Colorlicious Tea Party Storytime Special

Posted on February 9, 2012

Want to cash in on the super-popularity of Pinkalicious but don’t want to alienate boys (or, more likely, the parents of boys)? Then throw a Colorlicious party instead! Fans will still get to enjoy the sublime Pinkalicious, but with a bit of variety to cut the cloying gender paradigm.

Here’s the program we presented at my library, to the best of my recollection:

Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni
We just did a straight up reading of this classic, which I love, love, love. Best not dwell too long on how they hugged so much they became green; that could become an awkward conversation. Sometimes I’ll ask the kids if they’ve ever been so sad that they cried themselves to pieces. I tell them I hope they never do.

Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh, with special guest the mouse
I brought in my own personal white mouse puppet to introduce this book. As we read the story we draped him in the appropriately colored scarves. It was pretty interpretive puppet dance-tastic.

Make a Rainbow (fruit salad flannel board).
See the pictures below. Our “pot” kind of looks like a robot, so of course I made it talk in a robot voice, demanding fruit.

Make a Rainbow
(some good soul who typed out our copy made this poem all grammatical by using “have”, but the rhyme demands that you use “got.” Usually I am a grammar stickler, but poetry takes precedence, and colloquial usage is near and dear to my heart, so please, got it up here. Although the last line doesn’t rhyme with anything, but after all that vigorous stirring, you just have to hope no one notices or cares. The robot voice helps distract from the crappy lack of rhyme as well.)

Take some cherries and put them in a pot.
Stir them, stir them, stir them a lot!
Pour them out and what do you got?
The prettiest red you have ever seen!

Repeat with: oranges, lemons, limes, blueberries, and grapes. If you can’t figure out which colors go with which fruits on your own, might I suggest another line of work?

Pinkalicious!
Ah, the book we’d all been waiting for. This book was a hit with everyone.

“Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows” with shakers! (dance party)
We handed out shakers to the kids, put on this song, and busted a move. If you don’t dance in your storytimes, might I ask why you hate having fun?

And that’s it!

Roll With It

Posted on February 8, 2012

We got a new alligator puppet. Our previous alligator puppet was a head and torso model only, whereas our new one is a full body model.

I use this alligator to eat the monkeys from our monkey mitt during the song “Five Little Monkeys Swinging In The Tree”, which is really just Battle Royale/Hunger Games for toddlers and preschoolers. The old alligator was able to adeptly “spit out” each monkey after eating, contributing to the ruse that he was snapping those monkeys right out of that tree.

The new puppet, however, must have a more felt-y, less plush mouth, because with him, the monkeys stick. In his mouth. Between his teeth.

Oh, the hysterical laughter. The squealing. The joy tinged with bloodlust.

I could have freaked out that something went wrong. I could have stopped in my tracks because something was different. Instead, I made a joke, went with it, and ended up with an even better performance than usual.

You never know unless you try.

The full body puppet, by the great people at Folkmanis.

Beginning Reader Storytime: Art Adventure, Stage Two

Posted on February 2, 2012

Watercolor "character"

For the second stage of our Eric Carle Art Adventure, we used watercolors on heavy paper. I gave kids the choice to draw something first, or just paint and draw and cut out a creature next week. Most of the kids just went ahead and painted. We talked a bit about how the watercolors were different than the acrylic paints that we used for the backgrounds.

Next time, they’ll add details with colored pencils and cut out their characters.

Storytime Specials

Posted on January 31, 2012

About every other month at my library we present what we call a Storytime Special, which is a 45 minute program for 4-8 year olds that includes stories, a treat and a craft centered around a theme. I like to use these programs to stretch stories in different ways, or to give the kids and their parents a somewhat fancy and free outing, or to simply entertain myself.

Themes have included Frog and Toad Tea Party, Colorlicious (a more gender-neutral Pinkalicious program), Winter Wonderland, Shark Versus Train, Hot Dogs (there are so many encased meat picture books, you guys), and many more. I’m going to write up all the materials for the individual programs, but for now here’s a sampling from them to show you how we do:

Colorlicious Tea Party

Frog and Toad Tea Party

You can see more videos from these programs on my youtube channel as well.

Sharing A Wrinkle In Time

Posted on January 24, 2012

Click through to see the facebook page for A Wrinkle in Time.

My love of A Wrinkle In Time has been documented before on this blog, and because I love it so much, it is one of those books that I can’t share lightly, and I have to be careful not to put it in the hands of a reader who isn’t ready for it. Usually when I suggest books to kids, it doesn’t hurt my feelings if they decide they don’t want it, but if a kid were to reject Wrinkle, I’d be ineffably sad. (I was recently talking with a parent whose daughter was reading A Wrinkle In Time for a school assignment, and struggling with reading it. I wasn’t sure what to tell her. Every book its reader, and every reader its book; perhaps, sad though it sounds, she just wasn’t one of this book’s many and ardent readers.)

But I have to do something to celebrate this book’s 50th anniversary, so I’m going to throw a big book party. I’m looking to have an event in the fall, maybe October or November, so that the chance of somewhat dark and stormy weather will be increased. I’m thinking this will definitely be a family/all ages event, because I am sure there are some parents and grandparents out there who have some warm feelings about this book.

There will definitely have to be a buffet of all of the different kinds of sandwiches that the Murrays eat in the beginning of the book, and some hot chocolate. I also think having my fellow librarians and volunteers dress in costume as various characters would add a lot of fun to the event.

I want to booktalk Wrinkle and a bunch of L’Engle’s other books, and of course read aloud that first amazing chapter. We could also tie in When You Reach Me, which, as a contemporary Newbery winner, might pull in additional readers to the story. We’ll also booktalk other great fantasy and science fiction titles for kids.

How will you be celebrating the anniversary of this wonderful book?

My other posts about Wrinkle: It was a Dark and Stormy Night and How it All Began.

Read what other bloggers are saying about A Wrinkle in Time.

Beginning Readers Storytime: Art Adventure

Posted on January 18, 2012

After having my Beginning Readers Storytime for several sessions, I began to feel a familiar feeling: boredom. I was bored. I needed something new, exciting, thrilling. I needed to challenge myself.

Yet, I am not completely insane. The program was popular and well-attended, and people looked forward to it. I didn’t want to sabotage that. So what could I do?

I decided to tweak. (Not like a meth head. As in, to fine-tune or adjust a complex system. Because, yo, storytime is a complex system if ever I saw one.) I would keep the name, the day, the time, and the basic format–but this time around, the literacy activities would be replaced by art activities. Which, when you think about it, are literacy activities. There’s a rich, fun vocabulary in the art word: brush; stroke; acrylic; watercolor; collage; paste. Using a paint brush or colored pencil to draw develops the same fine motor skills that one uses when writing. And, of course, we began each sessions by reading aloud a picture book with beautiful art to serve as inspiration for our own art projects, specifically the collage technique of one Eric Carle. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

This is a five week series. Week one we talked about the project and I gave everyone time to peruse Eric Carle’s books and other picture books that use collage. The second week we painted our backgrounds onto our very own canvases (foam board from the craft store). I’ll talk about the next steps in further posts.

How about you? Do you use art in your storytimes–art, rather than just a craft? Do you ever get BORED?

books to give, books to get

Posted on December 7, 2011

Books to Give

If you need ideas for holiday gift giving this year, and want to give a book, I highly recommend going over to Mother Reader’s site and utilizing her “Ways to Give a Book” series. Quality stuff, and if you have to participate in the craziness of STUFF exchange, you might as well give a book. Since I never have any extra money, I hardly ever am able to give gifts, but even I will break down and buy a beloved classic at the thrift store to share with my nephew or other children I am lucky enough to know.

Books to Get

Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal

I hate snow. A fresh white blanket of it only reminds me of The Stuff, and if I have to drive in it–ugh. So much unhappiness.

Yet this book, with a layer of fresh snow at its heart, has managed to win me over. The quiet, simple, understated prose is perfectly suited to the topic of what happens over and under a layer of new fallen snow, and the bold lines and clean images of the art are a perfect complement. This book is an ideal one on one bedtime readaloud during the season, and it would work equally well being read aloud in a science classroom during a discussion of seasonal changes or hibernation. Bringing quality literature into all curricular areas–not just during language arts–is critical if we want to keep kids reading and excited about reading.

This book also presents a conundrum–Baker and Taylor suggests a nonfiction number for it, which I suppose makes some sense, especially with the rich author’s note and further reading suggestions, but I also think it would be better served in a public library being shelved with the picture books. What do you think? Where would you put this book?

The Conductor by Laetita Devernay

Somewhere in my childhood I must have had a book that was tall and skinny like this one, because the shape seems so familiar, but I can’t quite place it in my memory. The story–a wordless one, of a conductor conducting a symphony of nature, transforming leaves into birds and back again–also seems familiar, but I can’t tell you why.

The lines and limited color palette certainly bring to mind Caps for Sale and Edward Gorey, and the environmental slant reminds one of The Lorax, but I think this book reminds me of so many other things because it is just a good book–it knows what its saying, but it is also loose enough to allow for many different experiences while reading it. I think it would be amazing fun to play different pieces of instrumental music while viewing this book, and see how the music changes the way the swooping leaves and birds appear to you.

Both books are review copies kindly provided by the publisher.

story hacker

Posted on November 10, 2011

So this week on of the books I was using for my outreach storytimes wasn’t quite working for my groups for some reason. It seemed to be missing a crucial action in the text, which made it not quite pop for the children. It was as though there was a three step action sequence missing step two. So the second time I went out with it, I added the text I thought it needed (“and they pulled, and they pulled, and they pulled, but!”), replete with action, and read the rest of the text verbatim, and the kids seemed much more engaged with the story and seemed to understand it more.

I’m always a little conflicted when I do this. Part of me is a text purist, and I try to not abridge or omit if I can help it, because it seems a little bit like censoring to me. But when I’m performing a storytime–and I am performing in the belt it out, jazz hands, shuffle ball step sense of the word–I sometimes feel that to deliver the material well, a bit of improvisation is in order.

So, storytimers, do you do this? How often? And how do you feel about it?

librarian, weed thyself.

Posted on October 28, 2011

So the most recent Andy Poll was about weeding the library profession:

http://twitter.com/#!/wawoodworth/status/129942473882611713

Most people are replying with attributes (View the story “Weed the librarian” on Storify) rather than a set of criteria, which I don’t think is really answering the question. How do you weed librarians out of the profession? Don’t reinvent the wheel–just use the same process most libraries use for materials: CREW and its charming companion MUSTIE. CREW, as everyone should know, stands for “Continuous Review, Evaluation, and Weeding.”

As a professional, you should be continuously reviewing and evaluating your own performance, and weeding the skills and projects that are no longer beneficial to you or your organization. If you realize at any time that you’ve become MUSTIE*, then you should quit your job immediately and allow a newer, better librarian to have your job. If it’s good enough for our materials, it’s good enough for us.

*M is for : Misleading–factually inaccurate. I think we’ve all been there–we’re sitting on the desk with someone else, listening to them give out blatantly WRONG information. Even with gentle correction, our coworker refuses to change his or her way. Or, at best, they decide that they’ll just make you answer all of the hard questions because they’re too lazy to actually do their job.

U is for: Ugly–worn beyond mending or rebinding. Let’s not get into this one too much, except to say that ugly, when it comes to people, applies more to their attitude than their appearance.

S is for: Superceded–by a new edition of by a much better book on the subject. When you use the computer mouse by banging it against the desk, or answer a ready reference question with the phone book, you’ve been superceded.

T is for: Trivial–of no discernible literary or scientific merit. Have you been running the same programs for youth year in and year out with no changes? Do your booklists not have any titles published in the last twenty years on them? Are you chained to your reference desk?

I is for: Irrelevant to the needs and interests of the library’s community. Closely tied with trivial, many of the same questions can be asked. If you’re sitting at your desk waiting for people to come to you with their questions and their needs, you are irrelevant.

E is for: Elsewhere–the material is easily obtainable from another library [or librarian]. There are thousands of people with library degrees frothing at the mouth to work, and at least some of them have to be more outgoing, engaging, exciting, and innovative than your MUSTIE a**. How about you do one brave thing in your professional life and QUIT, so they can have a chance?

Hi Miss Julie!

Category Archives: librarians…for the CHILDREN!