Chess
Last spring, this 13-year old boy, who was in the 4th grade, who was really sweet but always looked a little bored, and would just sit by the information desks wanting someone to talk to (we tried to get him to read, but he really didn't want to), decided he liked to play chess.
We have a lot of these kids-- they're as attention deprived as my grandma, and just really need something to do. Also like my grandma, they get into trouble when they're bored (grandma stories deserve their own posts-- check back next week).
A few weeks earlier I'd decided that chess would make a great program because there didn't need to be any preparation time. From our point of view, it was just a matter of putting a staff member in the community room with a bunch of chess boards to encourage honest and fair games, and keep peace. Cost-wise, we borrowed the chess boards from another branch, and so the only price was an hour of staff time. Considering we regularly got 15-20 kids playing, this worked out to something like $1/kid/hour (see librarydust.typepad.com for a discussion of our low salaries), which seemed well worth it.
So, this 13-year old came to the chess program and really loved it. After a few weeks I watched him play, and noticed he was castling, which we hadn't taught them. He explained that he read about it in one of our chess books! And then said he'd finished reading all our chess books in the children's and adult's rooms! We put some on hold for him, from other branches.
It warmed this librarian's heart. The kid is in 5th grade now, and still asks to borrow a chess board every day when he comes after school.