Do You Believe in Magic? There's a good reason why so many families love storytimes

A colleague put a lovely image into our heads at a recent discussion of best practices for family storytimes. Librarian Maria Lowe offers family storytimes in the evenings, and she always includes a time for “family boats.” A mom and dad sit on the floor, join hands and encircle their children, or a single adult clasps his child in his arms, and they all begin to rock as Maria leads them in singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” When Maria looked out at the sea of boats in her room one recent evening, she had to catch her breath: it was magical.

Family storytimes are becoming more popular in many communities. Here in Multnomah County, our changing demographics support family programs, with more and more folks hailing from cultures where families (everyone from babies to grandparents) do everything together, from a Sunday picnic to a trip to the library. Our colleague Juliet Morefield, of Multnomah County Library’s Central Children’s Room, tells us that family storytimes really meet the needs of working parents with more than one child.

Branch youth librarian Janie DeNunzio agrees. Like Maria, Janie offers family storytimes in the evenings. “The evenings have great appeal,” she says. “Parents always appreciate the wind down.” She often offers a “Pajama Time,” where she lowers the lights and reads aloud quiet bedtime stories. She encourages parents to help her keep an eye on the clock to respect the children’s bedtimes.

Janie sometimes does family storytimes that are more rollicking than Pajama Time. She likes to include simple dramatic activities, encouraging the children and their parents to act out a story together. A favorite is Jan Brett’s The Mitten (Putnam, 1989); Janie uses a sleeping bag for the mitten. She also retells John Burningham’s Mr. Gumpy’s Outing (Holt, 1971), with an old blue blanket serving as the river that the children fall into with great glee.

Family storytimes can be a challenge for librarians. There is usually a mix of ages, from infants to six-year-olds, and often older children as well, and the mix cannot be predicted from week to week. Janie says that the key to any good storytime is flexibility. Plan for all ages, bring lots of books, and adjust as you size up the group in front of you. “Do rhymes and movement activities for the youngest early on,” Janie advises. She keeps older children engaged by giving them a stuffed animal to use as their “baby.” Later, as the real babies start to lose interest, she adds singing, clapping, and books with sound effects to bring them back. Then it’s time to get out one of the many books that offer something for every age, such as Mo Willems’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (Hyperion, 2003). The young ones enjoy the commotion and giggling, while their older siblings and parents appreciate the more sophisticated humor.

Juliet also engages her older participants by asking them to assist her with the little ones. She tells them that she needs their help to tell the story; she leaves out obvious words and has the older kids supply them, or she’ll point to an object and ask the kids to “read” the word to the tots and babies.

Librarian Natasha Forrester has several families in her community who attend her “regular,” age-specific weekly storytime with one child, and then come to her monthly evening family storytime with more children. Natasha says, “When the younger ones come with older siblings, they tend to perform 'up’ to the older siblings’ level, willing to sit longer or participate more than they might during their own age’s storytime. It seems to me that the littlest ones are modeling the behavior of older, admired sibs!” She adds, however, that one evening she had a tiny tot who got miffed that Natasha was paying attention to her older sister. “She grabbed my hand and pulled it away from the sister on whose hand I was trying to put a stamp, saying, “Mine!” and then crawled up into my lap. So the 'performing up’ may not extend to sharing their librarian!”

From our perspective, though—that’s a magical storytime image, too!