Tiny Treasury

Last year I discovered that library system in the township adjacent to mine has a number of different story hours for the preschool and under crowd. My son and I found two we love that meet on Mondays and Tuesdays and one we attend if the Tuesday librarian cancels or if we’re running too late to get there.

The Monday librarian knows how to tell a story. She hops on chairs, uses a variety of voices and gestures and circles the room so all the kids can see. She remembers the children’s names from week to week and makes sure she uses them in different songs and felt board activities. On the down side she’s a bit scattered sometimes and lets the parents and nannies talk too much. She’ll let the wheels on the bus go on for entirely too long and gives every one a turn when there are way too many kids in attendance for it to be feasible. We are talking about a story hour that’s attended by toddlers who are mostly under age two. (She sometimes reminds me of me when I was teaching and unprepared. I’d let the kids share their stories for the entire class period if it meant they’d be occupied.) But she’s wonderful. She always gets the kids up and moving and can usually rein them in when they get too out of control. She also knows when to give up on a story and sing.

The Tuesday librarian is far more organized. She’s got her routine down pat. She tells the moms and nannies to keep quiet before she starts and chastises them when they start to talk among themselves. Her routine is predictable, starting with the same song each week. She usually reads the same familiar books to the kids, bringing out puppets to help her with the stories and songs. She lets the kids (and adults) know when she’s reading something new so they can be sure to pay attention. All of the books she reads are engaging and allow for some level of audience participation. The kids love her story hour and so do the parents. If you get there too late it’s standing room only.

Sadly my local library doesn’t have a story hour. The children’s librarian hosted a series of morning story hours for children ages 3 to 5 last year, an age group that seemed odd to me because most of the children she hoped would attend were in school in the morning. We went the first week and arrived a few minutes late. There were songs and stories but the librarian didn’t have the same enthusiasm as the librarians we visit regularly. After we’d been there for about 10 minutes she popped in a video. Kipper. Sure Kipper is cute and British and all, but it was a video. At the library. She let the VCR do her job for her. I was disappointed and we didn’t go back for the following week’s story hour. She’s retiring at the end of this year and I don’t know that our library will have the budget for another full-time children’s librarian. I wonder if they’d let me run a story hour of my own.

Be sure to check out The Book Stacks’ A Book by Any Other Name game. The word of the week is “big.” How many books can you think of with the word “big” in the title?