We had such a good time reading Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen in yesterday’s preschool storytime.  There was a small crowd (no doubt due to parental Christmas shopping and frigid weather), but the four children – two sets of siblings – who attended absolutely loved the story.  The youngest of the four did ask a lot of “Why?” questions:  “Why did the lion leave the library?”  “Why doesn’t Mr. McBee like the lion?”  “Why did Mr. McBee go find the lion?”, but we were able to answer the why questions and keep the story moving.

Another highlight of yesterday’s storytime was the appearance of the owl puppet to assist with the telling of Wow!  Said the Owl by Tim Hopgood.  Though the story doesn’t really lend itself to telling with a puppet, it gave me an opportunity to use my favorite puppet.  Owl, who once had a name but I’ve forgotten it, blinks his eyes and turns his head and is so realistic that I have actually fooled kids into thinking there’s a real owl in the library.  Owl also serves as my familiar when I dress up as a witch for Halloween.

Most of all, though, yesterday’s storytime was great because it was small and I could interact with each child in a meaningful way, answering their questions about the stories and even introducing the two sets of siblings to each other.  It was a lovely last storytime of 2009 – no storytimes for the next two weeks! – and we all left the story room happy.

Anyone who knows my family knows that we have an odd affinity with puppets, and anyone who knows that wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that I accumulated dozens of Folkmanis puppets in my tenure as manager of the Toy Shop.  (I even got to meet one of the Folkmanis puppet designers one day when he came to shop in the store, and I got all googily-eyed and star-struck and almost got up the guts to ask him to sign a couple of puppets for me.  Almost.  I still regret not asking him.)

But there’s a distance to travel from loving puppets to successfully integrating puppets into storytimes.  I’ve been working hard at using puppets in my storytimes, and have learned that I have to forget that I’m a self-conscious semi-middle-aged woman who has her hand up the hiney of a stuffed animal* in front of a crowd of adults and children.  The magic is hopelessly lost the minute I start thinking, “Geez, these parents must think I’m some kind of whacko.”  Conversely, the magic is created when I kick aside my pride and have fun with the puppet.  I’ve even seen some adults get sucked into the moment, giggling along with their kids when the monkey puppets clap enthusiastically for the crowd at the conclusion of “Two Little Monkeys” in the infant storytime.  And I’ve seen grown-ups react like their children when the cat puppet purrs or the dog puppet barks and pants or the lion puppet roars.

Once I figured out how to use puppets in an adjunct way at storytimes – to introduce the theme of the week, or to supplement a finger play or song – then I started to tackle the issue of how to tell a memorized story with the help of puppets to preschoolers.  I began by using Margaret Read MacDonald’s Twenty Tellable Tales as my primary resource.  MacDonald has a lot of great stories here, and I’ve sucessfully told many of them, but I also struggle with combining the memorization with the puppet presentation.  Some weeks I’ve allowed myself to get nervous about getting the words exactly right, and then the whole story falls completely flat.  And then there are weeks when I just don’t have the time available to memorize a story, and I try to tell it from photocopied sheets laid on the table next to me.  Once again, hard to integrate the puppet presentation with reading my cheat sheet; at times the kids have become distracted by my reading and the magic, of course, is lost.

So I’ve tried something different the last two times I’ve done puppet stories at the preschool storytime: I’ve chosen simple picture books that feature animal characters for which I have matching puppets.  I don’t try to memorize the story, but rather I lay the picturebook flat on my lap (if the story can be told completely with the puppets) or I hold the picturebook up with my left hand and use my right hand for puppeteering (if the story needs the pictures and the puppets to be told).  This approach has worked better for me, and gotten a much better response from the audience.  The reason it works better?  I think it has to do with the stories, since I usually choose newer picturebooks that feature stories that are contemporary, not traditional.  Much as I love MacDonald’s book, some of her stories have that traditional folkloric edge that doesn’t sit well with today’s parents.  Today’s parents don’t like the scary or faintly macabre, and I know that, and get nervous when I use a tale that has those elements.  And today’s kids aren’t used to that type of story, and don’t respond as well to the traditional structure as they do to a newly published picturebook that is written in the style with which they are most familiar.

I’m still working out how best to use puppets in my storytimes, and how often to use them.  I’d love to hear from any of you who do use puppets – what works, what doesn’t, what’s awesome, what’s terrible.  Please share!!

*One of my best friends in college, Collin, used to make fun of my puppet usage by saying, “Ewwww!  That’s gross!!!!  You have your hand up the bear’s butt!!!!!  EWWWWWW!!!”  Collin’s words tend to echo in my head at storytime if I don’t block them out…