The only thing more fun than reading a good book is reading a good book to a child and watching the excitement on their face grow with every turn of the page.
Kim Hazen, the children’s librarian at Guernsey Memorial Library, gets to see that excitement firsthand several times a week, as she runs through her half-hour story time routine. On Tuesday, I went to the library to work with Hazen and see some of that excitement for myself.
I arrived at the library at 9:30 and quickly realized that being the children’s librarian involves a lot more than just picking out a couple books for story time. After nearly three years in the position, Hazen explained her responsibilities include picking out new books for the children’s and young adult’s sections of the library, keeping up the collection, planning activities and workshops for the library’s younger readers and working with the children, which Hazen said is her favorite part of the job.
Each week, Hazen holds story time on Tuesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays, the children’s librarian prepares for two different sections; the first for pre-school age children, and the second for infants and toddlers. For each event, Hazen chooses a different theme, and all of the activities done that day center around that theme. On Tuesday, the pre-school story time activities centered around a theme of friends and feelings. “Generally the themes are seasonal, based on the weather or holidays and others are just thrown in based on whatever we’re doing,” Hazen said. She explained the friends and feelings theme was chosen because of Valentine’s Day.
After setting up for the day’s craft project, making a happy clown face out of construction paper, the children started to arrive. We directed each to grab a mat and sit on the floor in front of Hazen’s desk. At 10 a.m. eight children had arrived. Most, Hazen said, are returning customers. “Once in a while we see a new face, but the same ones are usually pretty consistent until pre-school.”
After signing the regular song “The More We Get Together,” to kick things off, the story hour officially began. Before the stories were actually read, Hazen did a few activities with the children, starting with an interactive counting activity called, “Counting Friends.”
After identifying each of the children at story hour as her friends, Hazen moved on to the next activity, a short story called “Birds in a Tree.” While Hazen read the story from an index card, she placed items on a felt board to illustrate the action of the story. At the request of the children in the group, Hazen read the story again, this time allowing the children to come up and place the items on the felt board.
Then came the story, and my chance to get involved with the story time activities. For the morning, Hazen had picked out a book called “I’m Sorry,” by Sam Mcbratney and Jennifer Eachus. Sitting on the floor in the center of the carpet, I read the story of two friends who have a fight and have to learn to apologize. With colorful pictures and a simple message, the book was a great choice for the group of young children.
Following the story, we finished up story time by singing “If You’re Happy and You Know it,” and by having the children identify how they were feeling that day. Finally, we sang one last song “Shake My Sillies Out.” I’m sure onlookers would have been amused as I jumped up and down and shook my sillies out along with the kids, but they seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves, and to be honest, so did I.
To wrap up the morning, we sat the children down at tables and helped them to put their clown faces together, and then we started all over again with the infant and toddler group. Only three children attended the second group, but the limited numbers didn’t keep them from having a good time. While the songs and activities were a little different, they followed the same pattern, and the children seemed to genuinely enjoy it. When I finished reading to the younger group, a book about a bird trying to fly for the first time, I heard a little voice say “again.”
A simple coloring activity wrapped up story time for the younger children, and then Hazen and I began to clean up the area.
While my morning working at story time only lasted for a couple of hours, Hazen performs the routine several times a week. She explained that on Mondays daycare groups from the Children’s Center come over for story time, and the event is held regularly at 10 and 10:30 on Tuesdays and at 10:30 on Friday. In addition, Hazen regularly holds evening story time sessions throughout the year, where children are invited to attend in their pajamas. The next P.J. Story Time will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 25.
For more information about the library’s story time hours, visit the web site at www.guernseylibrary.org or call 334-3901.