The Little Red Hen, Three Ways

Story #1:    The Little Red Hen with felt
Story #2:    The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza with puppets (from the book by Philomen Sturges, illustrated by Amy Walrod)
Story #3:    The Little Red Pirate (a Brad Clark original)
Puppets:  Hen, Cat, Dog, Pig (#2)
Props:  Laminated Shapes and Felt Board (Version #1);  Flower, Rolling Pin, Penguin, Pizza (#2);  Pirate clothes, Parrot, Treasure Chest, Squirt Bottles (#3)
Technology:  none
Audience:  Family Story Time (mostly 3-7 year olds)

Once a year we do a "One Story Three Ways" theme in Family Storytime.  In previous years we've featured "The Three Pigs," "The Three Bears," and "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," but this year we broke our "Three" streak and tried "The Little Red Hen." 

We started with a traditional version, which Terri told using our big felt board and laminated, velcroed figures.  Details of this version are on a previous post.   We always like to start this three-version program with a pretty straightforward one.  This way the kids have the basics down and will recognize the parallels and get the jokes (well, some of them anyway) when we do the broader variations.  The child participation parts of this version do even more to help the kids know the story.  

For version two, we did a broad adaption of The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza by Philomen Sturgis.  We made it "The Little Red Rooster..." instead, mostly because my hen puppets is pretty static, while my Rooster is very nimble and animated.  Rooster was above the curtain, asking his three friends for help.  Dog and Cat each say the expected "Not I," but Pig replies with an "I Will!" and proceeds to bring Rooster the wrong thing:   a Flower instead of some Flour; a Squeaky Hammer instead of a Rolling Pin;  and a Penguin instead of a Pepperoni.  That penguin didn't really make much sense, but I just really liked the idea of something completely nonsensical, plus having little Rooster toss a big Penguin puppet behind the stage is a pretty fun visual.  At the end, Rooster wants to just look at
his pizza, then can't figure out what else to do with it.  When his friends suggest that he should eat it, he rewards that great idea by sharing it with them.  All three of us were behind the stage for this one; it could probably be done with two, but three made prop handling and movement nice and smooth.

For the last version, Terri and I got to just relax while Brad told his original story of The Little Red Pirate.  Brad does performances at several dozen other libraries all over the state, and this was one of his featured stories last summer.  He brings up two volunteers to be Polly the Parrot, and the First Mate, while the rest of the audience is The Crew.  So everyone gets their chance to do "Not I!" when Brad (as the Little Red Pirate) asks for help in finding the treasure.  Steps include Lifting the Anchor, Steering the Boat, Rowing the Dinghy, and Digging for Treasure.

Brad always does a great job of working with the child volunteers.  In one session, the First Mate volunteer did not want to play.  We could tell because he said:  "I'm not doing this."  But he stayed up there and Brad turned his defiance into a character trait, making it lots of fun without making fun of the boy at all.  There's also an excellent ending:  When we finally see the Treasure Chest and The L. R. Pirate points out that no one helped him, he decides they should all....Walk the Plank!, at which point Brad pulls two squirt bottles out of the chest and squirts everybody.  

We had lots of copies of different versions of The Little Red Hen available for checkout, but we had to tell the audience that there was no book version of The Three Little Pirates...yet.  Brad is actually working on finding a publisher for this and for a couple of other stories, and I'm sure it's just a matter of time before he'll be a published picture book author.  Wouldn't you use this book in storytime?

Here's a short video clip from Brad's story:  It starts from the point where The Little Red Pirate is Reading the Map, then has Digging the Treasure, and the excellent squirt bottle ending.....

This "One Story Three Ways" theme is always a fun one to put together, but it also has a purpose.  We always mention that by telling a story and retelling it in different ways we're playing with our narrative skills, just like kids do when they play and act out based on books.

    

K-2 Book Adventure Program Summary - "Dig Into Reading"

We just finished our last "K-2 Book Adventure" of the school year and I realize I haven't posted any program summaries...maybe I'll catch up soon.  For May we made it kind of a sneak preview of our Summer Reading Program, so we used the "Dig Into Reading" theme.  Not the easiest topic for this program, but I think we made it work, picking five books that each have something to do with guys who dig.

 

We started with "Digging Dogs," and acted out a scene from one of my favorite early chapter book series:  "Down Girl and Sit" by Lucy Nolan.  Those books just crack me up; they're perfect for people who like dogs and who have a 2nd grade sense of humor, so no wonder.  Though Down Girl and Sit do some digging in their books, we chose two funnier scenes to act out, both from Bad to the Bone.  As "Ruff" (Down Girl's owner) I tell how Down Girl and Sit got their names, while Terri and Sheila (as DG and S) demonstrate by jumping up and down and not sitting.  Then we did a scene where Down Girl drags her newly cleaned rug through the mud, so it will smell right again.  Some good chasing there as the neighbor cat, Here Kitty Kitty, clings to the rug while Terri/Down Girl runs into the audience with the puppet cat trailing.  We finished with the scene where the dogs grab Ruff's paint brush and get paint all over him ("now he will match the color of the house!") and eat Ruff's pizza.  The scene has a nice conclusion where Ruff decides Down Girl needs to go to dog training classes, and DG thinks it's a good idea because "Ruff has a lot to learn."

 

Then we shifted to "Digging for Dinosaurs," featuring Prehistoric Actual Size by Steve Jenkins.  For whole animal and projected them large on the screen, with a note on how close these are to actual size. 

 

this we just showed a few of the very cool life-sized illustrations, including some fold-outs.  The teeth of Giganatasaurus are especially nice.  To supplement it, we scanned the thumbnails from the back of the book that show the

 

Next up was "Digging Worms," and we took the easy way out for this one.  I just love the "Diary" books by Doreen Cronin and Harry Bliss, but could not think of anything we could do with Diary of a Worm that would be as good as the excellent Weston Woods film.  So we showed that on the screen.

 

One of our goals for this program is to check out multiple copies of the books we feature, so we only choose stuff that's pretty widely available in our county.  For "Digging Snakes," though, I went back to an old favorite:  "The Snake," which is a story in Gwot: Horribly Funny Hairticklers by

George Mendoza.  The book is long out of print (published in 1967, now $70+ on amazon), but I haven't had the chance to tell that story in a long time and decided I'd just take the opportunity.  Basically a farmer slices a snake in two and it comes back the next day twice as big and that keeps happening...I know, sounds kind of weird, but it really is a great oral tale, just funny enough and just gross enough.  Plus it works as a "stretch" if you have the kids stand up and "Thwack!" the snake each time. 

 

We were planning on finishing with "Digging Rabbits" and using Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens.  But a week or so before the event Sheila decided we just had to find a way to do Creepy Carrots, a recent Caldecott Honor book by Peter Brown.  We've been really busy and Tops and Bottoms was going to be easy since we had done it before, but sometimes the lure of a cool new book is just too hard to resist....so this became our "Digging Rabbits" book instead.  Details are in this separate post. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three Billy Goats X 3

Story:  "The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Three Ways"
Props:  #1:  Bridge, Backdrop;   #3 Goat BeardsPuppets:  #1:  3 Goats, 1 Troll (marionettes);  #2:  3 Frogs, 1 Troll, Rabbit
Presenters:  #1:  four;   #2:  two;   #3:  four   (#1 and #3 could be done with two)
Technology:  #3:  PowerPoint slides for backdrop, Tap dance sound effects
Audience:  Family Storytime (mostly 3-7)

For our annual "One Story Three Ways" Family Storytime this year, we decided to try "The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  Our previous programs were "The Three Pigs" and "The Three Bears," so why not try another three-based folktale.  Plus it works out nicely when we have four presenters, which we always arrange for this event (sometimes five). 

We always open with a more-or-less straight version of the traditional tale, just to make sure everyone knows it and will then appreciate the broader interpretations in the next two versions.  Years ago Sheila made an excellent set of marionettes for the story.  They have big old hex nuts for hooves, so we use a wooden bench as the bridge, which allows for some excellent "trip trapping" sounds.  We add a a big blue sheet of fabric on cardboard, set up as backdrop and river, and we're set.  None of us is a marionette expert, but the puppets really draw the attention of the kids.  We had a simple script that gave us room to play around a little, but not too much, since we wanted to convey the heart of the tale.

Next, we went for a fractured version:  "Three Frogs and a Troll."  I've used this for one of my Summer Reading puppet shows a couple of times ("Make a Splash: Read!" and one other from farther back in the SRP archives).  It's not that different, just Frogs/Flies instead of Goats/Grass, and some silly jokes thrown in.  Sheila played the troll and I was the frogs.  In the past I've used a big folkmanis frog that I don't think they make any more for the biggest frog, but was pleased to see a huge stuffed frog in our library supplies.  A bit of minor spinal surgery created a hand-sized opening and he became a puppet.  I shortened my full script to make this fit into our 5-7 minute slot; if anyone is interested in the full script (or the shortened one) email me (sengelfried@yahoo.com) and I can send it to you. 

We struggled to find the perfect third version, but then we saw a cool video called "The Grumpy Old Troll" from the Happy Ape Youtube channel.  It's a real catchy little song, sung by the Troll.  We needed to flesh it out a bit to make the story more complete, so we added some verses, plus a bit of tap dancing.  (Our version with the adapted lyrics is below.)  Brad was the guitar-playing Troll.  He introduces the "Who's that trip trapping over my bridge" refrain to the audience and they join in each time he sings it. 

The three goats comes out and sins one verse together, using the same catchy tune:  "We're the three billy goats.  We like grass that's green. / But this is not the greenest grass that we've ever seen.  /  Let's cross that bridge....and see what we can find." 

Then it's Goat #1 with a verse ("I'm getting kind of hungry so I guess I'll go across. / There's only one path so I won't get lost. / Trip trap, trip trap, I'm gonna cross that bridge").   Then we have a tap dance sound clip play while Goat #1 dances along.  Somehow that added just the right touch.

Next, Brad jumps out and sings the "Who's that trip trapping..." refrain.  The Goat responds with a verse and the Troll lets the Goat go by with another.  The pattern repeats with the other two Goats.

We used a projected image of a bridge as a background, and that worked fine.  We added a final verse to wrap it up, with the Three Goats saying:  "...he should take a trip...to the grocery store!"   And a new slide of a grocery store aisle appears.  Then we sing the chorus together one more time. 

 

This was my favorite of our three versions.  The only minor problems were when the taped-on beards of the goats kept falling out.  Oh, and one of the goats fell down when he tried to mock-tap dance too fast, but I'm pretty sure no one noticed.  This could be done with two people, as could the first version, if one person switches from one goat to the next.  The guitar really made it work well, but it could also work with just plain old singing.     

 

Here's the adapted script we used.  The tune is in the video and I'm told the guitar part is pretty easy to learn (you can click "show more" on the youtube video to see the chords).     

Three Billy Goats Gruff Song    adapted from:  "The Grumpy Old Troll"
        Purple lines are added to the original lyrics

 

Troll:  

I’m grumpy old troll living under a bridge

I’ve got an empty tummy and an empty fridge.
I’m waiting all day for a meal to come along.

There’s some billy goats over on the side of that hill.
They never come this way but I’m hoping they will.
Cause I’m waiting all day for a meal to come along.

3 Goats
We’re the three billy goats.  We like grass that’s green.
But this is not the freshest grass that we’ve ever seen.
Let’s cross that bridge…and see what we can find.

 

1st Goat
 I’m getting pretty hungry so I guess I’ll go across.

There’s only one path so I won’t get lost.
Trip, trap, trip, trap….I’m gonna cross that bridge
[tap dance interlude (optional)] 

Troll:        

Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?

Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?
Who’s that trip trapping….over my bridge?

1st Goat:
I’m the first little goat.  I’m lean and small.

I hardly would make a meal at all.
Wait for my brother…He’s a four course meal.

Troll:
You look pretty tasty, but I’ll let you go by.

I’d rather a bigger goat, and that’s no lie.
So I’ll wait for your brother…I’ll eat him instead.

2nd Goat
My little brother went so I know what I will do.

I want to eat grass so I’m gonna leave too.
Trip, trap, trip, trap…I’m gonna cross that bridge.
[tap dance interlude (optional)] 

Troll:

Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?

Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?
Who’s that trip trapping….over my bridge?

2nd Goat:      I’m the second little goat. I’m a little bit bigger.

Nice plump cheeks and a big fat figure.
But if you’ll only wait…the best is yet to come.

Troll:        

I kind of want to eat you but I’ll let you go by.

I want to make a giant-sized billy goat pie.

So I’ll wait for your brother…I’ll eat him instead.

3rd Goat:
My brothers are gone to that other grassy hill.  It’s time for me to join them so I guess that I will.
Trip, trap, trip, trap…I’m gonna cross that bridge.
[tap dance interlude (optional)] 

Troll:

Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?

Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?
Who’s that trip trapping….over my bridge?

3rd Goat:     

I’m the third billy goat.  I’m big and bold.

I’ll run straight ahead and I’ll stop you cold.
I’ll knock you over…off the side of this bridge.

Troll:        

Well you look pretty big, I’ll admit that it’s true.

I’m a hungry troll, but I’m afraid to mess with you.
You can keep trip trapping…over my bridge.

Troll:        

[sadly]  Now nobody’s trip trapping over my bridge.

Nobody’s trip trapping over my bridge.
Nobody’s trip trapping….over my bridge.

3 Goats:  

He's a grumpy old troll living under a bridge

He's got an empty tummy and an empty fridge.
He should take a trip….to the grocery store.

 We first got this idea for "One Story Three Ways" from The Oklahoma City Storytelling Festival.  Now that we've done it for three years we realize we could easily get away with repeating these sets annually, but I don't think that will happen for a little while.  There's already been some talk around the staff room about a tricky gingerbread cookie and a bread-baking hen, so I'm pretty sure we'll have three new tales for at least a couple years.

K-2 Book Adventure Program Summary: Caldecott Celebration

We featured the Caldecott Medal for a recent "K-2 Book Adventure Program."  There are a bunch of Caldecott Medal and Honor books that work with puppets and act outs for this age group...the problem was, we had already done several of the best ones for this K-2 program over the past 20 months, including Anansi the Spider, Strega Nona,  Fables, Raven, Officer Buckle and Gloria, Click, Clack Moo, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Knuffle Bunny, and The Lion and the Mouse.

After ruling out The Adventures of Hugo Cabret (we decided let's not compete with Scorcese), we came up with a pretty good line-up, using stories, a guessing game, some mini-booktalks, and a lively stretch:

We started with the latest Medal winner, A Ball for Daisy (click for details), using a combination of acting out, scanned illustrations, and music.

Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens is another excellent act out, with details on a previous post.

We finished by showing the video of Tuesday with music by Paul McCartney and a brief appearance by the voice of Dustin Hoffman, neither of whom mean anything to the 5-8 year olds, but maybe the parents appreciated it.  The movie is pretty well done, though it ran a bit long for our program, so Brad edited out a few bits to get it down to 7 or 8 minutes.

I was tempted, as I too often am, to try to cram in as much information as possible along with the stories, but reminded myself that this is mostly a story presentation and not a classroom, so I cancelled my plans for Caldecott trivia, scans from Randolph Caldecott's books, a "what the world was like 75 years ago when the Caldecotts staretd" feature, and snippets from Caldecott acceptance speeches (but if I was a teacher I'd do all of these).  Instead we did "Name That Caldecott Book" as an interlude between each story.  We scanned an illustration and uncovered it bit by bit, giving the kids a chance to guess.  Lots of fun, and it also highlighted the distinct artistic styles.  I was amazed that many kids guessed correctly after just the first slide for several of the books.

We also wanted to show the range of Caldecott winners, so we made sure to include a couple of non-fiction titles, using these as interludes between the stories.  We used scanned images and a mini-booktalk to highlight The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordecai Gerstein.  Later, we highlighted Me, Jane by Patrick McDonnel, again doing a quick booktalk and showing selected illustrations. 

Our program runs for 45 minutes, so we always need at least one good stretching activity somewhere around the 30 minute mark.  David Shannon's No, David! was the perfect Caldecott choice.  The kids mostly know this book, so we scanned several (not all) of the illustrations and just had the kids emulate whatever David is doing:   Stretch for cookies;  Swing a baseball bat;  Run down the street ("but," I said, "please keep your clothes on").  We even showed the nose picking illustration, but it was immediately covered up by a big red circle/slash, which meant we were not supposed to do that one. 

We always have multiple copies of the books we feature available for checkout with this program, and most are usually taken.  This time we added a table full of other Caldecott titles, and they went pretty well too. 

 

Three Bears X 3

Story:  The Three Bears, Three Ways
Props:  #1:  kazoos;  #2: broccoli, bowls, beds (brick, big pillow, regular pillow);  #3 Star Wars stuff
Puppets:  #2:  Bears (3), Girl
Presenters:  #1: four;  #2: three;  #3:  four
Technology:   #3:  recorded narration and music
Audience:  Family Storytime (mostly 3-7 years old)

For our second annual "One Story Three Ways" Storytime, we presented three versions of "The Three Bears."  The idea for the theme comes from The Oklahoma City Storytelling Festival.  Last year we did "The Three Pigs," and although we're not committed to doing tales about three animals forever, it just worked out that way again this time.   

We opened with "The Three Bears with Kazoos," which is described in an earlier post.

Version two was "The Three Bears with Puppets," an almost straight version of the tale, but with mistakes thrown in.  I've done this as a solo puppet show and it's a little complicated for one (lots of puppet switching), but we had the luxury of using three, and we took advantage.  So Terri narrated in front of the puppet stage while Sheila and I worked the puppets from behind.  There's a bit of delay between Terri's words ("There was Papa Bear...") and the puppet's appearance, which sets up the jokes as every now and then the wrong thing pops up.  Such as:  "There was Baby Bear".....and a human baby puppet pops out.  Then Terri corrects the mistake:  "No, I said Baby Bear, not a Baby!"  When Baby Bear is supposed to pop out the next time, it's that Baby puppet with no clothes ("Not a bare Baby, a Baby Bear").  And we had a kind of similar routine using our big stuffed Broccoli, which popped up a few times instead of porridge.   And when it's finally over, Baby Bear smacks Terri on the head with the broccoli.  Good old fashioned puppet show humor.   We didn't go too far with the props:  we didn't use chairs, just had Goldilocks sitting in different places; for beds we had a too hard cardboard brick, a too bouncy cushion, and a just right pillow. 

Our third version was not so old fashioned.  It came from the very creative mind of Brad, who comes up with stuff I could never dream of.  In this case:  "The Three Bears with Star Wars Guys."  For this version, Brad recorded the narration (because he can do all of the funny voices) and the rest of us acted out the parts with masks and props.  Papa Bear = Darth Vader, Mama Bear = Yoda, Baby Bear = Chewbacca, and Goldilocks = Jar Jar Binks.  A short video clip is below.  This was a great way to end it.  Lots of preschoolers really know Star Wars these days (it's the Lego influence I think) and even for those who didn't, the voices and costumes were fun, plus of course it was framed within the familar story structure they'd just seen two times.  We took some heat from one five year old who was visibly upset that we would portray Darth Vader with a blue lightsaber when it should have been red.  He seemed to have no problem with DV and Yoda sharing a bowl of Sarlacc Stew, but clearly the lightsaber error was unacceptable. 

Brad has great ideas, and then he also adds just the right touches.  He created handheld masks and placards we wore around our necks (those used Lego images to be more recognizable to the younger kids), developed a script that retained just enough elements of the three bears, and did all the voices and narration, recording them with music and everything.  He had to miss the presentations sampled below, and we had a couple of other people out sick, so that's Andi (Adult Program Manager) as Darth Vader and Sam (On Call Librarian) as Yoda, both stepping in and doing a great job, plus me as Chewbacca, and Sheila as Jar Jar.  Brad, who does shows for libraries and other venues around the Pacific Northwest (contact and booking information here) also performs this as a solo act, which I haven't seen yet but will get to soon I hope!   Here's the clip from our version:

Now that we've done it twice, we're committed to doing "One Story Three Ways" every year I guess.  Not sure what we'll try next time, but I'm kind of wondering what kind of silliness we could come up with a bridge, a troll, and those three Norwegian goats....

K-2 Book Adventure Program Summary: Wild Animals

 For our "Wild Animals" K-2 Book Adventures program we performed some old favorites, put a twist on a new favorite, and highlighted some excellent animal non-fiction.  We opened with something different:  We projected scans of the illustrations from Jerry Pinkney's amazing Lion and the Mouse.  At the same time we had musicians and students from our local music school providing string accompaniment.  This was very cool...the four musicians had chosen music ahead of time and had some sound effects for different moments in the story, like when Lion roars for help and when Mouse appears to save the day.  It was a little tricky timing our clicks/page turns to their music only because we barely had time to run through it beforehand, but the illustrations and the music really worked well together.

Scranimals  by Jack Prelutsky and Peter Sis was a nice poetry interlude.  We scanned two of the illustrations and read the accompanying poems:  "Oh Sleek Bananaconda" and "Sweet Porcupineapple," which got laughs from the kids and led them to check out our copies to read more.

We did a bit of Reader's Theater to present My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett and Ruth Chrisman Gannett.  This is one of my favorite books ever, so I love to introduce it to kids any way I can.  For this one, I introduced the basics of the story (Elmer Elevator wants to rescue a baby dragon from Wild Island), read the list of what he took in his backpack (with images popping up on the screen for each one (culled from Google images), including two dozen pink lollipops, seven hair ribbons of different colors, chewing gum, and more odd stuff.  Then we jump to the scene where he meets the tigers, who are played by kids (wearing simple paper tiger ears), each one reading the line from the book.  And once the tigers are ready to eat Elmer....."he opened the knapsack and took out the chewing gum."  Which is where we end it, with the kids wondering how some chewing gum might help Elmer escape seven hungry tigers.   

"Name That Wild Animal" was a fun segment where we projected an animal photo from a book, but revealed only a small portion so the kids could guess what it was.  Then we'd reveal another section, when most would be able to get it.  And finally the whole thing.  This is easy to do with PowerPoint, using Shapes to cover the picture and Animations to remove them in order with a click.  We took all the pictures from the "National Geographic Readers" series, which has several animal titles.  These are just right for our target age, plus since they all have the same kind of look, they made a very pleasing book display. 

The Gunniwolf acted out is always a success, and we had great fun with it again.  This was the story we also took to the schools for our quick promotion of the event....it travels well also, since all you really need is a few flowers. 

We always need a stretch break for these programs, which tend to stretch beyond our 45 minute goal, and the natural one here was to do some simple animal yoga.  We did two interludes with poses from A Yoga Parade of Animals by Pauline Mainland, including Giraffe and Lion. 

Then we highlighted two excellent "Life Size" animal series: Actual Size and Prehistoric Actual Size by Steve Jenkins and Life-Size Zoo and Life-Size Aquarium by Teruyuki Komiya (English adaptation by Kristin Earhart). For these it was just a matter of showing a few of the most impressive examples: Squid's Eye, Rhinoceros Horns, nearly a whole Walking Stick.

We closed with a quick puppet show by me based on Jan Brett's Annie and the Wild Animals. This can really be an excellent puppet show, but on this day I was a little too hurried and the kids had been sitting a little too long, so it wasn't as good as it might have been.

Overall, though, the program worked very well, and allowed us to promote some excellent picture books, non-fiction, a chapter book, and poetry. 


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K-2 Book Adventure Program Summary: Trickster Tales

Our January K-2 Book Adventure program featured "Trickster Tales."  The core of this program was four tales, and we mixed up some other "tricky" books to provide variety.  The tales included Gerald McDermott's Raven and Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock by Eric Kimmel and Janet Stevens...click on the links to see details of those.  One nice thing about those two books is Kimmel and Stevens have done several other Anansi tales and McDermott has a series of trickster tales that have a similar look, so we gathered multiple copies of those as well and most of them checked out. 

For Thatcher Hurd's Mama Don't Allow we brought kids up from the audience to be the "Swamp Band."  Terri was Miles, I narrated, and Sheila was a hungry Alligator.  In the book, parents and townspeople comment at how awful the band sounds, so we projected their comments in word bubbles on the screen ("Play outside!"  "How dreadful!") and had the audience read them. 

 "The Dancing Gator" was adapted (very broadly)  from "Buh Rabby and Bruh Gator," a story in Virginia Hamilton's A Ring of Tricksters.  This has been a long-time favorite of mine to tell with puppets, but my first chance to act it out with a partner.  I'll try to do a full blog entry on that one in the near future.  A Ring of Tricksters isn't easy for younger readers to manage, but it has some great readalouds for adults to share, and I was pleased that several copies got checked out.

In between the four tales, we highlighted books that were tricky in different ways.  One of our goals or this K-2 Book Adventure program is to expose kids to a wide variety of books, including non-fiction, picture books, poetry, and anything else that fits. 

"Tricky Photographs":   For Look-Alikes Jr. by Jan Steiner we scanned three of the illustrations, projected them, and had the kids identify the everyday items that are used in the amazing photographed scenes.  We'd name an item ("where's the spatula on the rocket?") and then with a PowerPoint click we'd add an arrow pointing right to it.  And of course we had the others in the series available too.
 
"Tricky Words":   We scanned and tried out a few tongue twisters from Alvin Schwartz's Busy Buzzing Bumblebees (illustrated by Paul Meisel), which is just right for this age group.  And had more tongue twister books on hand for checkout. 
 
"Tricky Nature":  We used the very cool book Where in the Wild (David M. Schwartz and Yael Schy, photos by Dwight Kuhn).  In the book, you see a photo with a camoflauged animal, then turn the page and see the same page with everything but the animal visually muted.  This worked great when transferred to PowerPoint and used with animations.  We scanned both pages and had the front one very slowly "Exit/Dissolve" while the next page very slowly "Enter/Dissolve," so you'd gradually see the hidden green snake emerge.  Another of those rare cases where I have to grudgingly admit that technology works as well as the printed page (but you still can't feel it or smell it).

And since we never expect this group to sit still for 45 minutes, we added a "Tricky Game," to get them moving, a variation of "Simon Says" that Terri led.  There are times when working our themes into a cohesive program takes some struggling, but this time the combination of tricky tales and tricky non-fiction seemed like a nice and natural mix. 

K-2 Book Adventure Program Summary: “Food in Fact and Fiction”

Our December K-2 program was built around food.  As usual, we tried to mix in different types of books:  folktales, picture books, early readers, and non-fiction. 

We started with “Cookies,” from Frog and Toad Together, which is described here. 
Then we did the first of our

three “Funny Food” segments that we interspersed throughout the program.  These all featured scans of the amazing photos from the books of Saxton Freymann...you know, the ones where he makes fruits and vegetables look like stuff.  We selected pages from several of his books and grouped them into three categories:  Animals, People, and Vehicles.  Then we projected the series of images with music in the background for about 90 seconds each segment.  The music we chose was Scott Joplin's “The Entertainer” by Marvin Hamlisch (from the soundtrack to The Sting) for People;  “In the Mood” by the Henhouse Five plus Too (aka Ray Stevens and others "clucking" the song) for Animals;  and “Soul Limbo” by Booker T & the MG’s for Vehicles.  This was great fun for the kids (and fun to put together in PowerPoint) and gave a nice continuity to the program.  Plus there's the added virtue of exposing a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds to Booker T & the MG's.

Next up was Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute by Jarrett Krosoczka.  Graphic novels are popular with this young age group, and easy to present.  Give them the premise (the Lunch Lady is actually a crime fighter!  The substitute teacher is an evil cyborg) and show some of the paneled illustrations on the screen and they’re hooked.

For a non-fiction food title we featured What You Never Knew About Fingers, Forks and Chopsticks by Patricia Lauber and John Manders.  This is a funny and factual look at how humans have eaten from prehistoric times to the present.  We shared a few facts from the book, accompanied by scans of Manders’ funny cartoon illustrations. 

Next up was The Fat Cat, which is described in more detail here.  We followed that with a food break.  We haven’t used snacks with this program in the past, but our theme pretty much required it this time.  We went with all fruits and veggies, cut up and put into cups, and the kids ate them all!  To serve them we borrowed a strategy we’ve been using in our “Cookies and Books” booktalk program for grades 3-5:  We give the kids 60 seconds to get up, get their food, and sit again, and we do a music/video countdown on the screen (from Minute to Win It) so they can see where they are.  It makes it fun, gets it done fast, and also serves as a “stand up and move around” break.

We did one more non-fiction book:  What Do You Do When Someone Wants to Eat You by Steve Jenkins, whose books I feature at any opportunity I get.  For this one we showed the picture of one animal on the screen (like the lizard) and asked the kids to guess how it avoids being eaten (tail falls off).  They seemed to know most of the answers, but that’s fine. 

We finished the program with If You Give a Dog a Donut.  Details are here.  Also, you can always click on “Program Summaries” under the “Labels” section on the right to see past K-2 Book Adventure line-ups.    

K-2 Book Adventure Program Summary: Mo Willems Author Celebration

Our November K-2 Book Adventure was a “Mo Willems Author Celebration.”  One of the easiest and most fun ones yet.  He has a ton of stories that are great for large groups, award-winning videos, and a website with interesting author facts, silly dances, and a cool handout!

We started with “Facts About the Author” projected on the screen and used these throughout the program in between stories.  Those segments were: 

“Mo Looks Like This” (plenty of silly photos on the website);   “Mo Wins Medals,” talking about his Caldecott,(illustrator); Giesel (author/illustrator); and Carnegie (filmmaker) honors;   “Mo Draws on His Walls” featured photos of the butcher paper and chalkboard drawings from his home, with work by family and visitors as well;   and “Mo Worked for a TV Show” with a slide of Sesame Street. 

As far as stories, there were so many to choose from.  We started with an “Elephant and Piggie”:  Watch Me Throw the Ball, which Brad and I had done for Family Storytime before.  Sheila (Piggie) and Terri (Elephant) had way too good of a time winding up for the big throws.  

Then it was Leonardo the Terrible Monster, with me narrating, Terri as Leonardo, and Sheila as Sam, the boy that Leonardo makes cry (except that’s really not the reason he cries).  This was all acted out, pretty much word for word.  We did include a few slides on the screen:  scans from the book of the other monsters to compare to Leonardo (Tony with all those teeth, Eleanor (she's big), and Hector who's "just plain weird")

Next up was Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, which if you’re doing a Mo Willems program you kind of have to do.  Like a Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band has to play “Free Bird” every time.  Details on our telling are here.

My favorite part of the program was City Dog, Country Frog.  Details about why I liked it and how we did it are here.

We always need something towards the end of these programs to get the kids up and moving, and fortunately Mo’s website provided that too.  We linked to the Elephant and Piggie Dance Game. The page asks you to pick three dances for each character and then plays them back, with animated E & P demonstrating the steps.  We just told the kids to follow either or both and have fun.  We ran it twice and that seemed just right.  If this blog entry is going on too long and you need a quick exercise break, the "Funky Trunky" and "Twist and Snout" might be just the thing.   

As a finisher, we showed the Carnegie winning DVD of Knuffle Bunny.  This was the first time we did a straight video for this program, but it fit just right since we had already highlighted his awards.  It’s just such a perfect video from the introduction (a perfect model of Dialogic Reading) to the voices of Mo, daughter Trixie, and wife Cher.  Here’s a clip that shows the first half of the movie. 

After that nice ending, we gave out Pigeon Door Hangers and let kids check out books.  Which they did!  We always get lots of checkouts at our K-2 events, but this time they nearly cleared us out. 

As always, we visited schools to promote the program the day before.  This gave us a chance to do another “Elephant and Piggie” story, since we had such a hard time limiting ourselves to one during the program.  We acted out Can I Play, Too with all three of us:  I was Elephant, Sheila was Piggie, and Terri was Snake (with a green scarf wrapped around her arms).  Again, we used Mo’s words, threw a bunch of balls to Snake (who couldn’t catch them of course), then finally played catch “with” Snake, throwing Terri back and forth between us (well, pretending to throw her, while she flailed about as if being tossed through the air, which you kind of have to see to get, but she made it work!). 

So we liked this K-2 Book Adventure a lot.  So far we've tried to do one "Author Celebration" per quarter, and have done Arnold Lobel and Dr. Seuss in the past.  But we're not sure yet who our next one will be.  There are many great authors out there, but not that many who have multiple titles that adapt well to acting out, puppetry, and the rest...

K-2 Book Adventure Program Summary: Magical Tales & Tricks

Our October “K-2 Book Adventure” was on “Magical Tales & Tricks.”   We don’t have a real strict structure for this program, and it this case the theme lent itself to a slightly different approach:  We alternated stories with magical elements with actual magic tricks. 

 We highlighted two of Rose Wyler’s early reader magic trick books…still the best for simple tricks that kids can really do.  We weren’t trying to impress the kids with our magician skills (since we have none); we wanted them to understand the trick and get excited about trying it on their own.

 To start off we handed out a tube of paper to every child and had them try “The Magnificent Magical Hand Trick” (we did make up our own names for the tricks to get some alliteration going).  That’s where you hold your hand next to the tube, look through it, and it looks like it has a hole in it.  I think about 75% of the kids got it.  Which did make this maybe not the best choice for an opening trick, but we wanted one that everyone could do.

Then we acted out The Little Rooster and the Diamond Button.  Details are on this page.

Next trick was “The Sensational Strange String Trick.”  Put two strings into your mouth…pull out one string!  This one takes a bit of practice, but works very well. As I mentioned, we don’t have sleight of hand skills, but did have a lot of fun with the patter, going on a bit about how we thought about using tape or glue to connect the strings, but instead….we’ll do it with our mouth!

The Wizard, the Fairy and the Magic Chicken was our next magical tale.  Details are here.

“The Stupendous Sticky Hand Trick” is where you pick up a ruler with your flat palm and no fingers.  Obvious once you see the trick, but it does fool most kids the first time. 

For a change of pace we used a “kind of” magic book:   Walter Wick’s Optical Tricks, one of my favorites.  We scanned three of the images from the book, challenging the kids to explain how the photograph we’re looking at is possible.  Then we projected the solution from the book.  For the third one, we only showed the illusion (the one with the red cube) and told them to check out the book if they can’t figure it out.  This book is a stretch for most kindergartners, but I think the first and especially second graders can get it (though I’ve also used with 4^th and 5^th graders, which might be even better).

Our final magic trick was “The Extraordinary X-Ray Eyes Trick.”  This is the one where a few kids tell you their names, you write down each of them on a card, then “see through” the card that’s selected to reveal the name.  The trick:  once you write down the first kid’s name, you just write it again four more times, whatever the other names are.  Another one the kids could go home and try that night on their family I bet.

We finished with Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola.  We stripped down the story to the core.  Strega hires Big Anthony;  Big Anthony sees her make pasta with her magic pot;  Anthony tells people about it but nobody believes him;  Anthony makes pasta, but can’t stop it.  It’s an excellent story even though many of the kids may have known it already.  And for the overflowing pasta, we got to use Silly String, which is always a plus for this program.  Since it overflowed all over Big Anthony and all over the village (the audience) there was plenty of mess to clean up, which is why we saved this one for last.