Beyond Books: Stepping into the story, children's books as muse, part 2

The next Beyond Books speaker was Annie Tillman from Midland County Public Library.  They have a 2500 square foot exhibit space inside one of their branches, and are currently working to become (or so she said), the first public library accredited by the American Alliance of Museums--so I guess we'd better get moving quick on that second floor!

Midland County wanted to make a library visit an experience, and felt that the children's museum and library would each draw in audiences that would end up using both.  They create library programs and special book collections to go with their exhibits to encourage cross-pollination.  They rent a large-scale children's museum exhibit each summer, and during the rest of the year they do smaller-scale exhibits they create themselves.

Next up was Kara Mackey from Bellaboo's Play and Discovery Center in Indiana, which is a county Parks & Recreation Department facility.  When she was hired to run the center, she was looking for inspiration for children's programs, and settled on children's books.  Books and reading are integrated into their center in many ways.  Every room has a supply of children's books, and there are comfortable "reading nooks" throughout the center.  They even have a book reading bathtub (no water, naturally) inspired by "King Bidgood's in the Bathtub,"

Much of their programming is enhanced storytimes based on children's books.  By "enhanced," I mean they do them as full performances, with costumes, props, audience participation, lots of asides by the storyteller, etc.  (Kara's background is in theater).  I can see both the pluses and minuses of this approach.  On one hand, it can engage the kids more, but on the other hand the book can kind of disappear among all the other craziness going on in the room.  Particularly for books with really good rhythm or a good sense of pacing, this approach could really spoil the effect of the text.  But the programs really did look fun, and would probably work well with some stories.  When staff want to do one of these programs, they have to "audition" first.

One more thing I thought I'd mention--they have a wind tunnel like ours, and use it in a lot of their storytimes.  I think that would be a really fun surprise to spring on a storytime audience, but I think it would probably best be left as a finale, otherwise all the kids would immediately jump up to chase whatever was floating on the breeze.  Still, a good idea to add a real exclamation mark to the end of  a storytime.

The last speaker, Mary Jane Eisenhauer, was a Purdue University professor whose Early Childhood Education class designs a space at Bellaboo for their final project.  It's a useful partnership for both, since the students get some practical experience and Bellaboo gets something new to keep the place fresh for their guests.  Might be an idea if we're ever looking for outside programming for the second floor to ask a local university class to design and implement a program for children and allow them use of the second floor space and our materials.

One last comment regarding preschool children, from Mary Jane Eisenhauer--"storybook reading in the number one factor for later school success."