2-5 Story time: Growing, cooking, and eating

I was all out of themes, so I picked some off the shelf and voilà: They made their own theme.

Anne Miranda's To Market, To Market: Smashing success! What happens nowadays when you go to market to market to buy a fat pig? In a children's book, at any rate, you don't take it home to butcher it. It- and the hen, the lamb, and any other live thing you bring home- create quite a stir.

"The one with the lady with the duck on her head" was a favorite. I was worried that the pictures were too cluttered, but kids a few rows back were shouting out what various animals were doing. The color- painted figures against the black- and- white collage background- help. I love how the animals are so realistic and at the same time so cute- look at that ducks feet! and his cheeks!

The kids loved it when I'm singing along and interupt myself with "uh-oh..." They helped.

I made the mistake of asking one group to help. One little girl who was too old to be in story time by herself clearly thought this was an invitation to read the book along with me. Need to think of a better way of encouraging participation.

Byron Barton's The Little Red Hen didn't go over as well as I thought it would in the first group- several two- and- unders with one big kid answering all my questions while everyone else looked on. The second group liked it a lot better- they caught onto the "Not I's" from the beginning. I ditched the animal voices I was using with group one and just let everyone else say it for me.

The illustrations in this one are bright, simple, and fun, and there's no one like Barton for simplifying a story down to a pre-school attention span. If it weren't so comparatively wordy, I would have gone with Brian Pinkney's version. Pinkney, Johnson, McKissack, Daly- we love your books! Now write simpler ones! I want to use them in story time!

For instance, I didn't use Grandma Lena's Big ol' Turnip by Denia Lewis Hester. I did display it, but a big person picked it up, looked inside, and immediately asked me for one didn't have so many words.

I told the Giant Turnip story from Judy Sierra's Flannelboard Story telling book instead. Synopsis: Old man plants a turnip that grows really big so he can't pull it up even with an old woman, a little girl, a cat, and a dog pulling with him. The addition of a mouse finally does the trick.

I made the flannel board pieces with felt and black interfacing from the fabric store as the book suggested (and as pictured on the cover). They didn't turn out quite as pretty, but they were passable (and more impressive looking than my normal photocopies glued to cardboard covered with shelf paper). I had to tell several kids I would let them touch the little people after I was done with stories (not NOW, when they need to be up on the board, please.)

The first group didn't help much with the "Pull! (grunt!)s" but the second group was more than happy to make noise with me.

BTW, my exceptional boy from the other week came back! And looking at another copy of the book in mom's lap seemed for him an acceptable alternative to standing right in front of the copy I was reading so no one else could see. The only time we ran into problems was, of course, when I wasn't using a book. I gave him one of our wire-and-bead things (you know, you've seen them in doctors offices) to play with and he did alright.

I let the first group vote on what they wanted to hear last (dangerous proposition, I know) and the vote was unanimous for my big book: Carrot Seed by Ruth Kraus. At least amongst those voting. Four abstained. One seemed to be raising his hand for my other choice as well, but I believe he was actually grabbing for Carrot Seed. Everyone was spellbound until the seed finally sprouts and half the group shouted out "Woah! BIG carrot!" (or something similar).

I forced The Cake that Mack Ate on my other group. Not so wise, but hey, I'd requested copies from two other branches and intended to use them. This one follows a "House that Jack Built" pattern (this is the grain that fed the hen that laid the egg that went into the cake that Mack ate, etc.) and so rolls on along...until you get to a picture of a dog. Captioned : "This is Mack." I cracked up! The kids completely missed the joke. Someone asked "Who's Mack?" and I went back and explained the joke. The parents laughed. The kids were still befuddled. I didn't have any copies to send back to their home branches, so maybe some of the grown-ups hoped the kids would get it a second time around.

Moral of the story: Visual gags work a lot better for pre-schoolers than irony, subtle or otherwise. Nothing I didn't know from grad-school, but experience is the best teacher (apologies to my child lit prof.)