Pickin' Peas with Puppets or Rabbit Ears

Book:  Pickin' Peas  by Margaret Read MacDonald
Props:   Pillow case (puppet version);  Rope, Rabbit Ears (act-out version)
Puppets:   Rabbit,  Girl
Presenters:   One or Two
Audience:  K-2 (also fine for preschool)
Video:  How to tell Pickin' Peas with Puppets

It makes sense that the books of a storyteller like Margaret Read MacDonald would adapt very neatly into oral and/or puppet presentations, and Pickin' Peas is one of the best.  The story is simple:  Girl picks peas;  Rabbit sneakily picks peas when she's not looking;  Girl catches Rabbit;  Rabbit tricks Girl and escapes.  But it also has strong character interaction, a catchy song, and some great opportunities for hiding, all three of which are excellent act-out/puppetry elements.  I've done it as a two-person act-out, a puppet show with stage, and a puppet story with one person.

Sheila and I acted it out last week when we visited schools to promote our K-2 Book Adventure ("Funny Festival").  She was the little girl and sang the song while she pretended to pick peas:  "Pickin' peas, put 'em in the pail, Pickin' peas, put 'em in the pail."  We didn't use a real pail or anything, just imagination.  Musical notes are on the back of the book, but you can use any tune (you can hear the one I use on the video link above).  As Rabbit, I jump out once she's at the far end of the stage and sing my song ("Pickin' peas, land on my knees") while she's not looking.  Then I hide, she returns to the other side pickin' and singing again.  This time I follow a ways behind, and when she looks behind I hop back to hide. She returns for one more row of picking, with more popping out and hiding.  You can play this part up and kind of improvise, which is lots of fun.

Finally the Girl hides, and when Rabbit thinks the coast is clear, she jumps out and wraps a rope around him.  In the book, she takes him back to her kitchen, but we just have them stay in the pea patch.  Rabbit convinces her to let him go so he can show her his dance, which is really his trick to escape.  When he gets to the "here" of "Heard my momma calling me right over here!" he takes one jump away and she grabs him back.  The second time through it's two big jumps, and the third time, he gets away after a bit of a chase. 

The book ends with a nice rhyme for Rabbit ("gonna eat all I want, cause you can't catch me!"), but with  I like to end it with a rhyme from the Girl:  "I picked some peas, I put 'em in my pail / And that is the end of this pea pickin' tail!"  Another addition I like to use:  Rabbit's "land on my knees" refrain is fun, but I like to make it a bit more silly by throwing in other rhymes:  "Pickin' peas....:  climbin' up the trees...I got a lotta fleas...think I lost my keys....I know my abc's..."

The tale is great for acting out like this because the kids so easily get the gist of the story and the dynamic between the two characters.  The visual elements of hiding, finding, catching, chasing, and escaping are all simple to perform, but very engaging to the audience.

For our actual K-2 Book Adventure event, we did the same story with puppets, using our stage.  It's an easy transition for the tellers.  We used the same script.  Going up and down the rows of peas was just back and forth across the stage.  Rabbit was able to do a little more hiding and peeking as a puppet with a curtain and all.  And the timing of Girl looking and Rabbit hiding at the same time took just a bit of practice....as long as both puppeteers do it fairly slowly, it works great.  Instead of roping Rabbit, Girl stuffs him in a pillow case, and Rabbit trying to dance from inside it, where you can just see his shape bouncing around, is a good visual moment.  Once he's out, you have to time Rabbit's failed escape hops right.  Again, slowing it down almost to slow motion works:  Rabbit takes off with a jump to the right, then Girl zips towards him, grabs him, and pulls him right back to the spot.  She should look sort of like a rubber band, stretching out to grab him, the snapping back to where she took off.  Another strong visual moment.  When Rabbit escapes, I just loosen him on my hand and toss him so he flies back over the screen of the puppet stage.  You can't do that with a puppet that's tight on you hand, but my raggedy old gray rabbit works very nicely.  

For a video demonstration of the one-person, puppet storytelling version, you can go to the Storytelling with Puppets youtube page.

It's Winter Break Time

We just wrapped up our Fall Programming season this week at our library.  We divide our program year into quarters and always have a break in between, ranging from two to four weeks.  We use the time to plan storytimes and other programs, develop a new story or two, and put some energy into sometimes-neglected parts of our jobs, such as collection development (not like we don't do that all year, it's just that December's a great time to catch up).
quarters and

So I'm afraid I won't be posting any new stories here for about a month.  Weekly posts will resume around January 15th.  Meanwhile, I'll continue to post a new video each week on the "Storytelling with Puppets" youtube channel.  Coming this weekend:   "Anansi the Spider" by Gerald McDermott.

Extraordinary Animal Friendships, with Scans and Music

Book:  Friends: True Stories of Extraordinary Animal Friendships  by Catherine Thimmesh
Puppets:  None
Props:  None
Technology:   Scanned Images Projected with PowerPoint;  Music
Presenters:  One
Audience:   Family Storytime  (mostly 3-7 year olds)

We use scanned images and PowerPoint in a variety of ways during our programs.  Sometimes it's just to make sure that our large crowds can see the excellent artwork....we call that a "straight scan," where we just show the pictures and read the words.  But more often we do something a little different.  One of my favorites is when we add music, which we did this week for our "Family and Friends" theme in Family Storytime.

Friends is a very cool book by Catherine Thimmesh.  She briefly tells the story of unusual animal friendships, and accompanies each story with a great photo of the pair.  We've tried this three different ways in our Family Storytime and finally got it right.  First we scanned the images and told the story of each pair in a couple sentences, shortening from the text for our mostly preschool audience.  It was fine, but a little too much for the kids to absorb.  So the next time we added music:  a nice instrumental version of "What a Wonderful World" (the one that was a hit for Louis Armstrong, not the Sam Cooke).  We played that medium-low while we narrated over the music....still too much.

Then Sheila had the solution:  No words at all, just show the pictures with music to accompany.  And it worked great.  We used "You've Got a Friend in Me" by Randy Newman (the kids know it from Toy Story).  We showed each image for about 10-15 seconds and clicked to the next, which fit perfectly for the two minute song.

Just focusing on the images allowed the kids to easily follow it and enjoy it without trying to absorb the back stories of each.  Just seeing the frog floating with the mouse on its head, or the monkey resting its head on the bird is enough to keep them absorbed.  We let them know it's fine to talk to each other during the story, because they're really eager to identify the animals and marvel at the unexpected combinations.

The music was light-hearted and fun, matching the mood of the photos.  And although we didn't use the words, we generated strong interest in the book, which doesn't work well for a large group in its entirety, but can be an excellent one on one read aloud at home.  We also pulled a bunch of other animal friend photo essays together for our book display and lots of those checked out too.  Titles include Koko's Kitten, Owen & Mzee, A Friend for Einstein, and several others.  It's a great way to promote non-fiction in a storytime.

Another fun music/scans combo is the one we did for our K-2 Book Adventure "Foods" program, using Saxton Freymann's food photo books.  Details are at the beginning of our Program Summary for our K-2 Book Adventure "Foods" program which we did a couple years ago (and just repeated last week).

And I really liked the way music worked with Mo Willems' & Jon Muth's City Dog, Country Frog.  We did narration with that one, along with four different music samples (one for each season).

We're lucky, of course, to have a built in projector in our story room, so we can project from the ceiling without having to have a projector on a table.  We got an iPad a few months ago and have added AppleTV which allows you to project from that screen...haven't quite explored the possibilities there, but we're still finding plenty of fun stuff to do with old fashioned PowerPoint.  For other examples you can click on the "Projector" label in the column on the right.,..

Elephant and Froggie (aka Piggie)

Book:  I'm a Frog  by Mo Willems

Puppets:  None
Props:  Pig stuff, Elephant stuff, but really just pink shirt/gray shirt will do
Presenters:  Two   (also works as a one-person puppet story)
Audience:  Family Storytime
Video:  How to Tell I'm a Frog with Puppets

With a "Mo Willems Celebration" as our Family Storytime theme, Sheila and I were planning on doing Listen to My Trumpet, which we hadn't tried before....but Mo's latest, I'm a Frog, came in just a week before, and we knew we had to do this one instead.  It works great as a two-person act out.

Piggie (Sheila) starts behind a backdrop, and when Gerald looks for her she "ribbits," then hops onto stage.  And, as usual with the E & P books, we stick to the just-right dialogue straight from the pages.  Even though there aren't that many words, the back-and-forth has to be in the right order and with the right timing, so it does take a few run throughs to get it right.  It helps me to kind of break the story down into sections:

First it's Gerald reacting to the fact that Piggie is pretending to be a frog.  We take it kind of slow, making sure we give the audience time to react to Piggie's hopping and ribbiting and fly catching, and to Gerald's concern.  This section ends with Gerald stating:  "You learn something every day!," which comes up again later.

Then it's Gerald freaking out when he realizes that Piggie is a frog and the same could happen to Gerald.

Then Piggies explains about "pretending" (with the "You learn something..." refrain repeating).

And finally Piggie tells Gerald he can be a frog too, which leads to a fun "No I can't! / Yes you can" back and forth.  The conclusion is perfect, as Gerald reveals that he can't be a frog, because..."I am a cow.  Moo!"

We struggle from time to time with stories that have punch-line endings where we're never quite sure that all the kids, especially the 3's and 4's, really get.  And sometimes we add a clarifying line or something.  But this one is right at their level and everyone gets the joke.

Really, there's not too much to say about this one as an act-out, because it works so naturally and easily.  You can't really say Gerald or Piggie's lines without getting into their characters.  You don't even have to do much in the way of costume.  A simple pig/elephant hat or ears works, and we've even done E & P's just by wearing pink and gray.

This also works great as a one-person puppet show, and there's a video demo here.  I've added a "Label" on the bar at the right called "Video - Storytelling with Puppets" which gets you to all of the posts on this blog that also have a link to a YouTube video demo.

Slightly Spooky Dust Bunnies

Book:  Here Comes the Big Mean Dust Bunny by Jan Thomas

Puppets:   None

Props:   Dust Bunny costumes

Performers:  Five

Technology:    PowerPoint slides

Audience:  Family Story Time

We typically have two people do our Family Storytimes, and many (but not all) can also be done with one, but for this one you really need four or five.  So I know this means many libraries couldn't do this story this way, but we just had so much fun with it I have to tell it anyway.

With our annual "Slightly Spooky Stories" event we always use all five of us children's staff (Shannon, Brad, Sheila, Terri, and myself) and try to find stories where we all have stuff to do.  We had done Jan Thomas' Rhyming Dust Bunnies before as a two person puppet show (details here) and we all knew about this sequel, but never thought to try it until this storytime came up.  We realized we had enough people to have four Rhyming Dust Bunnies (RDBs) plus the Big Mean Dust Bunny (BMDB), but then decided to mix acting out (the RDBs) with PowerPoint scans from the book (the BMDB).  Jan Thomas' illustrations, with her thick black lines and bright colors, come through really well on the screen.  

For costumes, we happened to have a bunch of frilly skirts that are worn quite often in storytimes (though not so much by me and Brad).  Turns out if you wear one around your neck instead of around your waist and then tie a scarfy kind of thing around your head, you look just like a dust bunny.  Well not just like, but close enough.  So the four RDBs entered, sort of spinning around and bumping into each other, then went into the simple words from the book.  We had the words show up on the screen, which is a neat way to reinforce the rhymes.  It also helped us remember what to say.

The the Big Mean Dust Bunny appears as an image filling the screen, while Brad is offstage doing his lines with a microphone.  We did some simple PowerPoint animations to get the action into the story:   

1.  When the BMDB uses "Sit!" as the rhyme, the four RDB's get directly under the image on the screen, then pretend to get squished as the image moves down to the bottom of the screen.

2.  When the BMDB uses "Chase!" his image moves back and forth across the screen a couple of times, while the four RDB's run back and forth across the stage area, trying to stay in front of the image (which is harder to do than you'd think)

3.  When the BMDB gets squished by the Cat (Bob tried to warn him), had a sideways image of the BMDB that was squished, then two RDB's on each side pretend to pull it.  Each click switches to a less-squished version of the image, so it kind of look like the BMDB is getting stretched out to full size as we pull. 

Sometimes when we try to mix screen images and acting out it can be a little complicated, but in this case I thought the two styles mixed very smoothly.  I'm pretty confident that no one in the audience was really scared by this one, but that's why we call it "Slightly Spooky Stories."  

Mo Willems Has Yet Another Good Idea

Book:  That Is NOT a Good Idea!  by Mo Willems
Puppets:    Goose, Wolf (or Fox), Goslings (3-5)
Props:    Pot (big enough to fit Wolf puppet); Veggies (optional) Puppet Stage (optional)
Presenters:   2, plus 2-4 kids from audience
Audience:   Family Storytime (mostly 3-6 year olds)

Not all Mo Willems books are easily adaptable for presentation, but that doesn't mean we don't look carefully at every new one that comes along.  It took a bit of tinkering, but That Is Not a Good Idea! worked out very nicely when Sheila and I had "Mo Willems" as our Family Storytime theme last week.  In the book, Fox tempts Goose to accompany him, step by step, to the woods, to his kitchen, and into his soup pot.  Goose plays along and has a trick of her own at the end.  Meanwhile Goose's little Goslings act as a kind of a chorus:  Each time Goose agrees to one of Fox's sly suggestions, they yell out the title of the book.  The joke is that they're really warning Fox, not Goose, that things will end badly for him.

We used our puppet stage and regular hand puppets for Goose (maybe not technically a goose, but Sheila made this great bird puppet years ago and I use it every chance I get) and Wolf (we have a Fox puppet, but our Wolf is just a bit more expressive).  They appear on stage, Wolf makes a suggestion ("Shall we walk in the woods...?"), Goose agrees, then both exit. 

For the chorus of Goslings, we scanned, enlarged, and laminated the guys from the book, then stuck them onto paint sticks.  My original idea was that they would appear above the puppet stage, looking down on the other two.  Then Sheila had a better idea:  we had four kids from the audience come up to hold one Gosling each next to the stage, while Sheila held the first one.  This worked even better for their "chorus" role.  Sheila ran them through their line before we started, adding that they would say "really not..." then "really really not..." and so on.  She also encouraged the rest of the audience to join in on the refrain, and they did. 

We didn't bother with any backdrops; Wolf just said: "Now that we're in the deep dark woods..." and that was enough.  Each time the audience chimed in with the "..not a good idea" part, Wolf would pop back up and say something:  "you be quiet," or "it is too a good idea."  That's not in the book, but we felt like adding interaction between Wolf and Goslings helped establish the chorus' role and Wolf's plans.

When it's finally time for soup, Wolf puts a big plastic pot on the stage, adds a few vegetables to draw it out (and a lollipop just to be silly) and finally prepares to add the last ingredient, which everyone thinks will be Goose.  The Goslings give their last warning, then Goose grabs Wolf and stuffs him in the pot.  First, though, she explains that the Goslings "did try to warn Wolf..."   We wanted to make that clever twist very clear to everyone in the audience, short of spelling it out directly.  

Once Wolf is in the pot, Goose calls the Goslings down to have lunch with her.  The kids bring their stick figures over, Goose takes a bite or two of Wolf, and the kids, following Sheila's lead, have their Goslings gather round the pot for their own share.  Sometimes we find simple ways to soften the ending of a story that ends gruesomely, trying to respect the delicate nature of three and four year olds without compromising the story.....not this time.  We just followed the perfect ending of the book and that Wolf got eaten up.  The story was just so silly and so neatly constructed, it was by far the most satisfying way to end it (for the storytellers, as well as for the hungry geese). 

A Couple More Puppet Videos

I've posted a couple more puppet videos on the  "Storytelling with Puppets" YouTube channel.

They are:

Whose Mouse are You  by Robert Kraus
  and
The Boy Who Cried Wolf  by Aesop