The Chocolate Chip Ghost (and other colors)

Story:  The Chocolate Chip Ghost  by Meighan Piefer & Phyllis French

Props:   Felt Ghosts + Felt Board; colored food props or pictures (optional)

Presenters:   one

Audience:   Toddler, Preschool

I keep trying to get back to this blog, and my motivation this time is to get in a good Halloween story before the holiday happens.  This a favorite among pre-school teachers and librarians, but not everyone knows it.  I've pretty sure that I've  never actually seen the book:  I learned it as a felt board story from someone years ago.  I don't do many stories with felt, mostly because I'm so completely unskilled at scissors, patterns, and just general crafty creativity.  But these shapes are even simple enough for me.  You just cut out five small ghosts and one big one.  I made the big one into a simple flat puppet, but it works fine as just a felt shape.


 Then you tell the story, which is basically this:

Mother Ghost goes to the store to get some food.  She tells her five little ghosts not to have anything but milk when she's gone.  One by one, each ghost goes to the fridge and gets something that's not milk, but something with a distinct color.  Ghost one gets a tomato.  [pick her up and bring her behind the felt board; show the tomato].  And when she came back, she was......red!  [switch white ghost for red ghost and put that one back on the board].

Then then next three ghosts do the same thing, with different colors and different fruits or vegetables.  Play food or real food both work fine.

That simple anticipation and guessing game, where the kids guess what the ghost will eat and what color she'll turn to, along with the satisfying visual image of that brightly colored ghost, works just great.  Similar in effect to doing Pete the Cat: I Love My Red Shoes with colored shoes.  

Then there's a neat twist at the end, when the last little ghost finds the refrigerator empty, so she looks in the freezer.  I usually let the kids know that she found some ice cream, ask them to guess what flavor, then show the decorated ghost and they all get that it was chocolate chip ice cream. 

For the food props, you can use real food, toy food, or if you don't have either, just print out a picture. Actually pictures might work even better because you can stick them to the board, though I've never tried it that way.

The humor and surprises in this story are right on target for two and three year olds, but it's also engaging enough for ones and surprisingly fascinating to four and five year olds as well.  And for toddlers it's has just the right level of Halloweenishness, with the least scary ghosts ever.   

Funny Food + Scott Joplin

Book:  Food Play  by Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers
Puppets:  none
Props:   Selected images from the books, scanned, printed, and laminated
Presenters:   one
Audience:   Toddler Time  (1's and 2's)

Saxton Freymann & Joost Elfers have done a bunch of books with photographs of fruits and vegetables put together to look like people, animals, and other stuff.  They're really amazingly creative and kids love to look at them.  We've used them more than once for our "Food in Fact and Fiction" K-2 Book Adventures program, putting scanned photos into a slide show that we ran with musical accompaniment.

Later, we used an adapted version of that in Family Storytime.  I decided to give it a try in Toddler Time, but there's just one thing:  we never, ever do anything in Toddler Time that puts the pages of a book on the screen.  Although I've really enjoyed our creative uses of the screen with stories for older kids, we're not going there with 1's and 2's.  Also, our Toddler Time crowd is small enough (20-25 kids, but they're little) to see pictures pretty well.

So my first thought was to play the music and use the book, just doing page turns.  That didn't work too well, though, because most of the pages have at least two separate images.  Which is great for a book, but in a group presentation you want to be able to focus on one photo at a time.  So I decided to enlarge and print out individual pictures, cropping where needed, and show one piece of funny food at a time.  For our earlier presentation, we selected images from a variety of books, but this time I stuck to just one book, Food Play, which actually consists of pictures from several of the other titles, kind of like a "Greatest Hits" collection.

In our slide show, we utilized three pieces of music, but for Toddlers I stuck with one:  Marvin Hamlisch's recording of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" (aka the Theme from The Sting).  It's an instrumental that has just the right bit of playfulness.  It also has a strong pattern, so you get very strong end-of-line cues on where to do your page turns.  Or in this case, page switches.  The music adds a lot to the experience, and I'm sure there are other tunes that would also work.   I actually did go to the trouble of "transcribing" the music, so I could organize the images neatly.  I don't know anything about music, so my transcription was just a line by line list of sounds, using a "d" for some reason:
    d d d D d D d D  /   d d D d d D d d D
It made sense to me anyway, and did help my planning some, so if anyone wants to try the story and would like the line by line, let me know and I can send it.  I'd also be glad to list the photos I used, but it's also fun to just pick out your favorites.

The song divides neatly into 6 sections, and I picked 4 illustrations for each section, grouping them into similar themes for each section:   Faces, Animals, People, Vehicles, More Animals, and Faces again to end.  With the slide show, we used more illustrations, switching them faster, because clicking for a new slide is seamless.  Also, the toddlers really need more time to absorb what they're seeing.  So doing 4 per section means that I held each one up for about 4 or 5 seconds.

I thought about putting the images on sticks to make them easier to handle, but just using two hands worked fine.  And even though "holding up a picture" sounds simple, Terri pointed out that there should be rhythm and sameness to the appearance of each picture.  So I picked up the picture from the stool on my right, slowly panned it from left to right, then slowly went back right to left, and picked up the next one.  That regularity meant the kids could focus on the images without having to work to track where the picture will be.

This is one where all the work is in the prep.  Choosing the illustrations, scanning, printing, and laminating, and practicing to the music.  You really want the transitions from one picture to the next to match the rhythm of the music....it could work without that, but it's better with.  And then once it's time to tell it, you just put on the music and flip from one picture to the next.

The toddlers really enjoyed it, but I'm sure it was on a different level than the preschool or K-2 groups did.  The older kids see bananas that look like giraffes and are amazed at the cleverness;  toddlers just see giraffes that look kind of silly...and that's okay.  Identifying the fruits is more of a lap activity, and since so many of the Freymann/Jelffers books I had available checked out, I'm sure some of that happens later at home.

A couple weeks later I did this same version for a Family Storytime at the Hillsboro Library, where I'm a sub and do a Sunday Storytime a couple times per month.  We don't have the screen and projector set-up there, so using the pictures and my ipod worked just fine.  The things I was sure to do for Toddlers (fewer pictures, move them slowly and regularly) were equally useful for a mostly 4 and up group, so I really didn't need to change a thing for the older crowd.

More For Bear, But a Few Less Rhymes

Book:  Bear Wants More  by Karma Wilson

Puppets:  Bear, Mouse, Rabbit, Raccoon, Chipmunk (forest animal substitutions ok, except for Bear)

Props:  Grass, Berries, Carrots, Fish, Net (or Fishing Pole), Basket of More Food

Presenters:   One

Audience:   Toddler Time  (1 and 2 year olds)

When I decided to try adapting Bear Wants More into a puppet story for Toddler Time, I knew I’d have to make some pretty big changes.  As a picture book it works great, and Karma Wilson does a better than average job of writing rhymes that really flow easily when you read them.  My problem was, I wasn’t going to read them, I was going to memorize them, and my memory’s not all that good.  So I cut some lines out, simplified some others, and tried not to mangle the author’s flow too much.  

Here’s a section from the book:  “Mouse scampers by with his acorn pail. / “Come along,” Mouse squeaks, “to Strawberry Vale!” / So up Mouse hops onto Bear’s big back. / They tromp through the woods for a fresh fruit snack.”  With pictures from the book and a leisurely storytelling pace, the rich language (“scampers… tromp…”), alliteration (“fresh fruit….Bear’s big back…”) and specificity (Strawberry Vale) all work great. 

With puppets and toddlers, though, I strip it down to the bare bones:   “Mouse scampers by and he’s feeling quite merry / ‘Come along, Bear, let’s find some berries!” No Zolotow Award for that, but it supports the interaction of the puppets, shortens it enough for me to remember, and retains a passable rhyme. Then we skip straight to:  "The berries are sweet / And they eat, eat, eat!"   With puppets and a young group, it works better when the words are direct and simple, even if it means losing some of the poetry and flair.  I made similar adjustments to other sections, keeping to the original whenever I could.

The puppetry part also required a bit of adjusting.  The story starts and ends with Bear's den, and I couldn't work that out until I decided to use my puppet bag for the den.  So I pop Bear out of the den in the beginning (“A bear wakes up very hungry and thin!”).  He nibbles on grass “till the last blade is gone…”  Then I hesitate so the audience will start to join in on the repeated refrain:   “But the bear wants more!” 

Then Bear meets three friends (I use Mouse, Rabbit, and substitute Raccoon for Badger).  Each one invites Bear to join them for food (Berries, Carrots (instead of clover), and Fish), and each time “Bear wants more!” (with the audience joining in).  I was a little rushed that morning and forgot to bring my little fish.  I used my goldfish and you'd think that would be okay, but it's just a little too cute, and the other one just looks more...edible.   You can see from the photo that you'd much rather have Bear nibbling on the little guy than the pretty (and large) goldfish.  The little one looks more like food than a character, at least to toddlers.  They still have plenty of time to learn that meat comes from animals and then promptly become vegetarians (at least that's how it worked with my own kids)  

In the book, several of Bear’s friends prepare a surprise party for Bear while he’s gone.  I trimmed that to just one (Chipmunk) and simplified the party description:  “She gathers a lot of Bear’s best things to eat / So when he gets back he’ll be in for a treat.”  Then Chipmunk puts the food the bag, and I close the zipper a bit.

When Bear returns, the words describe that he’s grown bigger: “Bear is so big…that he can’t fit in!”   And with the zipper more closed, the kids can see that he really can’t fit, and finally gets stuck.  The visual image isn't all that convincing, but the story is so clean and direct that they all got the idea.  

In the book, Badger pries Bear out with a stick, but since I can’t show the inside of the den/bag, I have Mouse pull him out, which is a nice visual puppetry piece.  When he pops out Mouse flings him into a flip in the air then he lands on the bag.   The ending matches the book:  Bear eats all of the party food (which I drop into the bag when he's done) so his friends just sniff at the empty basket while snoring Bear is “full, full, full…but…his friends want more!”     

For that final bit I just grab whichever two puppets are nearest and have them shake their heads atop the sleeping bear.  

A Wide-Mouthed Bird Named Confetti

Book:  Snack Time for Confetti  by Kali Stileman

Puppets:  2 Birds, Giraffe, Zebra, Elephant, Monkey (substitutions okay)

Props:  Leaves, Grass, Fruit, Banana

Presenters:   One

Audience:  Toddler Time  (1 and 2 year olds)

The Wide Mouthed Frog is one of my all-time favorite stories to tell with puppets, but my version is a little too wild for most kids under three.  So I was pleased to discover Snack Time for Confetti.  It's an original story, with excellent illustrations, but has a similar basic structure to WMF:  Hungry animal asks other animals for food ideas and doesn’t like any of them.  But it’s scaled back a bit, and has a nice Yuck/Yum pattern that’s just about right for two-year olds.  So I told it with puppets for Toddler TIme.  

I tell it with a combination of narration and dialogue.  “Confetti was hungry.  Really, really hungry!  And she met….a Giraffe.”  So I bring Giraffe out of the bag, and then it’s dialogue:   “Giraffe, I’m hungry!”   “Well, Confetti, I like to eat luscious leaves.”  Giraffe brings out some leaves, then I slip back to narration:  “Giraffe said…. YUM! (as Giraffe nibbles on leaves)….”And Confetti said….YUCK!  So Confetti went to find a different snack.  And she met….a Zebra.”  And the same pattern repeats.

It’s a nice pattern, with some simple elements that work very well with toddlers and puppets:   A new animal popping out of the bag;   That animal’s food popping out of the bag;  And a fun and easy participation prompt, where the audience naturally joins in on the Yums and Yucks, especially with a little hesitation by the storyteller just before each Yum and Yuck.  

The book includes a Crocodile twist, where the bird learns that the Croc is hungry and replies with a whisper that she’s “maybe not that hungry.”  The illustrations cue the readers that the Croc is dangerous.  This also echoes WMF a bit, but I feel like it will get lost on the younger toddler time audience, so I don’t include it.  I just stick with the main pattern until the last segment.  So I just do Giraffe/Leaves, Zebra/Grass, Elephant/Apple, and Monkey/Banana (the book uses Nuts for Monkey, but a banana is always easier to manage than nuts in the world of puppets).

Finally Confetti’s mom comes home.  In the book, she brings her child 5 things to eat…I cut that to 3 for my presentation:  a wiggly Worm, a speedy Spider, and a fine Fly.  I was going to use a caterpillar, but realized that my little stuffed caterpillar is the one from The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and we just did that book two weeks before....don't want to replace that image of caterpillar-becomes-butterfly with one of caterpillar-becomes-bird food, at least not yet.   Mom brings each one of those out, one at a time, and puts them on a plate.   And then of course it’s:  “And Confetti said:  YUM!” and she gobbles them up.  The two bird puppets I have for Mom and Confetti work well for this story because their beaks are pretty nimble…it can be hard to pick stuff up with some bird puppets. 

After Confetti eats her creepy-crawlies, I list off the other animals (but I don’t put the puppets back on…too chaotic and not really needed).  “And guess what Giraffe and Zebra and Elephant and Monkey said?   YUCK!”  It's a satisfying ending, with some silliness that two-year olds really get and one-year olds...well they might not get it, but they at least get to see animals eat stuff and say "Yum" and "Yuck" a lot, and with one-year olds, that can be just enough.  

Always Room on Mother's Lap

Book:  On Mother’s Lap  by Ann Herbert Scott

Puppets:  Boy, Baby

Props:  Boat, Dog, Blanket

Presenters:  One

Audience:  Toddlers   (1 and 2 year olds)

When I first started doing Toddler Times in the late 80’s, there really weren’t all that many books that were just right for 1 and 2 year olds.  This was one of them, and it still works great as a book.  It also works very well as a pretty simple puppet story.

I tell it mostly with narration, with the boy puppet (“Michael”) speaking up regularly.  Actually I use a doll; we have one at the library who matches the look of the Inuit child much more closely than the boy puppet  have, and the doll is mobile enough to do the simple actions required.  I play the role of the mother myself…I know, wrong gender, but I just tell the audience that’s who I am and that’s all they need.   It starts with Michael on Mother’s lap,  rocking “back and forth, back and forth.”  I ask the audience to join me for that part, both saying the “back and forths” and rocking back and forth, which works great since many are in their grown-ups’ laps while they listen.   The line from the book is “Back and forth, back and forth they rocked.”  It’s a small thing, but I change that to “they rocked:  Back and forth, back and forth.”  Especially with toddlers, I really want the participation parts to work smoothly, so moving the prompt (“they rocked:…”) to the front makes it very clear when they are supposed to join in. 

I leave a few beats of silence after the second “back and forth, then I pop Michael up from my lap and he says:  “Let’s get Dolly!”  I pull the Doll out of my puppet bag and narrate again:  “Now Michael and Dolly were on Mother’s lap, and they rocked back and forth, back and forth.”   And the pattern repeats, with Michael popping up to get something new each time.  In the book it’s Puppy, Boat,and Blanket, though other items could be substituted.   There’s a real nice storytelling rhythm to the tale, moving neatly from the quiet interaction of rocking, to Michael popping up, to a surprise item from the bag, and back to the rocking.  I try to keep Michael’s explanations fairly restrained and not play up the “what’s in the bag?” part too much.  You could make his reactions more extreme and emotional, but better to keep with the gentle tone of the story I think.   

The twist comes when it’s Mother who mentions someone who needs to be on her lap, and it’s Baby.  This time Michael pops off her (my) lap, looks at Baby, looks at Mother, and sadly says:  “There isn’t room.”  Then Mother calmly gathers everyone onto her lap and ends the story with the very reassuring line that “there’s always room on Mother’s lap.”

That theme, along with the new sibling rivalry that leads to it, is a universal one that resonates most families.  My props don't match the words as well as I wish, but I don't change the words, calling it a "reindeer blanket" even though it doesn't have reindeer on it and "canoe" even though it's obviously a different kind of boat.  The words lend some of the cultural specificity in the book, and of course the theme and the actions that lead up to it are universal.  And ideally the puppet version leads families to check out an excellent, but sometimes overlooked book (and it's still in print!).    

I Made a Mistake, But At Least It Rhymed

Book:  I Made a Mistake  by Miriam Nerlove

Puppets:  Bear, Fish, Frog, Fox, Cheetah, [substitute freely]

Props:  "The End" sign

Presenters:  One

Audience:  Toddlers  (one and two year olds)

Here's one of those books that worked very well in print form, but now it's out of print and almost 30 years old, so puppets are one way to keep it going.  And it's among the simplest puppet tales around, so a great choice if you haven't used them much.  It's based on an old jump rope rhyme and sort of a relative of Old Mother Hubbard, with mistakes and rhymes:  "I went to the bathroom to brush my hair. / I made a mistake and brushed my bear."  That's basically it, with a series of about a dozen verses, with a sensible every day activity in the first line, and a a nonsensical mistake involving an animal in the second line.  So if you've got a handful of animal puppets, you're set.

My first time with this I'm pretty sure I assembled all of the props for the first half and used them.  So I took out a brush on the first line, then popped a Bear puppet out of the bag to complete the rhyme.  And that works fine for the first verse, and for a few others, but once you get to "heater" (for Cheetah) and "sit on the lawn" (for Swan), the whole thing just gets too prop-heavy and difficult.  So I drop all props for the first line
and just go with the animal puppets.  Much less confusing for all of us.

I just say the first line, then after "I made a mistake and brushed...." there's a little hesitation as you reach into the bag and bring out  "...a Bear!"  By the time you start the second verse, which in my version is "I went to the laundry to wash my socks. / I made a mistake and washed....a Fox!" the kids have picked up the pattern.  And they've also heard the rhyme, even if they're not conscious of it.  The story works because of the anticipation of "pop-out," so hesitating a bit, maybe seeing if they can guess based on the rhyme (toddlers usually can't, though), heightens the engagement of the kids.

Since I use this in Toddler Time, I don't go with a full dozen rhymes.  I pick about six, based on the puppets I have around and the rhymes that are the most fun.  And it's fine to add your own rhymes that aren't in the book...that's the way jump rope rhymes work anyway.  For example, I always like the chance to use my Armadillo puppet, so I added "I went to by bed to fluff up my pillow / I made a mistake..."   And for similar reasons I appreciate one rhyme that is from the book ("went to the heater.../...sat by a Cheetah") because I have a very cool, but under used, Cheetah puppet.

One more minor adaptation for presenting with puppets is the ending.  The final verse wraps it up nicely:  "I went next door to find my friend / I made a mistake and found...The End!"  So for that one I print "The End" on a letter sized page and pull that out of the bag, which is a nice minor twist to finish with.

Bear, Moon, Hat, and an Echo

Book:  Happy Birthday Moon  by Frank Asch
Puppets:   Bear
Props:  Hat, Moon (white ball)
Presenters:  One
Audience:   Toddler Time, Preschool
Video:  How to Tell "Happy Birthday Moon" with Puppets

Here's one that I like to do in Toddler Time, even though I know deep down it's more of a preschool story.  So when I tell it with puppets and props I make sure to do some stuff before the story starts so the group can follow it pretty well.  Bear's voice echoing is a key plot element, and lots of kids don't know what that means, so I prep them.  I tell them about how if you say something loudly, sometimes the sound can bounce off of a wall or a mountain and you can hear it again.  Then I have them practice.  My Bear puppet says "Hello!" to them, and they say it back as a group.  We try it a couple times and they pick it up pretty quickly.

Then it's on to the story, which is as much storytelling-with-props as it is puppetry.  I pare it down to the basics.  Bear wonders when Moon's birthday is, decides to ask him, and climbs a mountain to get closer.  I hold up Moon in one hand (using a big styrofoam ball, but any big white ball would work).  Bear shouts:  "Hello!" and then I prompt the audience:  "...and the echo came back.  Ready...?"  And they all join in with the echoing:  "Hello!"

Then I have Bear react to that echo, this time addressing the audience:  "Wow!  Moon said 'hello' to me!"  So Bear alternates between calling up to Moon, with the echo coming back, and sharing his reaction with the audience.  Bear's calls to Moon are in a slightly different voice, more drawn out, and that helps to cue the audience that their turn to echo is about to come.


Once Bear learns that Moon wants a hat (which is just what Bear wants....this is such a cleverly conceived story!), he gets one and leaves it on a tree for Moon.  I've done this
using a big tall plant as the tree, but eventually just went to holding my arm straight up with that hat on it, and that works just as well and is much easier.  I take Bear off my hand to bring Moon up across the sky, "freezing" Moon when it's just below the hat.  I'm narrating this part, rather than talking as Bear, to make it clear:  "The Moon moved across the sky, until it looked like it was just underneath the hat."  And then back to Bear reacting:  "Wow!  The hat fits!"

Then I narrate the wind blowing the hat off the tree and onto Bear's doorstep, where he finds his "present from Moon."  Then it's back up the mountain, without the hat which has been blown away, for the concluding dialog with Moon.  "Thank you for the hat" says Bear / "Thank you for the hat" echoes Moon/audience.

I know some of the kids are really not getting this exploration of relative positioning and visual illusion, but I think enough of them get the general idea, and anyway it looks pretty interesting.  I like to this one because the storytelling is so excellent and the audience participation is fun, but you can also get a ton of STEM points for this one if you need them.

This is one of the stories which also has a link to my "Storytelling with Puppets" youtube page.  Often those videos show a way of telling that's different from the blog description here, but in this case the Happy Birthday Moon video shows this same approach described above....

Brave Cowboy and His Lullaby

Book:  Let's Sing a Lullaby with the Brave Cowboy by Jan Thomas

Puppets:   Cow, Sheep, Wolf

Props:  Cowboy Hat, Flower, Pillow and/or Blanket

Presenters:  One (also works as a two-person act-out)

Audience:   Toddlers (1-2 years);  also works with Preschool

My Toddler Time group is for ones and twos and I try to choose material accordingly, but every once in a while I just have to try a story that’s more of a 2-3 year old choice.  Let’s Sing a Lullaby with the Brave Cowboy fits that description.  In the book, Brave Cowboy tries to sing the cows to sleep, but gets scared by things that aren’t really scary:  a flower that he thinks is a stick, for example.  For preschool kids, you can really play up the mock-scariness of the story, but everything for ones and twos has to be pretty gentle.

I put on a cowboy hat to play the role of Brave Cowboy, rather than using a separate puppet.  That way I can control the goofiness and make sure any suspense is always light-hearted.  I used one cow puppet, rather than the pair used in the book.

I sing the lullaby to the tune of “Home on the Range” (the “Oh give me a home…” verse part, not the “Home, home on the range…” part).  Sheila and Terri worked that out when they did this story for older kids. I had to write it like this:  "It's time for little cows to rest their heads / It's time for little cows to-go-to-bed," with the dashes in the last bit so I remember to run those together and match the rhythm of the song.   
|

  The song ends with: “It’s time for little cows to say….” And then instead of a gentle “good night,” Cowboy says:  “OH NO!”  (It’s “EEEK!” in the book, but I’m not sure toddlers get “eek!” so I changed it).  Cow asks what’s wrong and Cowboy points to the puppet bag:  “I think I see a Huge Hairy Spider.”  As Cowboy, I reach in and poke out the top of the flower, so everyone can see it’s not a spider.  Then Cow pulls it out and reassures Cowboy.  Since it's toddlers, I don't act too scared at the suspected spider.  And I reveal the top of the flower for a bit before Cow identifies it for Cowboy.  That keeps the kids one step ahead of Cowboy, which is just right for the story.

The same sequence repeats:  Cowboy sings the song;  Thinks he sees a Large Lumbering Bear;  It’s really a Sheep.  The book also has a bit with a Snake / Stick, but I decided we only needed two Cowboy errors with toddlers, and then could go right into the last bit.

Now Cowboy realizes he’s been overreacting. But when he says that the next thing in the bag might look like a Huge Shaggy Wolf, Cow zips away behind the back.  Cowboy says it’s “probably just a Big Giant Bunny, right Cow?”  Cow sneaks back, looks and says “No, it’s really a Wolf.”  For preschoolers this is a fun, wild moment that you play up a lot, but with this crowd you keep a smile on your face and never have Cowboy be all that scared.|

The ending wraps it all up nicely, as Cowboy sings the song to Cow and Wolf and they finally make it to the closing line of “It’s time for us to say:  Goodnight.”  In the end, this one worked the way slightly-too-old-for-Toddlers books often do:  They enjoyed it, even though they might not have fully grasped the humor of a Cowboy who claims to be brave but really isn't.  But...there's a storyteller in a cowboy hat, some puppets doing silly things, and a nice little song, though, and you can't go wrong with all that.

Monkey Meets a Bunch of Other Guys

Book:  Monkey See, Look at Me  by Lorena Siminovich

Puppets:  Monkey, Bird, Rabbit, Lion, Elephant (substitutes could work for all but Monkey)

Props:  None

Presenters:  One

Audience:  Toddler Time  (1's and 2's)

 

I often wish there was a way to do this search in a library catalog:   “Picture books where one guy meets a bunch of other guys one after another.” (like Ask Mr. Bear, The Fat Cat, etc.) Also "Picture books where one guy meets another, then that guy meets another guy, and so on..." (that's the Jump Frog Jump, Big Fat Worm model).  Because those can be the best books for telling with puppets.  They're easy to adapt, never require more than two characters at a time, and have those strong patterns that make them very accessible to young listeners.

 

But I don't see either description listed in my big red LC Subject Headings books (actually I don't even see those books...do they even make those any more?), so I try to keep an eye out for both structures, which led me to notice Monkey See, Look at Me on the new Picture Book

shelves.  In this one it's Monkey who meets various animals, always right after he’s pretended to be that animal.  So, with a few adjustments for Toddler Time presentation, the puppet progression is pretty clear:

 

Monkey tells the kids he’s pretending to be a bird and pretends to fly (“Look at me, I can fly…I’m a bird!” is the repeated pattern). Then Bird pops up from the puppet bag and shows him how to really fly…and flies away.  The same pattern follows with Rabbit / Hopping, Lion / Roaring, and Elephant / Stomping (in the book Elephant splatters and splashes, but it’s easier to show stomping with puppets).  It's not that dramatic and would probably be kind of boring for preschoolers, but for the 1's and 2's in Toddler Time it's just the right level.  

 

With puppets, I try to amp up the silliness of Monkey’s attempts a bit.  For flying:  he jumps a couple times, takes off, freezes in mid-air, and crashes.  His hops barely get him off the ground and his roar is almost a whisper.   I also have Monkey continuing his animal imitations for a while after the animal comes out, so Rabbit sees him hopping and Monkey doesn't notice right away, adding just a bit more humor.  These antics are fun to watch, give Monkey a bit of personality, and also contrast more blatantly with the real animals, all of which works well with toddlers.  

 

The book ends with all four animals pretending to be monkeys by swinging.  That messed with my whole “only-two-hands” limitation, so I changed it a bit and had each animal reappear and do a different Monkey-like thing.  So Bird says “Look at me, I can eat a banana…I’m a monkey!”  Rabbit climbs a tree; Lion swings; and Elephant scratches.  That way they all appear one at a time and the idea of them imitating Monkey the way he imitated them is reinforced. 

 

Monkey’s response to their imitations wraps up the story nicely:  “I’m silly.  I’m a monkey,”which echoes the response each of the animals had given him earlier.  A nice, containable, fairly easy to manage puppet story...and if we just had a couple good new subject headings I know there are more like this out there...

Seals on the Bus, Baby Driving

Book:  The Seals on the Bus  by Lenny Hort.  Illustrated by C. Brian Karas
Puppets:  Seal, Baby, plus a handful of Other Animals
Props:  None
Presenters:  One
Audience:  Toddler Time (1 and 2 year olds)

I always do one puppet story in my Toddler Time sessions and sometimes I have a tendency to try to squeeze a 2-3 year old story into this session for 1 and 2 year olds.  Partly because there aren't enough really great 1-2 year old books that adapt for puppets, but also because I just like a little bit more of a story.  Something like Squeak-A-Lot or What Will Fat Cat Sit On is just a little more fun to tell than Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?.  And really, those slightly more involved stories end up working well, but I have to admit, the simple stuff is really reliable for this age group.

Seals on the Bus fits that category.  I usually tell it just after singing (or having Raffi sing) The Wheels on the Bus.  Then I introduce the book:  "There's a song about wheels on the bus; what if there were seals on a bus?  So they get the idea that it's a take-off.  (I mean, Weird Al is always funnier when you know the song he's parodying).  The picture book is very clever, with Brian Karas' illustrations adding a kind of storyline to the progression of animal sounds....but for puppets, I stick to the progression of animal sounds.  Which makes it a simple series of Pop-Outs.  First it's Seal, then really any animals you want to bring out....I don't stick to what's in the book. 

After we've all sung:  "the seals on the bus go Arf Arf Arf," I kind of stop to build up to the next animal, and provide a clue or two:   "Now we know there are seals on the bus.  I wonder what other animals are on the bus?  [peek in the puppet bag].  Oh!  This next animal has a long tail...and eats bananas.  [pop out Monkey and all sing]: The monkeys on the bus go eee!  eee!  eee!  (or whatever your preferred monkey sound is).   So this sets up a nice pattern with some guessing, some vocabulary, and lots of participation.  The puppetry is easy to manage, since puppets don't even interact with each other.  Just pop out, make the sound, and back in the bag.

I always like to include a Giraffe for change of pace:  "the Giraffe on the bus goes..."[finger to lips and say nothing].  And I end it with the Driver on the Bus:   "Now it's time for the driver.  Who do you think the driver will be?...[anticipation builds....peek in the puppet bag].  Oh!  This is not the driver I expected!"  [anticipation builds even more....and out pops:  a Baby!]   I don't know why, but the idea of a baby driving a bus (and saying "Waa, waa, waa"] is just really funny.  And a good way to end it.

My one regret with this story is that I don't have a Pigeon puppet.  But it's probably just as well, because then I wouldn't be able to resist making it:  "The pigeon on the bus says:   'Please let me drive the bus!  I'll be your best friend!  I'll give you five bucks! I have feelings too!...'"  and on and on.  Which would amuse me quite a bit and maybe a parent or two, but those toddlers just wouldn't get it. 

Farm Animals Got the Beat

Book:   Farmyard Beat by Lindsey Craig, Illustrated by Marc Brown

Puppets:   4-6 Farm Animals (can make substitutions from the book)

Props:  None

Presenters:   One
Audience:   Toddler Time (1's and 2's mostly)

Since I use puppets a lot in Toddler Time, I want more books like Farmyard Beat by Lindsey Craig and Marc Brown.  It's an excellent book to read aloud and share with pictures, but adapts to a simple puppet story very easily. Not quite directly, but just a few adjustments make it a just about perfect puppet story.  

The story is simple, as a toddler plot should be:  Chicks wake up Sheep; Sheep wakes Cat; Cat wakes Cow; and so on.  It's told with a rhythmic, repetitive rhyme that's easy for the teller to remember and easy for the audience to join in with:  "Chicks can't sleep.  Chicks can't sleep.  Chicks can't sleep 'cause they got that beat.  Peep!  Peep!  Peep-peep-peep!  All that peeping wakes up.....Sheep!"

So you can picture how this works with puppets.  Chick pops out and moves in rhythm to the chant.  When it gets to the "peep-peep-peep," Chick directs the peeps at the puppet bag.  An anticipatory pause after "wakes up..." leads to Sheep popping out.  Chick goes away, and Sheep does a turn with the same refrain, which leads to....Cat.  It's a nice smooth rhythm with an animal pop-out surprise at the end of each verse, and some good audience participation possibilities:  animal sounds, clapping along, and some will join in on the "--- can't sleep, --- can't sleep" refrain.

 

So it works great just following the text. But to make it just right for Toddler Time, I do make a few changes.

1. Switch plurals: The book uses plurals for some animals (like "cows" and "chicks") and I just keep everything in the singular.  It's that old I-only-have-two-hands problem.  And an easy adjustment. 

2. Cut repeated line: The book repeats the animal sound refrain: "Peep, peep, peep-peep-peep" happens twice in a row. You might get a bit more joining in from the group if you stick with doing it twice, but I just feel like it flows a little better with just one time. That one could go either way.

3. Change animal sounds: Those animal refrains are silly and fun in the book. Chick is a straightforward "Peep, peep, peep," to rhyme with Sheep, but Sheep goes "Tat! Tat! Tattity-tat-tat!' Fun to say, and also "Tat" rhymes with "Cat," to lead into the next verse. Works great with the book, but I decided to simplify these for the puppets. So Sheep's refrain becomes: "Baa! Baa! Baa-baa-Bat!" This way the toddlers get the animal sound they're used to, and can anticipate and play along more easily. Also, changing "Tat" to "Bat" at the end actually accentuates the rhyme that's about to follow because it's so clearly a switch from the expected sound. They can hear it better I think.

 

This really is an excellent stand-alone book, and here I've gone and made three changes to it. But these adjustments make sense when you think about the Toddler Time audience following puppets, rather than a child on a lap following the picture cues.

 

In the end the animals wake up Farmer Sue, who does go to sleep.  Then everyone wakes her, after which they all fall asleep. Here's where you need a bit of puppet management.  I make sure I have a place to put each puppet after they've done their verse, so I'm ready to bring them back one at a time for this ending.  I don't bother getting them in the right order, just grab what I find, make the sound, and grab the next one.  I don't even worry about slipping them onto my hand if that's awkward...just showing them for the quick sound refrain is fine.  When it end with:  "they fall in a heap!  Asleep!" I gather as many as I can onto my lap.  Having a second bag or a tub to put each puppet in once they've made the first appearance can help here, just so they're all handy for the finale.

The only problem with this book is if you're into early 80's pop music you'll probably walk around while you're setting up Toddler Time singing this song to yourself but mixing it up with the Go-Gos:   "See the Sheep walking down the street / Fall in line just watching their feet / They can't sleep / because the Chicks went "peep" / But they're baa-ing in time / They got the beat, Sheep got the beat, yeah / Sheep got the beat."  Or maybe that's just me....

 

 

Presents from Dear Zoo

Book:  Dear Zoo by Rob Campbell
Puppets:  Elephant, Lion, Monkey, Giraffe, other Zoo Animals optional, Puppy
Props:  Boxes and bags for presents (optional)
Presenters:   1
Audience:  Toddler Time or Family Storytime

The puppet "Pop-Out" is always a strong moment in Storytimes...that's when the kids know a puppet's about to pop out of the bag, but they don't know what it will be.  Lift-the-flap books like Dear Zoo are sort of like the print equivalent of the puppet Pop-Out.  Which makes Rob Campbell's book a natural for presenting with puppets.  I've done it two ways....one's simple, the other's requires a bit more stuff. 

For the simple version, it's just me and puppets in the bag.  I tell the kids that I wrote to the zoo to ask them to send me a pet and they sent me (and here comes the pop-out)......An Elephant!  "But he was too big.  So I sent him back.  And then they sent me....A Lion."  And so on.  The anticipation and recognition of the animal is a surefire attention grabber.  It's also fun to let the kids supply the reason why I would send each pet back (and also practice for their vocabulary and narrative skills).  Just popping out the puppets is fine, but some of the sequences allow for more activity.  When the Frog is "too jumpy" he can jump around on your hand as you try to catch him.  The "too naughty" Monkey can do whatever mischievous stuff comes to mind.  When the people at the Zoo finally "thought very hard" and sent a Puppy, I like to ask the kids what they think they sent and draw out the pleasant surprise finale (A Puppy!) 

 Depending on how many animals are used, the puppet management can be a bit tricky, since there are a lot of them and they come out one after another, so I typically use a couple bags to hold them without too much crowding.  And you need to work out where you'll put them after they've done their thing:  either on a table where the audience can see (but won't grab) or back in a bag or box.  For Toddler Time I usually use four or five animals, plus the "perfect" Puppy at the end, and it's fine to substitute as needed. 

To expand it into more of a production, I've also done this story with all of the animals in their own individual bags, boxes, or packages.  Each with a "To Steven, From the Zoo" tag attached.  So instead of just the animal Popping-Out, it's a box.  And then you open the box, just as you would a package delivered in the mail, and out pops the animal.  So it's the same idea and the same effect, but it extends the premise of the book more fully and draws out the anticipation more.  This way really isn't necessary for Toddler Time, where too much stuff going on can just overwhelm the kids, but it makes a nice Preschool story.

This is also a fine stage puppet show for preschool audiences.  I don't use packages or anything else with a stage because the puppet interaction really carries the story.   I use a boy puppet, and you can have the animals popping out at various locations, have the boy not-see-them-but-then-see-them, throw in a few chases as he tries to catch them to send them back....all that fun puppet show stuff. 

Sam Who Never Forgets

Book:  Sam Who Never Forgets  by Eve Rice
Puppets:  Sam, 3+ Zoo Animals, Elephant
Props:  Food for Zoo Animals
Presenters:  One
Audience:  Toddlers, Prescshoolers


Another old (1977!) favorite of mine that tells quite well with puppets.  It stars Sam the Zookeeper and several zoo animals.  You don't need to have all of the animals to tell it with puppets.  Sam feeds each of the animals one by one.  I have each animal lined up in my puppet bag on my left hand side and the food props for the animals in a box on my right hand side.  The telling is, like the book, a combination of narration and dialog: 


"First Sam feeds.....[reach into bag and pop out...]....Giraffe!  For Giraffe, Sam has brought....[hesitate, let kids guess while you reach for the prop]...leaves!  'Hello, Giraffe!  I've brought you some nice green leaves today.'  'Thank you Sam!' Leaves are just what Giraffe likes best."

The gentle, friendly interaction with props and puppets is nice, but when he gets to Elephant...Sam's wagon is empty!  This is one of those nice moments when you get to watch your audience of two year olds, who were so comfortable with reliable old Sam and the clear repetitive pattern of the book start to get worried.  So far they only had to think about which animal would come next and what the food would be.  They never dreamed he would skip someone!  And as Elephant calls out ("Sam....did you forget?") there's just enough of that toddler tension to set up the triumphant ending, where Sam reappears with a wagonful of hay.  Because Elephant is just so very large that Sam needs a whole wagon to carry his food.  And the happy ending is perfectly punctuated with "three cheers for Sam, Sam who never ever forgets."

For Toddler Times, this story works fine with just three animals plus elephants.  I typically use Monkey, Giraffe, and Crocodile, mostly because I have the food props to match:   Banana, Leaves, and Small Child (just kidding...Fish).   For Elephant's hay I just drag out the paper cutter and yellow construction paper and chop up a bunch of strips.  Sam can be any person puppet (male or female and you don't even have to change the name).  I've also told it without a Sam puppet, acting as the Zookeeper myself, and that works okay too.


The first times I did this (early 90's) I used to go a little farther, setting the animals up on chairs, using a box decorated to look like a wagon and, as Sam, walking from one to the next.  It's more of a production, and in the end really didn't add anything to the heart of the story, so as usual I opted for the more basic approach.  Plus this meant I could remove the box-that's-decorated-to-look-like-a-zookeeper's-wagon from my limited prop storage place (though come to think of it, the box was also just right for The Box with Red Wheels by the Petershams, an even older book which I haven't done for quite a while).


I do think Sam Who Never Forgets would make a good two-person story acted out though, with one teller as Sam and the other using puppets or animal hats for each of the animals.  Maybe one of these days in our Family Storytime.....


I have to admit I've always been just a bit bothered about the logic of this otherwise perfect picture book.  We know Sam feeds the animals every day.  And every day he must have the same situation:  he needs to make a separate trip for Elephant's food.  So does Elephant forget that this is going to happen every day?  Is the same drama going to play out tomorrow, and the next day, and every day from now on?  Is Elephant that forgetful?  Or is this maybe Elephant's first day at the Zoo?  But if so, why does he seem to be familiar with Sam already?  I know, this is more thought than you need to put into a picture book, especially one that captures this moment so perfectly, and of course no child or parent has ever raised this question....but I still think about it every time I share the book.