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....

Fish On Stick Steals Hat

Book:   This Is Not My Hat  by Jon Klassen
Puppets:   Fish  (on a stick, copies from book)
Props:   Stick to put the Fish on
Technology:  Scanned images, projector
Performers:   2
Audience:   Family Storytime (but also K-2)

Tomorrow morning is the announcement of the Caldecott, Newbery, and other Youth Media Awards.  I don't have a role in that like I did last year (Newbery Chair), but I got to relive the moment in a different way:  I used one of the award winning books in Storytime.  No, we didn't do a puppet show of The One and Only Ivan...but I've been wanting to do This Is Not My Hat for a while, and since Terri and I had a "Getting Dressed" theme last week, we had the chance.

Using the illustrations was a must, of course, so we scanned a selection of these to project on the screen.  But I also wanted to get Little Fish into a more active role.  First I thought I would use a hand puppet fish and move him around in front of the screen, but no, it has to be the Little Fish from the book.  So we scanned, enlarged, printed, laminated, and stuck it onto a long stick.

I started out with a script that followed the book exactly, but Terri had a perceptive suggestion:  In the book Little Fish says "it" a lot when referring to the hat and "him" when talking about Big Fish.  This works great on the page, but we knew the sparseness of the text would be a challenge for the younger side of our audience.  So we inserted "the hat" and "the Big Fish" several times, just to make it all clear for the 3's and 4's.

For the images, I scanned most, but not all of the images, cropping Little Fish out (since he would be the stick puppet).  So we had a nice background for Little Fish to move around in front of.  Terri sat below the screen, holding the long stick puppet.  She moved Little Fish, mostly from audience's left to right, as he made his escape.  She slipped him behind the screen to the right, then brought him back in front on the left side, so he was always moving left to right.  It kind of worked like a puppet stage when you want to show that continued motion in one direction.  With her moving and me telling and clicking, the timing was a little tricky.  Little Fish's movements across, behind, and back in front of the screen have to match the pace of the story, so it took some rehearsing for the two of us to time it right.  

The effect of the Fish in front of the screen, with the projector light hitting it, was effective, with a nice mottled look.  Terri didn't move the Fish too fast, just sort of floating around.  It was tempting to add a little basic PowerPoint animation, especially when the Big Fish sets out after the Fish, but we left that alone.  In the book, the still images suggest just the right amount of motion, so we didn't change that.
The progression of scans worked very well.  There's that great section where we see the Big Fish sleeping ("he probably won't wake up"); then awake ("he won't notice his hat is missing");  then looking up ("he won't know it was me that took his hat"), then looking forward.  That's a perfect series of illustrations in the book, and they translate quite nicely to scans, where a click substitutes for the page turn.

We ended it pretty much like the book pretty much.  Little Fish goes behind the screen and makes a couple of confident statements from back there ("nobody will find me...") while the audience sees Big Fish approaching on the scans.  Terri shook the screen a bit with the stick to show there's something going on back there.  Then come the slides of the Crab watching and Big Fish floating off with hat on head.

To make sure our young audience got it, we added two questions.  I asked the audience:  "Can you see where the hat is now?" and they did.  Then it was:  "What do you think happened to the Little Fish?"  Most answers were "he got eaten," but some thought he might be back in the plants (and they're not necessarily wrong...he could be back there, unlike the definitely-eaten rabbit in Klassen's I Want My Hat Back).  Terri, meanwhile, has taken Little Fish off of the stick and hidden him with tape behind the screen.  So she comes up and shows us all the empty stick, inciting an extra bit of curiosity about where the puppet fish went.

We've now done the last two Caldecott Medal books in our programs (this one plus A Ball for Daisy), so we'll see what the prospects are for tomorrow's winner.  I know, "potential for adapting into storytime presentation for large audiences using puppets, props, and/or projected images" is not in the Caldecott criteria, but it still could work out...[update:  Locomotive just won the Caldecott Medal...amazing book, but will not be showing up in Storytime]

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.,..