roots in the Roman Ludus Duodecim Scriptorium from 2000 BCE. Chess predecessors start showing up around 400 CE with chess proper around 1100 CE. 
 
 

Listener, you're probably familiar with The Landlord's Game, which came out in 1903. What? That doesn't ring a bell? 
 
 

The rights to the game would later be purchased by Parker Brothers and turned into Monopoly. Board games really started to take off in the United States. With the release of Klaus Teuber's smash hit Settlers of Catan. 
 
 

Catan was the winner of 1995's Spiel des Jahres, a German board game award that's the equivalent of the Oscars' Best Picture. In Settlers of Catan, up to four people compete to try and settle a fictional island, placing roads in building towns and villages using gathered resources. A competition is fierce for space on the most productive tiles as players race to complete their empire, winning the game. 
 
 

Other famous winners include 2004's Ticket to Ride, a rail network game where you try and connect stations across the United States; 2001's Carcassone, where you collaboratively build a map and competitively fight for control of roads, towns, and fields; 2009's Dominion, the first big deck builder as you crafting a card based engine letting you buy more powerful cards and earning more points. 
 
 

2019 had Wingspan win a subcategory, the connoisseur Spiel de Jahres. Wingspan is a beautiful engine building bird game. There are board games with different themes, different mechanics ranging from simple to complicated. Some competitive, some cooperative. Whatever you're looking for, there is a board game for you. 
 
 

So you're convinced. You want to try games, but you don't know where to get them, and you don't know where to find people to play with. 
 
 

To start off, if you're looking for games, the Hamden Library has a collection of board games to borrow located right next to the information desk, and the collection includes games such as Ticket to Ride, and Wingspan, and one of my personal favorites, Seven Wonders Dual. Great for two people if you only have one other person to play with. 
 
 

But if you're looking for more people to play with, the Hamden Library also has a game meetup, which happens on the second Saturday of each month. The Branford Library hosts a game meetup, though you'll have to call to see when it's happening next. There are also game stores all around the state. 
 
 

Hamden has Unison Games Cafe, which has board game rentals and hosts frequent trading card events. For those of you who play Magic or lma, Elm City [Games] is an excellent board game store and play area on Orange Street in New Haven, and going farther afield, there are regular game meetups at the Tabletop Gaming Center in Newington and Back Again Games in Middletown. You can also try searching online forums such as meetup.com to try and find game clubs and events that are meeting in the area. 
 
 

Several of my coworkers participate in interviews about their favorite games in our collection, but before we get into that, some board game vocabulary.  
 
 

Engine builders: These are games where you start off with a set of basic actions and can either improve or unlock more powerful actions throughout the game. Players frequently improve different aspects leading to asymmetric gameplay area control. These games have a map or board, and you receive rewards for managing space. Risk, chess, and Go all have area control aspects. 
 
 

Euro game: Euro games have low player interaction, no attacking your neighbor and are won by scoring the most points, an objective these games give you many avenues to work towards. There are many more common mechanics to discover, but this should give you a good footing. 
 
 

Now on with the show, who are you and which game do you love?  
 
 

Dave Scanlon: I'm Dave Scanlon. I am a librarian here at Hamden Public Library, and I love playing chess. 
 
 

Matt McGregor: So for those of you at home who don't know, what do you do in chess?  
 
 

Dave Scanlon: Chess is an adversarial game where you play against one opponent and you try to capture their king.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: How long does it take to learn chess? How long does it take to play chess?  
 
 

Dave Scanlon: I really don't know how long it takes to learn chess. I learned how all the pieces moved when I was a kid and had played many games. 
 
 

And it wasn't until actually recently where I started to try to learn the ins and outs of the game itself. 
 
 

How long it takes to play a game? You might have some better knowledge, but I feel like it you most games, take me about an hour and a half to two hours.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: Casually, you could play with someone in 20 minutes. 
 
 

You could play for two hours, but competitively, they have all different time controls ranging from bullet, which is one minute aside, all the way up to day long games. For you, where is the excitement in chess when you play chess? What makes you feel joy?  
 
 

Dave Scanlon: I think that the competition, if you will, feels very real in that. 
 
 

I enjoy playing chess because I end up so focused on the game itself, that there's really nothing else going on in my life for that hour-ish of time. And when I say that the competition feels real, I say that because usually after the game is done, whether I've won or lost, I usually have to shake it off 'cause there's so much tense adrenaline in me that have to walk around a bit, which I know that doesn't necessarily "spark joy". 
 
 

But there is something very special in that. Something that you can do that feels so strongly, that feels so... I guess you feel so intensely in that time period.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: When you play a great game. It's just, it's so satisfying. Even if you lose, if you look back and you say. What a game.  
 
 

Dave Scanlon: Definitely just with each move the like, "Ugh, do I know what to do in this moment?" 
 
 

That type of feeling and trying to think through so many things is both. A wonderful exercise for your brain and just like a wonderful thing to do and absolutely. It's one of those things where I'm not going to be thinking about, oh my gosh, I really have to scrape the moss that's growing on the siding. 
 
 

Matt McGregor: In a little bit of bad news listeners, we don't actually have a chess board for you to borrow. But, there are many places where you can play online, such as lie chess or chess.com, and we do have books of chess strategy that you can borrow from the library. So if you're looking to get involved in a lifelong passion and one of the most popular board games in the world, and a true classic. 
 
 

Check out chess. Who are you and what game do you want to talk about?  
 
 

Kacie Meixell: Hi, I'm Kacie, and I would love to talk about Skyjo.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: In Skyjo, what are you doing? 
 
 

Kacie Meixell: In Skyjo, The object of the game is to have the fewest points, so it's kind of like Golf, if you've ever played that game, Golf. But the cards in Skyjo are color coded, so for all you visual learning people such as me, you don't actually have to do math as you're playing. You can just look for the color of the card that you need. 
 
 

The fun thing about Skyjo is that it's great for a crowd and it's great for a group that has multiple ages. We've played it with kids as young as six, and adults as old as 80. It's very popular. It's been very popular with the teens at the library in the last few months. 
 
 

Matt McGregor: How long do you think it would take to teach someone to play Skyjo? And then how long would it take to play a game of Skyjo?  
 
 

Kacie Meixell: So, learning Skyjo is pretty easy, because everyone knows the goal is to just have the fewest amount of points. So everyone gets 12 cards and they're dealt face down and you put them in a grid. 
 
 

everyone gets to flip two cards over so you know what two of your cards are, and then you take turns grabbing from either the discard or the draw pile and replacing cards. In your own hand. I, it's very easy to learn. There are multiple strategies, so I would say it gets more fun the more you play it, 'cause you can experiment with different, ways to reduce the points in your hands. 
 
 

The other fun thing about Skyjo is that if you are the first person to have all your cards face up and you do not have the lowest point value of all the people playing, your score is doubled. So a round of Skyjo can be very fast, like five to 10 minutes. But the goal of the game, or the game technically ends when someone in the group reaches a hundred points. 
 
 

So if you play until someone reaches a hundred, it may take 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the number of people playing. Or you could just have a continuing game going that like each time you get together with a certain group of friends or each night at dinner with your family, you play one round and then it doesn't, it ends eventually when someone reaches a hundred. 
 
 

Matt McGregor: While we don't have Skyjo for you to take home, you can come with your family and use it in the teen area. So come visit us at the Hamden Library and play a game. 
 
 

Who are you and which game do you love?  
 
 

Michael Pierry: My name is Mike and I love Ticket to Ride  
 
 

Matt McGregor: In Ticket to Ride, generally, what are you trying to do? 
 
 

Michael Pierry: Well, basically it's a game where you and your opponents are each trying to complete train routes across a big map of the us. You're trying to finish the roots and do more route than your opponents.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: How long does the game take to learn? How long does it take to play?  
 
 

Michael Pierry: It's very fast to learn. It's a, it's definitely a gateway, entry level game. 
 
 

Takes a few minutes to learn. Takes about 30 to 60 minutes to play.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: Where's the excitement in this game? Where's the tension in Ticket to Ride?  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Well, the excitement is you don't know what your opponent is trying to do, right? So a lot of times you're trying to finish a route and you need, say that one extra white car, and then your opponent grabs it before you can get it, and you think, are they trying to finish the same route that I'm trying to finish? 
 
 

Do I need to change my strategy up? Do I need to block him somehow if I can? It's in trying to beat your opponent and finish the longest route and the most routes possible before your opponents can.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: Maybe I can get away with skipping Topeka.  
 
 

Michael Pierry: Exactly. Maybe I need to root around or block my opponent before they can get there. 
 
 

There's a million different ways to kind of complete your route or figure out what to do.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: Alright. So if you're looking for a game that's very approachable, but still a lot of fun, you can borrow a Ticket to Ride from--you guessed it--the Hamden Library. 
 
 

Who are you and which game do you love?  
 
 

Rosie Rubin: I'm Rosie. I'm usually working at Borrower Services and I love the game Wingspan.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: So what do you do in Wingspan?  
 
 

Rosie Rubin: Wingspan is an engine building game where you're creating your own wildlife preserve. So you place different birds and different types of habitats. They have certain powers related to characteristics that the birds have in real life. 
 
 

It's a really fun time. It's really different every time.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: And if you had to guesstimate, how long does it take to learn the game? How long does it take to play the game?  
 
 

Rosie Rubin: So as someone who's played it a lot, I can typically play it at around 45 minutes to an hour now. But the first time I was learning to play with friends who also had no idea what they were doing. 
 
 

It took us about two or so hours to get started, but usually it's around an hour now. 
 
 

Matt McGregor: When you're playing Wingspan, where is the excitement? Where does the joy of the game come from?  
 
 

Rosie Rubin: I think it's a really beautiful game. It has gorgeous illustrations. It helps me learn more about birds in real life and their different characteristics. 
 
 

I love that it's different every time based on the different combinations of birds that I play. And it's also really exciting that it's a game that's designed by an all female design team.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: Alright, so if you're looking for a fantastic engine builder to really turn you on to birding Wingspan is available to borrow from the Hamden Library. 
 
 

Hey, it's Matt interviewing people about what games they love. Who are you and what do you like to play?  
 
 

Taylor Ikehara: I'm Taylor. I work at the library as a digital navigator and I like to play the game Scythe.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: What about Scythe do you love?  
 
 

Taylor Ikehara: Scythe is one of those games where it will take you maybe an hour to learn how to play, but once you do know how to play it, it's just a lot of fun. 
 
 

I love the strategy involved. I love all the different pieces that you get. You basically play as one of four different teams and each one has their own kind of unique figurines and huge Robots. So it's just a lot of fun with your, all of your friends.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: And are you trying to control area or are you trying to do objectives or how does the game work? 
 
 

Taylor Ikehara: It's kind of like a European style game. So essentially your actor, you're, trying to acquire victory points and those can be acquired by holding territory. Getting into battles with your cool robots, completing objectives. It requires a lot of thinking ahead. So each step you'll be thinking about not only what you want to do in the current step, but also like, "okay, what should I plan for in the next two, three steps down the line?" 
 
 

Each card has its own like flavor text. So if you choose an objective that shows you a picture of some villagers riding on top of your robot. You can choose different outcomes. So you can help them out, you can trade with them, or maybe you could, like, take their food. So yeah, just a bunch of fun. 
 
 

it's very unique and yeah, I enjoy playing Scythe.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: Alright, so if you're looking for a thematic brain burner, you guessed it. Scythe is in our collection and you can borrow it from the library. 
 
 

Who are you and what game do you want to talk about?  
 
 

Thomas Rooney: I'm Thomas Rooney. I'm the borrower services manager and I'm here to talk about X-Wing. 
 
 

Matt McGregor: What are you doing in X-Wing?  
 
 

Thomas Rooney: So in X-Wing you are in charge of a squad of fighters from Star Wars, either the Rebel Alliance or the Empire. It's played with little. Pre-painted miniatures and you get to build your squad pretty much however you want, as long as a miniature exists for it. You can use it. 
 
 

So you can have a combo of X-Wings and Y-Wings or TIE fighters, and you're battling it out with another squad and trying to destroy them.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: So how long does the game take to learn? How long does the game take to play?  
 
 

Thomas Rooney: It's pretty quick to learn. They have a simplified rule set for people just getting into it. 
 
 

And then more advanced rules you can do later on. I'd say maybe like 10 minutes to learn it. The game's play, it can be played over several rounds, and then each round is like 15 minutes. So it's pretty fast paced.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: And for you, where is the excitement in X-Wing?  
 
 

Thomas Rooney: Well, so the interesting thing is rather than being an "I go, you go" game where one player goes and then the other player goes, a lot of the action happens at the same time. You have these little dials that you turn to determine how your ships are gonna move, and you all pick that secretly and put it down, and then you reveal your dials and it goes based upon the initiative order of your ships. 
 
 

So some ships are faster than others, others are slower. So basically all the decisions are already made and you're just watching it play out. Which is pretty cool.  
 
 

Matt McGregor: If you're looking for a great way to dip your toes into miniature combat or a big fan of Star Wars, you can borrow X-Wing from the Hamden Library Board game collection. 
 
 

That's our show. Thanks for listening, and thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts for this episode. But before you go, I love board games. I love the puzzle of them. I love the feeling of mastery and exploration, but above all else, board games are a great way to be physically present with the people around you. 
 
 

So get off your phone and get into some games and we'll see you next month.