Storytime : spring has sprung!

Storytime at the Wazemmes Library has really taken off. The February dates were successful. The Saturday reading took place on the Saturday that school vacation started. Since my mother was our “guest reader”, I recruited some friends to make sure there’d be at least some kids. And to my surprise, the room was overflowing with both kids and their parents! There were at least 20 people crammed into the little room at the back of the Médiatheque Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier!

We didn’t have a French librarian with us that day, so I took over the French part (at one point reading the English instead! Old habits die hard). My mother and I read a couple of books in bilingual format to get the kids acquainted and then I let my mother do her librarian thing. She told the story of Joseph’s little overcoat, using paper and scissors to tell the story. She then read a couple of simple books in English, finishing with an English translation of a French book called Press Here (or Un Livre) by Hervé Tullet which is a book that screams for crowd participation. But the kids wouldn’t participate. By the time my mother was done, all of the kids were grabbing and pressing and shaking the book (this is normal behavior for this book which asks the reader to do all those things to move the spots around on the pages).

My mother observed how reticent the kids were. Where American kids would have been geting up and repeating the words or pressing the book, the French kids sat still and listened. This harkens back to my participation theory of the French which I’ve already observed in professional settings. But I digress...

March story time dates are Wednesday, March 21st at 3:30PM and Saturday, March 31st at 10:30AM .

Here is a list of books we have read so far and which seem to work well in the bilingual setting and format. There are both books in French and English, and there are some bilingual in the text.

• Le Machin/ the Thing by Stéphane Servant and Cécile Bonbon
• Bark George/ Aboie George by Jules Feiffer
• What a Radish! / Quel radis dis donc!  by Praline Gay-Para and Andrée Prigent  
• Little Blue, little Yellow / Petit Bleu, Petit Jaune by Leo Lionni
• A Color of His Own  / Une histoire de cameleon  by Leo Lionni
• The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog/ Le Pigeon Trouve un Hotdog by Mo Willems
• What Faust Saw/ La Nuit de Faust by Matt Ottley
• Yummy / Je te croquerai byLucy Cousins
• Elephant and Piggie : there’s a bird on your head / Un Oiseu sur la tête by Mo Willems
• I like Books/J’aime les livres by Anthony Brown
• Willy the Dreamer / Marcel le reveur  by Anthony Brown
• My Dad / Mon Papa by Anthony Brown
• My Mum / Ma Maman by Anthony Brown
• I Want My Dinner/ Je Veux Manger by Tony Ross
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear / Ours Brun, Ours Brun by Eric Carle
• We’re Going on a Bear Hunt /  La Chasse à l'ours by Helen Oxenbury
• Tralalire : Ours Bleu et Tigre Rouge - a bilingual text from issue 116 from july 2010)
• La maitresse dit hello by Kris di Giacomo
• Tout le Dit Hello by Kris di Giacomo
• Farmer Duck / Le canard fermier by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury
• Press Here / Un Livre - Hervé Tullet
• Come Out and Play Little Mouse  /Viens jouer avec moi, petite souris! x by Robert Kraus, Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey

Other books in English that work well for a non-English speaking group:

• Cat the Cat by Mo Willems
• Orange, Pear, Apple Bear by Emily Gravett
• Press Here by Hervé Tullet
• Monday Spaghetti by Eric Carle
• Jazzy in the Jungle by Lucy Cousins
• ABCs by Bruno Munari
• Red Hat, Green Hat by Sandra Boynton