Don't Try This At Home

Raccoon puppet as planned

For Valentine's Day I used The kissing hand by Audrey Penn and looked for a take-home craft to go with it.  "Oh, cutting out a few pieces for some kids - how hard can that be?" I thought to myself.  I love cutting things out.  Gah!  Monday's group canceled which meant I only had my Tuesday group (not realizing that it was the larger one) and Wednesday's individual walk-ins.  I traced and cut out over 500 pieces (although my husband helped with some while waiting for his car to be serviced).  I sent 26 off on Tuesday and hoped I had enough for Wednesday.  I did - phew!  But Monday (and part of Tuesday) was a frantic cutting session, even tripling up the paper, collating all the pieces, putting them in baggies, and inserting them in the paper bags. 

But, you know, it was worth it to see the cute little raccoon puppets come out - eyes crossed, hearts put any-old-where!  The walk-ins had the option to take them home or use the glue sticks I'd put out.  One little boy wanted to take his home, but his mom said they didn't have any glue at home.  As an inveterate and unrepentant craftie, I can't imagine a house without glue!  We might be out of epoxy, E-3000, crazy glue, fabric-tac, white glue, glue stick, gorilla glue, wood glue, glue pen, etc. - but no glue?  No glue at all?  How do they fix things? 

Anyway, here are some pattern pieces, but plan ahead (unlike me) and have your volunteers cut them out.

Pattern pieces for the Kissing Hand/Raccoon puppet.

Help! I Have 90 Firsts Graders Coming!

Partial Cast of The Mitten

Set pieces for Granny Glittens and Her Amazing Mittens

Okay, you're told that 90 first graders are coming and expecting some boffo program as well as a tour of the new library.  They're dividing them in half and taking one half on a tour while you do your fabulous thing.  I've chosen two puppet plays I know I can do by myself (plus a shadow puppet play to "Frosty the Snowman" at the end if there's time).  The first is The Mitten, a cute story where, by the end, the puppets explode out into the audience.  That's almost as much of a crowd-pleaser as squirting them with water at the slightest excuse.  The second is a favorite story from my childhood.  It came from The Tall Book of Christmas Stories and captivated me totally by turning itchy woolen mittens into candy.  I only have to put my hair up, my bifocals back on, and throw on a shawl to be Granny Glittens herself.

The set pieces for Granny Glittens are made from white posterboard (and one piece of corrugated cardboard for the packing box for her new stove) and backed with pieces of paper towel roll to keep them standing up straight.  The balls of yarn are on bamboo skewers.  I pop a white ball of yarn in the pot on the stove ... and out comes one by one: a red one, a green one, a brown one, a yellow one, and a black one.  I've heard gasps of amazement from 4 year olds.  First graders might be a bit more jaded.

Don't they wonder about the size of the stove relative to the human being? you ask.  What, you haven't heard of suspension of disbelief? 

Beautiful Puppet Theatre

Beautiful carved puppet theatre from 1917 in its new location after renovation of St. Paul's Central Library. Note carving of face of Loki, Norse God of Interfering Architects.

Librarian's Holiday: Visiting other libraries when out of town on vacation. The Central Library in St. Paul, MN was just across the street from where I was staying, so I had to visit. I'd have visited anyway, I suppose. Please note that all comments are mine, of my opinion, written by me, from me, yadda-yaddah.
The library was opened originally in 1917, but they renovated in the past 5 years or so and the Children's Room moved to a different area. They were kind enough to allow me behind the scenes at the puppet stage when I said we were building a new library. The above puppet theatre is original to the library, but was moved and reinstalled in the new children's room and, like most puppet theatres installed by architects, it is more beautiful than useful. Of course, it is that by design as well.
There are two lower stage areas but, honestly, the outermost one would be more difficult to use. The best use for it would be set pieces, but they would also have to be ones that you weren't going to be moving during the show. Other uses are: display. There is an upper stage area, but that can't be reached by normal humans and there isn't a way in the back to get at it.
The theatre is in a corner, which on the one hand limits the storage space but on the other hand may keep some things more at hand. The storage space is already full. You know, you go to new libraries everywhere and the first thing they tell you is that they don't have enough storage. The then-new Hilton Head Branch Library said they had no storage. I was appalled by the small amount of storage in the "ginormous" Spartanburg library. You can see how this happens, though. Things need cutting back during the design or fundraising process and ... storage just vanishes.
Oh, and they have no other programming area. For storytimes and crafts they have to move the furniture around (small chairs and tables with toys).

Backstage area of puppet theatre with dangerous, eye-gouging corners.

Curtains interfere with the puppet stage area by taking up room on the sides when they are opened. Scrim was lifted out of the way to show off the (adult) eye-gouging corners. There are microphone clips poking out so they can speak live, which I don't do in my shows. All our material is prerecorded so that we don't have to follow a script along with everything else.
It was demonstrated how a puppeteer must use his/her foot to work the lights. (Wish I could have gotten a photo of that, but my guide was nice enough to take me backstage - asking for a pose would have been over the top.) Plugs are in handy position, although they don't need to be.
They have had a professional puppeteer come look at it to make suggestions for improvement.
This is one of my greatest fears: money goes into dedicated puppet theatre in our new library and it becomes something we cannot easily use, unlike the portable ones we've been using. Donor then becomes cheezed off. Hell, who cares about the donor? My blood pressure will go through the roof every time I have to use it!
Okay, calm down, calm down. They haven't done anything horrible ... yet.

Actual suggestions from the St. Paul CR staff for someone building a new facility: No sharp corners on desks, etc., at child eye level. They have had to scrounge around for those plastic things you stick on to blunt the point. And scrounge seems to be the operant word. They had enough for one desk, but not the other. Comment No. 2: Don't put ruddy great columns where children will run into them. I swear that column wasn't there a minute ago! They sneak up on you!
Other than the pointy bits on the desk just waiting to leap into a small child's eye, a good thing about the CR info desk was how deep it was. A staff member was working on a poster-sized pad copying song lyrics for a storytime and it fit! There was all this lovely room to spread out and work while manning the desk. Picture it, a huge meeting-notes pad on a desk! They had two levels (for poking different ages of child) of desk, a lower one for kids and the upper one where a mom could rest her purse or elbow. A separate table and a wall-brochure holder for displays and brochures!
They had some computers for children, some of which had games, some internet, some word processing. There was a suggestion for writing a Backwards Story. Start with The End and go from there! Their community is much more culturally diverse than ours and so their bi-lingual and foreign language collection had so much more going on!
The teen area was full of computers and there was a window into it behind the CR info desk where they could check if they heard shots fired or something. I didn't go in there because I was unaccompanied by a teen.
The rest of the library was also nice. Signage was easy to locate and interpret. I found the CR and the Adult Fiction areas with no trouble. The trouble came when I sat down with a book I found in Adult Fiction ... and read all the way through to the end. Consequently, it was almost 7 pm before I checked the time (Yipes!!!). Because I don't have a watch, I have to check my cell phone and of course I had that turned off while I was in the library! I mean, really! How long does it take to read a book? Apparently, around four hours. Time just slipped away!
The library's interior is modern without clashing with the staid and classic architecture. It's a wonderful place with such nice people as staff! I was shown all sorts of stuff, they let me wander, I was told to help myself to the brochures - they were all Garrison Keillor has led us to expect from St. Paulians.
Perhaps I will run into them again in March.

shelfmonkeys

In honor of his birthday this month! Here's to Theodor Geisel. My first Dr. Suess book was One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Although I don't remember being taken to the library, I must have been familiar with the concept. My mother had taken me to a bookstore and let me pick out a book. I chose this vibrantly yellow book ("cadmium yellow light" I'd have called it then, which would have gotten my mother a free trip to talk to the teacher). I was stunned to learn it did not have to go back! This was also my first book of all my own. The rest were hand-me-downs from my sister. I can't describe how thrilled I was with this book. I took it to school for show-and-tell and then left it on the playground. I made my mother drive me back to the school to get it. My favorite Seuss story, though, is the Grinch. I read it to kids every year. It is long for pre-schoolers, but they already know the story, having seen the tv version and can fill in the Whoville Carol.

shelfmonkeys

Based on a True Story of a Visitation to a Child Care Facility Which Shall Remain Nameless.