Build A Better World: Summer Reading Time

June has finally arrived and in the world of a working storyteller that often means summer reading.

Alas, it doesn't mean I'm going to finally be able to finish the stack of books on my desk waiting for a read. It means I will spend the summer performing in libraries all over the country.

Summer Reading has changed quite a bit in the thirty years I've been participating in it.



In the olden days, there were lots of different themes for summer reading, and you'd have to keep track of them from county to county or sometimes from library to library.

These days, there is one central Summer Reading program theme, and many systems all over the country use it.


The idea behind Summer Reading is simple.

1. Bring your kids to the library and sign up for this free program.
2. Spend the week reading with or to your children. If they are old enough, they read to themselves, you or their siblings, grandparents, or cousins.
3. Keep a record of the reading
4. Once a week there is a program or activity. You return your reading logs to the library, enjoy a free show or activity, and win prizes for your reading.

The benefits?

-Kids spend the entire summer reading.
-Kids spend time with their families.
-Kids read to their siblings.
-Kids spend time communicating with people of different ages and discussing literature.
-Kids spend time at the library getting to know it and love it
-Families are exposed to art, crafts, performers, science, and much more at the library

There are also Teen Summer Reading Programs and Adult Summer Reading Programs.

The librarians who put these programs together for teens are known to come up with some wild and whacky stuff.

There is everything from Zombie Daze to body art parties, and the books they read are pretty amazing.


This year, the summer reading theme is Build A Better World

I choose out about ten stories that I think will work well for the theme of the year, and I give myself a loose idea about how I want to combine the stories to make a unified set.

I never quite know how I'm going to put them together until I get in front of an audience. That, of course, is where the rubber meets the road and I discover if I can really do what I see in my head.

Stories that I didn't plan to tell occur to me because of the responses I get from the patrons. Ideas for things to discuss that never crossed my mind come up because of the questions I get.

The set is shaped and altered, and somewhere in the midst of the summer, the program is truly set...which means that it will be time for a library to throw something at me for which the set is completely inappropriate, and I will begin anew with different stories.

This week I started learning how to Build A Better World.

So far, the kids have suggested -

1. Recycle
2. Don't hit your sister

A Fellow with a hammer!

3. Don't be mean
4. Plant trees
5. Don't litter
6. Get a hammer
7. Be polite
8. Don't lie
9. Don't bully people
10. Respect your parents
11. Learn
12. Work hard at school

I don't usually ask the grown ups about building a better world. I ask them what they dreamt they would do when they were kids. Lots of them won't answer the question, but a few have offered up their dreams.

1. I wanted to be a mom
2. I wanted to be a teacher
3. I wanted to be a fashion designer
4. I wanted to be a librarian (This from the librarian)

Most of the adults I've encountered so far don't answer. They look perplexed as if they can't imagine I really want an answer, don't remember what they dreamt, or just refuse to say it out loud. I hope their kids ask them about it later.

There are so many things I forget about summer reading until I start doing it.

- The peripheral children in the library who are too "old" for storytelling are enjoying it as much as the kids who are sitting in front of me.

- The adults in the library often make a point of telling me that even though they are adults, they enjoyed the stories...as if I wasn't also telling to them.

- The librarians who have not ever seen me or who have never gambled on a "storyteller" before are shocked that the kids will actually sit still if you don't have puppets, instruments, dry ice, or animals.

- There are communities who do not have live performance opportunities, and if they don't see them in the summer at their libraries, they might never see anything like this at all.


Arts, math, science, reading, family time, libraries, community, computers, and dreaming are all part of building that better world for the thousands of children and families I will share stories with this summer.

I love summer reading.

I hope you are out there somewhere sharing it with someone.

Happy Building A Better World!

Librarians Have The Best Stories

Blogging has been a very interesting experience for me. As I continue on into the years, I learn more about the insidious way my brain works.

So, I promised to blog about Sydney, but I couldn't think of anything particularly interesting to say about Sydney. Not because I didn't love it. Not because the Conference wasn't fabulous. Not because I didn't absolutely enjoy the sessions I attended, the storytelling I got to hear, the workshop I got to teach, meeting old friends and new. Meeting tellers from new South Wales, and all of the various states of Australia was amazing, and I enjoyed all of the really wonderful things that happened at that conference from the SLAM to the youth tellers. I recommend that if you can get there in 2018 - which is when they will have the next one, you should go.

Other people did all the heavy lifting right after I got home last week when I discovered I was comatose from equal parts exhaustion and jet lag.

Here is a great blog post about what happened at the conference from the blog of 'Storyteller Victoria Australia!'

I also met the wonderfully funny, well published, fascinating author Kate Forsyth, who autographed one of her trilogies to my daughter!

Kate Forsyth

And yes, I got to spend the weekend with that silver tongued fox, Jeff Gere, and his lovely wife Dominique, and once again I was in close quarters with the ever brilliant David Novak.

Jeff Gere

It isn't that I don't have anything to say. It turns out that every now and then I'm just brain dead. My brain has had enough, and it just shuts down, and even though I have lots of thoughts, feelings and...as always...opinions, they get road blocked and nothing will flow. Add the incredibly bizarre election season going on right now, and politics moves into the empty spaces and takes up residence in my thought patterns, blocking any and all hope that I will have any thoughts that are not rage oriented.



So, I had a good time in Sydney, got home, slept almost constantly for three or four days, had a wonderful show at the Jung society that Saturday evening, and started Summer Reading performances on Tuesday.


I have had a blast, as I always do with summer reading. The rules are simple for summer.

1. Whoever shows up gets stories.

2. As long as the audience outnumbers me it is a show.

3. Everything is an adventure, and you never know what might happen.

If you've seen the story 'The Exploding Frog' you'll know what this is!

So, this morning I had a show at a wonderful auditorium. I ended up with an audience of twelve adults and two children. The youngest was nine the older child was twelve. Everyone else, retired or in that neighborhood.

Told adult tales that were appropriate to kids, and a couple of great stories for intergenerational audiences. The kids had a good time, the adults had a good time. It was fun. Sold CDs, always a good sign.

Afterwards, the librarian took me out to lunch. That was the best. There were so many things we talked and laughed about over the course of one and a half hours at the River Room seafood restaurant on the waterfront in Georgetown, SC.


Sheila has been a librarian in Georgetown, SC for forty two years. She has seen some things, let me tell you. The two of us just laughed, thought, talked, and solved all sorts of problems over Asian glazed salmon and an immense bread pudding with bourbon sauce.

I laughed so hard at one point, I had tears coming out of my eyes. So, here are two of the tales she shared with me over lunch.

1. There is a family in their community that is 'as American as you or I', but clearly from China. They are faithful library patrons and the girls just chat up a storm. At one point they came in and there was an elderly Chinese man with them. He smiled and nodded, but would say nothing. The girls explained that he was their grandfather in from China for six months, and that he loved to read, but he couldn't speak a word of English. She asked the girls what sorts of things he liked to read, and they told her after some consultation with him.

Sheila saw that he clearly understood more than he could speak. She immediately contacted another library and set up an exchange program so that she could get books for him written in Chinese the entire time he was in America. He would come into the library as soon as a new offering arrived and stand quietly at Sheila's desk. She'd look up and ask if he'd gotten a notice his book was in and he'd smile and bob his head. She'd go in search of it, and he would check it out. He never uttered a single word to her. He was indeed a lover of reading, and spent his visit reading through his local public library. By the time he left, he made sure his grandchildren told Miss Sheila that he couldn't wait to visit again.

We veered into talking about how important small branches of libraries are to communities, especially places where kids have little access to outside information...I have stories about this as well, but I will save them for another post.  Let us move on to the second story she shared.

2. Sheila lamented that some of our legislators don't seem to see much reason to have libraries. She recalled a recent hearing with the government officials during 'non-profit' day, when all the non-profits are forced to go before the legislature and explain why they should be funded.

An aside here...WTF?

Anyway, they are required to plead their case. One of the House Members, a fellow, stood before this group of people, held up his Apple iPhone and demanded to know why we needed libraries.

"I can get anything I need on my phone!" He told them. "Why should we continue to finance buildings and employ librarians when I have a phone with everything I need at my disposal? All of my children have phones..." he went on and on. Sheila said she just put her head down and raised her hands to her cheeks. She couldn't even look at him.

She felt someone patting her gently on the arm and turned around. A Senator was sitting behind her. He smiled hopefully and said, "Don't worry. It will be all right."

The Head Librarian in the state of South Carolina got up and pointed out that the House Member and his family were quite privileged, and that he could not base his experience on every other person in SC. There are many places in SC where families do not have internet in their homes, or access to books without their community libraries. Apparently this very articulate person had charts, graphs, and stats to back up his comments on rebuttal. 

Still, every librarian in the room was feeling quite defeated. The house member gets to have a say in the budgeting process for the library, the head of libraries does not.

As the librarians were packing up to go, they noted the house member grinning as he began to gather his things only to have his wife storm up to him red faced and about to explode. In a loud voice, she began to harangue him.

"I have never been so embarrassed in all of my life!" She shouted. "Don't you know that every single one of your children has a library card!" She demanded. "I have a library card! How dare you get up there and say something so nonsensical!" She went on and on in a fit of fury and disgust, and he just stood there staring at her wide eyed. "How Dare You!" She thundered.

The librarians were silent as they gathered their things, left the building, and went out to find a place for dinner. Over celebratory drinks they speculated where the house member would be sleeping that night.

Librarians have the best stories!

Happy Summer Reading!