Dark Stairs, Mice, a Monster, and Music

Book:  The Dark at the Top of the Stairs  by Sam McBratney,    Illustrated by Ivan Bates
Puppets:  None
Props:  None
Technology:  Projector and Scans; Music and Sound Effects in PowerPoint
Presenters:   Two or more
Audience:  Family Storytime

For our annual "Slightly Spooky Storyime" we decided to try The Dark at the Top of the Stairs  (the Sam McBratney picture book, not the William Inge play), .  It's been one my favorites suspenseful/funny read alouds for a long time, but we thought it could make a good Act-Out with Scans.  It would have been okay, but then Brad added some just right music bits and it really came together.  We did it with six(!) people on our big Halloween event, and the rest of the week Terri and I were joined by the newest member of our team, Deborah Gitlitz (our new bilingual outreach librarian, and also an excellent storyteller).  It can also work fine with two people, though.

 In the book, an old Mouse takes three eager/scared Little Mice slowly up the dark stairs in the cellar, where a monster supposedly awaits.  We edited and ad-libbed a bit, but tried to keep a lot of McBratney's excellent storyteller's voice in there.   For example, I always love the line where the Old Mouse agrees to bring the mice up the stairs, speaking "as if he knew that sooner or later all young mice will try to see the dark at the top of the stairs."  I'm not big on messages in storytime, but it's a nice little nudge to the grown-ups to let their kids do scary things once in a while.

Before they go, the Old Mouse tries to talk them into going to the meadow or swinging on the grass.  The music Brad chose for this opening was "Morning Song" from Rossini's William Tell Orchestra, which gives it a nice, light, carefree mood.  



When the story moves into the cellar, the music switches to "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Grieg, which is just the right amount quiet and mysterious.  We only used the kind of tiptoe-y part at the beginning, not the big ending.  It's always neat to see how much of an impact a well chosen piece of music can make.

I was the Old Mouse, and also narrated.  Deborah and Terri were Cobb and Berry-Berry....we axed Hazel in the three-person version.  We scanned illustrations of the stairs, and tiptoed around in front of it to kind of simulate going up the stairs.   Each new page-turn / scanned image brings the mice further up the stairs.  And with each section there's a new bit of dialogue as they get more scared:

We didn't do any costumes or anything to make us look like mice...we counted on the story and the images to convey that.  And as the story progressed, we didn't really try to act out ascending stairs.  We wanted to stay facing the audience, or sideways at least.  So we just sort of crept in place, making sure to stay on the sides of the screen, without blocking it.

The pace of the story works really well with a mostly preschool age audience.  The scariness the mice show is kind of real, but also kind of self-generated, so the audience is tense, but not really really scared.   When they get close to the stop of the stairs, with the mice bickering and getting excited, the Narrator can build up to the climax with a louder, more ominous voice:   "And then....Something Happened."   At the same time, the music abruptly stops.  The door opens and the monster is finally revealed.

For the "monster," which of course is a cat, we put a black box over the image in the PowerPoint slide, then animated it so it slowly rose to reveal the Cat.  Another click added a "Meow" word balloon, plus a sound effect of a real cat's meow.


At which point all of us mice kind of ran around in a tizzy for a while and then finally flopped onto the floor "in a jumble and a heap."  

The tale has a very satisfying ending, as the Old Mouse asks the Small Mice where they would like to go the next day and "none of them mentioned the Dark at the Top of the Stairs."

With our "Slightly Spooky Stories," we usually like to get the kids just a little bit scared, but then have them able to say after the story is over:  "I wasn't really scared....even though they probably were."  This story seemed to hit that pretty well....  

Jumanji Puppet Show

Book:  Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg
Puppets:  Boy, Girl, Monkey(s), Lion(s), Snake(s), Shark(s)
Props:  Squirt Bottle, Storm Sounds (optional), Fog Machine (optional), Dice, Game Board (printed and taped to cardboard)

Jumanji is such an excellent book that I hesitated a bit before doing it as a puppet show, knowing I'd have to change it a bunch.  But I justify it to myself by saying it's way closer than the movie version, and by using the usual standby:  kids will check out a bunch of copies of the book.  So we did the puppet show for our "K-2 Book Adventure" program on "Award Winners."  (a separate post will summarize the program).  When I did this show years ago it was a solo show, but we had three people this time (Sheila, Terri, and I) and it was much easier.  I played Judy and Peter, the two kids.  Terri and Sheila were on either side of me and each had one of each animal puppet.

The first change from the book was to jump right into the two kids playing the game.  No trip to the park and finding the game.  So they're bored at home, discover the game, read the rules, and we're off.  As a puppet show, it's the appearance of the animals and other dangers that are the key.  So when one child rolls the die and reads "Lions attack, go back two spaces," Sheila's Lion appears behind Peter on the right, he turns and a chase ensues.  They lose that Lion, head back the other way, and Terri's Lion appears on the left, and a chase ensues.  And that's the basic pattern.

 The next roll leads to "Monkeys pull hair."  I know, in the book it's "monkeys steal food," but that was too complicated.  And having a Monkey pull a girl puppet across the stage by the hair is a pretty funny visual.  When it's "Monsoon season," Terri and Sheila made storm noises with our thunder tube and squirted the audience with water.  Then we did "Python," which was more chasing.  And finished with "lost in fog," which was added because we got to use our fog machine.  Terri held it up right below the puppets and it was a quite effective surprise for the audience.  We did not include the rhinoceros stampede or the lost guide, partly because it had to be a fairly quick show and partly because they would have been harder to manage (once again artistic integrity is trumped by time and convenience)...

When Judy finally reaches the end, we stretched out the action by having her forget to shout "Jumanji."  So the game isn't ended and all the animals (or as many as Terri and Sheila could put out there) converge on the kids until she remembers.  And when she says it, all the animal puppets instantly disappear.  

Since the kids never go to the park in this version, we had to drop the excellent book ending where they return the game to the park and watch two other kids walk off with it (we learn about their game in Zathura).  So we added a basic joke to end it up:  The kids decide to play a safe, harmless game like "Go Fish," and when one of them says "what could possibly be scary about "Go Fish?"....two Shark puppets appear and chase them.

The show was a big hit with the K-2 audience, proving once again that there's nothing like a chase or two to make a puppet show work.  It's one that could be done pretty easily with two people...you'd just have to have animal puppets coming from one side only.  And you just need a bit of pre-choreographing of the chase scenes to make it work, then there's plenty of room for improvising if you feel like it.  The fog machine is not really needed (though we enjoyed using it).  As for the Game Board, we just printed an image of the actual board game which came out when the movie did and taped it to cardboard.  Actually a very good board game....my own kids played it for hours at a time when they were younger.

I Elephant, 1 Piggie, 2 Birds, 3 People

Book:  There Is a Bird on Your Head  by Mo Willems
Puppets:   Two Birds
Props:   Nest, Egg, Baby Birds (3), Elephant Hat (or similar), Piggie Hat (or similar)
Presenters:  3
Audience:   K-2, Preschool

It's been nine(!) months since I posted on this blog, but I haven't really quit.  The usual suspects are to blame:  procrastination,
laziness, and their various relatives, but I choose to put the blame on computer Scrabble, which, as it happens, I purchased for $2.99 just a week or two after my last blog entry, and I'm afraid that's too close to be mere coincidence.  It's not like I'm addicted, and really I can quit any time I want, it's just that I choose not to.  So for now my plan is to get back to blog entries with an unambitious (but attainable) two times a month, and as for Scrabble....well I don't think anyone needs to know how many Scrabble games I play in a month.  

I'll jump back into it with yet another Elephant & Piggie.  We did There Is a Bird on Your Head for a K-2 Book Adventure program on "Award Winners" (it won the 2008 Geisel Medal) and the repeated it for Family Storytime.  We acted it out with me as Gerald and Sheila as Piggie (as usual, but one of these days we're going to switch roles, challenging stereotypes of gender and height, just for fun) and Terri with the Bird puppets.  

 Sheila and I sat, while Terri moved the first Bird onto my head.  She didn't talk for the birds, but gave little chirping whistles that were just right.  As usual with a Mo Willems, we stuck to the word from the book very closely.  When Gerald first learns there's a bird on his head, I jump off the chair and run away, while Terri takes the first Bird behind our backdrop.  Then I return and she comes back with two birds.




Then there's a progression as the birds go to work, while Gerald gets increasingly worried about what's going on up there.  They bring out a Nest.  Then an Egg.  Then Chicks.  In the book it's three eggs, and although we do have three plastic eggs, its too hard for a puppeteer to manage them along with two birds and a nest.  So Terri showed one egg, and Sheila stood up, looked into the Nest, and counted three.  We do have three baby birds.  Actually they're three finger puppets connected to that nest (it's a Folkmanis nest that they don't make any more but you can find it on ebay and elsewhere).  So Terri kind of pulled them up so the audience could see them peeking out.

As with most Elephant and Piggie's, you have to take your time with the dialogue and don't really need to overdo it.  The characters and pace is so strong that the kids totally get what's going on and why it's funny.   Piggie finally suggests that Gerald simply ask the birds to leave, then Sheila exits.  The birds do leave, as Terri follows her behind the backdrop.

 That sets up the finale, where Gerald calls Piggie back to thank her for the suggestion, and she re-enters with both birds on her head.  The visual effect of her showing up with the birds works well, but Terri had the good idea to add one more line.  In the book, Piggie closes the book with "you are welcome," and her perturbed look tells readers all they need to know.  Sheila's perturbed look is equally effective, but she also says:  "Gerald.....is there a bird on my head?" which circles back to the opening line and makes it clear that this is the end.  Okay, so we messed with Mo's words just a little bit, but the transition from page to act-out sometimes just needs a bit of that, even with a perfect book....

The Little Red Hen, Three Ways

Story #1:    The Little Red Hen with felt
Story #2:    The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza with puppets (from the book by Philomen Sturges, illustrated by Amy Walrod)
Story #3:    The Little Red Pirate (a Brad Clark original)
Puppets:  Hen, Cat, Dog, Pig (#2)
Props:  Laminated Shapes and Felt Board (Version #1);  Flower, Rolling Pin, Penguin, Pizza (#2);  Pirate clothes, Parrot, Treasure Chest, Squirt Bottles (#3)
Technology:  none
Audience:  Family Story Time (mostly 3-7 year olds)

Once a year we do a "One Story Three Ways" theme in Family Storytime.  In previous years we've featured "The Three Pigs," "The Three Bears," and "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," but this year we broke our "Three" streak and tried "The Little Red Hen." 

We started with a traditional version, which Terri told using our big felt board and laminated, velcroed figures.  Details of this version are on a previous post.   We always like to start this three-version program with a pretty straightforward one.  This way the kids have the basics down and will recognize the parallels and get the jokes (well, some of them anyway) when we do the broader variations.  The child participation parts of this version do even more to help the kids know the story.  

For version two, we did a broad adaption of The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza by Philomen Sturgis.  We made it "The Little Red Rooster..." instead, mostly because my hen puppets is pretty static, while my Rooster is very nimble and animated.  Rooster was above the curtain, asking his three friends for help.  Dog and Cat each say the expected "Not I," but Pig replies with an "I Will!" and proceeds to bring Rooster the wrong thing:   a Flower instead of some Flour; a Squeaky Hammer instead of a Rolling Pin;  and a Penguin instead of a Pepperoni.  That penguin didn't really make much sense, but I just really liked the idea of something completely nonsensical, plus having little Rooster toss a big Penguin puppet behind the stage is a pretty fun visual.  At the end, Rooster wants to just look at
his pizza, then can't figure out what else to do with it.  When his friends suggest that he should eat it, he rewards that great idea by sharing it with them.  All three of us were behind the stage for this one; it could probably be done with two, but three made prop handling and movement nice and smooth.

For the last version, Terri and I got to just relax while Brad told his original story of The Little Red Pirate.  Brad does performances at several dozen other libraries all over the state, and this was one of his featured stories last summer.  He brings up two volunteers to be Polly the Parrot, and the First Mate, while the rest of the audience is The Crew.  So everyone gets their chance to do "Not I!" when Brad (as the Little Red Pirate) asks for help in finding the treasure.  Steps include Lifting the Anchor, Steering the Boat, Rowing the Dinghy, and Digging for Treasure.

Brad always does a great job of working with the child volunteers.  In one session, the First Mate volunteer did not want to play.  We could tell because he said:  "I'm not doing this."  But he stayed up there and Brad turned his defiance into a character trait, making it lots of fun without making fun of the boy at all.  There's also an excellent ending:  When we finally see the Treasure Chest and The L. R. Pirate points out that no one helped him, he decides they should all....Walk the Plank!, at which point Brad pulls two squirt bottles out of the chest and squirts everybody.  

We had lots of copies of different versions of The Little Red Hen available for checkout, but we had to tell the audience that there was no book version of The Three Little Pirates...yet.  Brad is actually working on finding a publisher for this and for a couple of other stories, and I'm sure it's just a matter of time before he'll be a published picture book author.  Wouldn't you use this book in storytime?

Here's a short video clip from Brad's story:  It starts from the point where The Little Red Pirate is Reading the Map, then has Digging the Treasure, and the excellent squirt bottle ending.....

This "One Story Three Ways" theme is always a fun one to put together, but it also has a purpose.  We always mention that by telling a story and retelling it in different ways we're playing with our narrative skills, just like kids do when they play and act out based on books.

    

Fat Cat Tries to Sit on People (not puppets)

Book:  What Will Fat Cat Sit On?  by Jan Thomas
Puppets:  None
Props:   2 Signs each for Cows, Chickens, Pigs, Dogs, 1 each for Cat and Mouse
Presenters:   2, plus 4 child volunteers
Audience:  Family Storytime (mostly 3-6 years old)

I've enjoyed doing What Will Fat Cat Sit On? with puppets, and it was even my first post on this blog (January 17, 2011).  Terri and I decided to do it as an act-out for our "cats" themed Family Storytime.  In the story, Fat Cat half-threatens to sit on five different animals, so we decided to use kids for four of those, with Terri as Mouse, who comes in at the end.  Sometimes with stories like this we've had kids hold puppets or have something on their heads to identify the animals, but this time we just decided to have them hold a mask, laminated and mounted on a paint stick.  Some of the kids put the masks in front of their faces, some held them at their chest and either way works.  We had some store-bought farm animal masks for Cow + Chicken + Pig already that we'd used for a different story.  Then for Cat, Dog, and Mouse, we scanned, enlarged,

and laminated face pictures from the books.

Having the masks on sticks makes it real easy to switch, so we decided to have Terri and a child as each animal (except Mouse).  That way Terri could cue the kids and supply some of the personality, but it also gives the kids enough room to get into it too (and some did, some didn't).  I was thinking maybe I should stuff my shirt with a pillow to make a really fat cat, but Terri said don't worry about it:  curved arms, big wide steps, and a deep, goofy voice is all you need....and she was right, as usual.  

 

So first I come out as Fat Cat, wondering what I should sit on.  All four kids are sitting on small chairs, while Terri is behind the backdrop poking the Mouse mask out and back, which the kids see, but I don't, to sort of preview the Mouse ending (and parallel what Jan T. does with her illustrations).  Then Terri comes out, grabs a Cow mask and steps up with the Cow child as Fat Cat notices them and says:  "Will Fat Cat sit on...the cows?"  Then there's a short, slow chase as Fat Cat takes big steps towards the cows, circling them, until the cows say:  "Sit on the Chickens!"  The pattern continues with Chickens and Pigs, then shifts a bit when the Dogs growl and Fat Cat runs away.  

In the book, it's only the Chicken who tells Fat Cat to sit on someone else, but Terri had the good idea to do this for each animal, to really make the transition clear to the audience and to give the child volunteers a little more of an active role.   When Mouse comes out, Fat Cat repeats the big "What will Fat Cat sit on?" refrain, getting closer and closer to Mouse, who finally suggests the chair.  Each time we did this, when Fat Cat sits on the chair, the audience thought it was over, making the final twist ("Now....what will Fat Cat have....to EAT?!") even more fun.  Fat Cat gets off the chair and we have another slow chase as all the animals take off.  

To give it a nice clear conclusion, after chasing the animals I say one more "What will Fat Cat eat?" and pull a carrot out of my pocket.  Not in the book, but it worked just right for this presentation.  For two of our four performances we had a third teller, Carson Mischel (a visiting children's librarian from the nearby West Linn Public Library), and this story worked fine with three too.  Carson took the Mouse part, leaving Terri to do the other animals. 

 

Creepy Cardboard Carrots

Book:  Creepy Carrots  by Aaron Reynolds, Illustrated by Peter Brown
Props:  Big Cutout Carrots, Mirror, Bunny Ears, Bedtime stuff
Puppets:  None
Presenters:  2 or 3, plus 2 child volunteers
Technology:  Scans from book projected
Audience:  K-2

When I was halfway through my first reading of Creepy Carrots I was sure it could be a fun puppet show:  Stick puppet carrots sneaking up behind rabbit...it would be great!  But when Roscoe Rabbit builds a giant fence at the end I couldn't really figure out how to make it work, so I gave up the idea.  A month or two later Sheila thought it would be just right for our summer Preschool Stories & Science program, with the "Dig Into Reading" theme and all.  She figured it out:  we could to act it out, add some volunteers from the audience, and fill in selected scenes with some scanned illustrations from the book.  We decided to try it for our K-2 Book Adventure Summer Reading preview, which also used "Dig Into Reading."

We used three staff, with me narrating, Sheila as Roscoe, and Terri as Creepy Carrot #1.  Creepy Carrots #2 and #3 were child volunteers.  Our volunteer Ruth made some great cutout carrots and the three just held them in front of them as they creeped around:

For Roscoe's carrot field, we projected the illustration from the book on the screen, then had a table covered with brown butcher paper at the bottom of the screen, sort of extending it into 3-d.  And we sprinkled a bunch of real carrots in there, so Sheila could hop past, stop, and take a bunch. 


When it came time for the Creepy Carrots to appear, Terri led the kids in the refrain "tunktunktunk" and they just followed her, appearing from behind our backdrop, then ducking back just before Sheila turned around to see them.  The kids rarely stayed all the way hidden, but that was fine.

When Sheila returned to the field to see if the Creepy Carrots were real, we showed the regular carrot scene again, but when she turned her back on it, we clicked for the carrots to appear:

Then as she decides with relief that "creepy carrots aren't real," we did a "grow" animation click so they got even bigger. 

We combined the animation and "live" carrots for the other scenes where Roscoe sees the carrots.  When he looks at the window, for example, we showed the illustration, while the three live rabbits  were showing themselves at the side of the screen:

We put the next window scene, which is on the opposite page of the book, "underneath" the first illustration, then had one "fade out" while the other "faded in," using PowerPoint animation effects again.  And as the non-carrot window appeared, the live carrots snuck back behind the backdrop.

In the end Roscoe builds a fortress around the carrot field so they can't get out.  And it's exactly what the Creepy Carrots were hoping for, since now he can't get in to pick them.  For this, we showed the scan of Roscoe's fortress, then the scene of the celebrating carrots, and had our three live carrots come out and celebrate too.  Much better than whatever I might have come up with for a puppet show.

Overall, the combination of screen and act out worked well.  While the scans on the screen let us share the excellent illustrations, it was the three cardboard carrots interacting with Roscoe that really made it come alive for the audience.  The one disappointing piece was the lighting.  The orange coloring on the book and on the computer screen has a great glowi-ness to it, but that only shows up on screen when it's dark in the room...and we needed enough light to see the acting out guys.  We found a middle ground that worked well enough, though. 

 

And the cut-out carrots were great.  When Terri and I visited some kindergarten classes to promote the event we brought the carrots along, even though we performed a different story for them.  I think just showing them the carrots and showing the book cover might have been all we needed to do....     

Ninja Pigs and Perfect "Pork Chops"

Book:  The Three Ninja Pigs  by Corey Rosen Schwartz, Illustrated by Dan Santat
Props:  Wolf Hat (or similar), Pig Ears (or something like that), Fake Bricks, Pre-cut Stick, Martial Arts Clothes (or even a plain bathrobe would be funny)
Presenters:   Three
Audience:  K-2 (also works for Preschool, just not quite as well)

Even before I saw the book, I knew just from the title that there would have to be something fun we could do with The Three Ninja Pigs.  We decided to try it for our K-2 Book Adventures "Heroes and Villains" program.  It's a clever re-telling of "The Three Pigs," where each pig learns a martial art, but the first two don't stick with their training.  The third one's a girl and a good student, and she saves the day. 

For our three-person telling we decided to go with one person (Teri) as all three pigs.  Sheila was the Wolf and since the text rhymes and we wanted to get that just right, I was narrator.  We usually don't mind half-memorizing and acting out with a script, but Terri couldn't do that this time:  she had to have her hands free for Ninja moves.  The illustrations are also excellent, and give the kids a more tangible sense of what the book is all about, so we selected some of those and projected them as the story progressed.  We also threw in a bit of the martial arts terminlogy as visuals, and added word balloons for most of the dialogue.  For the script we trimmed a stanza or two just to fit our time slot.

With that in place, the story plays out pretty smoothly.  Terri borrowed an authentic Taekwondo Ki to wear from a co-worker.  She even learned an authentic move or two, but in the end she went for comical effect, and it was definitely funny.  I'm pretty sure "the cartwheel, the crescent, the crane" don't go quite the way she did them.

Pigs one and two battled Wolf briefly.  We projected a scan from the book, then clicked to add word balloons for their lines.  Then Pig Three demonstrated her skills.  Terri broke a stick (pre-broken ) and shattering bricks (cardboard ones, but still visually impressive).  This scares Wolf and he leaves without even coming to blows ("I love to eat ham / But I think I should scram / before she makes mincemeat of me").

We'll probably use this for Family Storytime as well, but K-2 is really the perfect audience, since they get most of the jokes, like when Pig Three performs a "perfect Pork Chop."  Younger kids will still get the heart of the story, though, and will love the silly action. 

A. Wolf and 3 Pigs, Acted Out

Book:  The True Story of the Three Little Pigs  by Jon Scieszka, Illustrated by Lane Smith
Puppets:  Sheep, Bunny, 3 Pigs
Props:  Wolf ears (or similar)
Technology:  Projector with scans (optional)
Performers:  3, but works with 1
Volunteers:  3 kids (optional)
Audience:  K-2

We featured Jon Scieszka in a K-2 Book Adventures a while back and decided to finish with The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.  The storytelling voice really makes the book, so we did it as an act-out and we mostly stuck to A. Wolf's narrative from the book, with a few extras.

 

Since we had the luxury of three tellers (Sheila, Terri, and I), we switched off in the role of Wolf/Narrator, passing on the wolf ears each time.  We introduced it by saying that all three of us wanted to be the Wolf, and since we couldn't decide, we would take turns.  And of course everyone knows:  tallest goes first.  So I started as A. Wolf, explaining about how "this whole Big Bad Wolf thing...is wrong."  With the line about "it's not my fault wolves like to eat cute little animals like bunnies and sheep," I hold up a puppet of each, turn my back to the audience and "swallow" them, turning back with them visibly stuffed under my shirt. 

 

Then I turn it over to Terri, passing the wolf ears to her, and she tells about how she accidentally "sneezed a great sneeze," and ate the first little pig.  We gave one volunteer from the audience apig puppet and a couple of lines to say, in this case:  "No! I'm not in!"  When Terri "sneezes a great sneeze" I grab the pig puppet off the child's hand and toss it in the air.  Terri eats it ("think of it as a cheeseburger just lying there"), stuffing it under her shirt.

 

We followed the same pattern with Sheila getting the second pig and me again, trying to get the third.  Each  time we have a child with a puppet, one good line to say, and the big sneeze and a pig puppet toss.  Along the way we throw in a few slides on the screen just for fun.  When Wolf tells what each house is made of, the first slide shows a mistake.  Plastic Straws instead of Straw;  Chicks instead of Sticks; and Blue Bricks instead of Red Bricks.  Wolf notices and corrects himself each time.  We also had slides for the mentions of Cheeseburgers and the Cup of Sugar at the beginning and showed the illustration from the Newspaper at the end, followed by a Jail slide.  These aren't necessary, but were fun, and we do like to mix our media when we get a chance.       

 

This is one tale where you really do have to be in character to pull it off. The audience has to listen to Wolf's excuses but also realize but Scieszka's words are so good, you can't really read them without becoming A. Wolf.  The whole story could be done just fine by one person, along with the kid volunteers for the pig.  Three tellers worked great for us, but we did miss out on one element: a solo teller's stomach would have gotten bigger and bigger with each puppet eaten, while we all kind of started from scratch each time.  These are the hard choices one must make when telling silly stories.     

Tacky the Penguin with four kids and one Hawaiian shirt

Book:  Tacky the Penguin  by Helen Lester, Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger
Puppets:  None
Props:  Hawaiian Shirt, Penguin Name Signs, Squirt Bottle, Drum (or some sort of instrument)
Presenters:  Three Staff + Four Kids  (could be Two Staff)
Audience:   K-2nd grade, also fine for preschool

Tacky the Penguin is a perfect picture book and one of my most-used-ever books for storytimes and class visits, and I've always thought I should be able to do it as a puppet show.  I have a fine Folkmanis penguin puppet and even saved a scrap of an old Hawaiian shirt so I could dress him properly...but I could never get past the need for five more penguins in the story.  I thought maybe if I just used the same penguin appearing five times in a row (because they do all look alike), but no.  Once you add a second presenter, though, or better yet, a third one, and act it out instead of doing puppets, it all works out.  I had a "Friends" themed storytime coming up and was ready to go, but Tacky got bumped for Z is for Moose.  But luckily we also had a "Heroes and Villains" theme for a K-2 Book Adventure Program, and who's more heroic than Tacky? 

We didn't worry about looking penguin-y.  Terri played Tacky and she just needed a tacky Hawaiian shirt.  I was Narrator and Goodly, then we had four kids from the audience as Lovely, Neatly, Angel, and Perfect (their names might be my favorite part of the book).  We gave each kid a sign with the penguin name on it to wear around their necks.   So I told the story ("Tacky lived in a nice icy land..."), and the kids did what I did:   "Goodly, Lovely, Neatly, Angel, and Perfect greeted each other politely" - and we all shook hands with each other.  Then it's Tacky's turn:   "Tacky was different" - Terri appears giving back slaps and high flippers to us and shouting "What's Happening!" 

 

And that pattern follows, as in the book.   G, L, N, A, and P march neatly;  Tacky marches his own way ("1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 6, 0, 2 and a half, 0.." and winds up flat on the floor....maybe that's my favorite part of the book).    The five swim (and we just pretend to swim); Tacky does a cannonball (Terri yells "cannonball!" and squirts the penguins and the audience).  This back and forth worked pretty well.  The kids had fun being the penguins and didn't get too silly with it, so each time Terri did her thing the contrast was clear and funny. 

 

Then the hunter comes along (Sheila with a net).  It's three hunters in the book, but one works fine.  And just like in the book, Tacky repeats all the things that penguins do in his oddball style, convincing the hunter that he's not in the land of the penguins at all.  The kids and Goodly, meanwhile, are half hiding behind a backdrop, then come out and join Tacky's awful song that drives the hunter away ("How many toes does a fish have?  How many wings on a cow...?").   Really the only change we made to the story was to add the words "Tacky was a hero!" after the hunter was gone, just in case anyone forgot what our theme was.  And of course we retained the just-right last line:  "Tacky was an odd bird.  But a very nice bird to have around." 

 

Our three staff + four kids cast worked great, but this could also be done with two staff, having Narrator/Goodly step into the Hunter role also, since the Hunter only interacts with Tacky.  So having more than one teller really does open up the possibilities for doing act-outs and other versions of great books that won't fly solo.  There is a downside though:  You have to share.  And it doesn't always work out that you get to do the role you really really want to do.  I mean, I do like to narrate, and Terri is just great at physical comedy, so she was perfect for the title role.....but next time, I wanna be Tacky!

 

Stinky Cheese with Scans and Puppets

Book:  The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales  by Jon Scieszka, Illustrated by Lane Smith

Puppets:  Jack, Hen, Girl, Wolf, Giant
Props:  None
Presenters:  3
Technology:  Scans from the book projected on screen, with PowerPoint animations

Audience:  K-2

We featured the books of Jon Scieszka for a recent K-2 Book Adventure.  We chose the theme several months earlier, thinking:  "funny guy, great books, should be no problem."  But once we got down to actually figuring out how present those books in our typical methods (act-out, puppets, powerpoint, in various combinations) it took some thinking.  We had to do Stinky Cheese Man, of course, and finally decided on:  Puppets + PowerPoint.  We didn't do the whole book, since we just had our typical 5-10 minutes.  We focused on several parts with Jack and tried to convey some of the characters interacting with book pages pieces.  Here's how we did it, probably in more detail than you want, but it doesn't make sense in summary form:

In this book, Jack narrates fractured versions of folktales and is regularly interrupted by other characters and interacts with parts of the book itself.  So we decided to use our projection screen as the book, but use puppets for Jack, the Little Red Hen, Red Running Shorts, the Wolf, and the Giant.  So we puppeteers were behind the screen, using it kind of as a curtain.  Side and front view show how this looks:

 













So Jack opens in front of a scanned image of the endpapers and Little Red Hen accosts him just like in the book. 

The Title Page and Dedication Page are scans that "Fly Down" onto the screen with Jack responding accordingly. 









When Jack describes what "Fairly Stupid Tales" are, the screen shows "Fairy Tales" at first, then a few simple animations show "Fairy" changing to "Fairly" and "Stupid" getting inserted in the middle. 

From that point, we selected segments from the book, hoping to get the kids intrigued about the stories we didn't tell while conveying the inspired absurdity of the whole thing. 

So Jack tells "Chicken Licken" in a couple sentences (with a scanned illustration), skipping to how it ends, with the Table of Contents falling and squishing everyone (another scan, "Flying Down").  He mentions the titles of a couple stories, with an illustration showing for each.  So we don't actually tell "The Princess and the Bowling Ball" or "The Really Ugly Duckling," but the titles and one illustration work to get a laugh and catch some interest.   Then we did a little more with "Little Red Running Shorts."    Wolf and Girl puppets enter and complain about the way Jack tells the story, then take off.  When the puppets are gone we show the corresponding empty silhouette image from the book, then follow up with the blank page (or in our version, blank screen) while Jack silently frets about how to tell the story with no images.

The other story we get into (after another loud interruption by the Little Red Hen puppet) is the Giant's story.  The Giant puppet chases Jack off and tells the story his way:  We have each line of his backward story in reverse order on screen as he recites:  "The end;"  "Of the evil stepmother;"  "said I'll Huff and Snuff and;"  and so on until the last line, "Once upon a time."  And Jack declares it the "Most Stupid Tale Ever" as those words Zoom on top of the illustration:

When Jack tells his endlessly repeating tale (to delay the Giant from eating him) we do something similar with the screen, with each refrain appearing below the previous one, in smaller print like in the book.  And then we end it (after another Little Red Hen appearance) kind of like a booktalk:  "The Giant comes back.  And finally gets to eat something, but I won't tell you what it is, so you'll have to check out the book and read it until...The End (as those words "fly down" on the screen).

It seemed like an effective way to do the story.  It wasn't the easiest though.  The projection-screen-as-puppet-curtain idea is cool, but it's a little awkward to manage as a puppeteer:  Not much mobility and you can't see a thing.    And this story really did need three people.  I was Jack and Sheila did the other puppets, plus we had to have Terri doing the clicking: the timing was too important to try to manage many scan transitions along with puppets.  The book is just so cool, though, and it was fun to go as far as we could to bring it to life this way...