The Time Frame: 17 weeks
The Tools: all of children's literature, and an undergraduate degree in literary studies.
I really love doing storytime. It's one of my favorite parts of my job. But lately, I've been sagging. I took a new position within my library system in March of 2012, and storytime here is really, really different.
To begin with, my picture book collection is tiny. And I weeded it immediately upon arrival to make it even tinier. Circulation is low at my branch, and I found myself weeding clean, sturdy copies of classic books because they hadn't been checked out in oh, a dozen years. So I'm starting out with about 18 shelves' worth of circulating picture books. The last library I worked at was the main library for my system; I was in the children's room, which was basically its own small library. We had everything. Everything Margaret Wise Brown wrote that's still in print, and a few that aren't. And if something wasn't on our shelf in the children's room, I could creep into storage and probably find a historic copy, usually not a first edition or anything but still old enough to smell good. We had a copy of the Gertrude Stein picture book, the one printed on rose-colored paper with navy-blue ink that is just kind of long and incomprehensible, and I would never use it for storytime but oh, wow-- just to touch it. (Thanks to the OMCA White Elephant Sale, I now have a copy of this as well.)
Before that, I was at a tiny branch with a HUGE picture book collection. It was a really wealthy neighborhood with a lot of young kids and the picture books circed like crazy. I had to buy *everything* new and noteworthy, and I had to have the classics on the shelf too.
Storytime here was kind of optimal storytime experience. The kids listened, laughed in the right places, didn't push each other over during "Twinkle Twinkle," etc. And their parents came. They were used to storytime, already loved it, and pretty much ate out of the palm of my hand no matter what I read.
Which brings me to the other storytime obstacle I'm having at the new branch: with a few exceptions, the kids are not accustomed to storytime, and their attention spans and verbal skills skew young. Last year I tried reading mostly fun! books! with lots of funny sounds and interactive elements--the kind of thing I might read to a toddler group. But they didn't necessarily love these. They had fun with some of them, but at four and five years old, they were really craving a story.
By summertime, when the Head Start took a summer break and preschool storytime dwindled to just a few kids, I was putting very little effort into preparing for storytime. Some of that was by necessity because we were summer-busy, but also, I was bored. Somewhere in August I realized that I was just grabbing things off the shelf in the morning before 'time and doing the same songs and fingerplays every week. Very interesting it wasn't.
Feeling frustrated at being uninspired by something that had always been so joyful for me, I decided to kick it into high gear by using THEMES! We always did themed storytimes at my first library, and while in the past it's felt like a school assignment to me (blurg), I've also noted that it's a challenge, and a challenge is what I need right now.
What theme? Bugs? Been done. Animals? Meh. And then I remembered the great scene from the great movie High Fidelity where Dick asks Rob what order his record collection is in, and he tells him... autobiographical.
And that's the moment autobiographical storytime was born. For 17 weeks-- roughly half a school year-- I will do my weekly preschool storytime on a theme based on my own life, running in chronological order. Barely talking in school, deaths of cherished pets, family members' eating disorders, happy vacations, moving cross-country, depression, falling in love with my career---it's all fair game. Though it may not be super recognizable once converted into a 30 minute children's storytime. That's why I'll be keeping this blog, to record the process.
The Goals:
- Using my own life as a theme, create a developmentally appropriate storytime each week
- ...that will be enjoyed by kids who are new to a storytime setting
- Refresh my enthusiasm for preschool storytime
- Discover books I haven't read before
- Use new rhymes and fingerplays that match the themes
- Engage kids in books that aren't necessarily crowd-pleasers
Vive la storytime!
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