Storytime Tale of Woe

Took the kids to storytime today at a major bookstore chain. The guy who used to run it (we'll call him Bill) recently left his position at the store, and someone else is now doing it. Bill was very good at storytime, and he was quite popular. He was animated and creative, and often had props to help make the stories more fun. He also played banjo pretty well, and would get the kids up and moving to music in between his two books. There was even, most times, a theme each week and he made coloring pages the kids could have afterwards. It was like the Cadillac of story hours.

So we were pretty spoiled. And I am not trying to talk down to the girl kind enough to step in and read to our kids, but her attempt this morning was not a great success. She's young--early 20s at the most--and I'm guessing doesn't have kids. Which isn't really a prerequisite for reading to them, but it helps to know how to engage them. I think, therefore, that storytime is harder to do well than any of us really imagined. And, poor girl, Bill is an impossible act to follow. Plus he'd likely been at this for several years.

As an audience, we tried to be gracious and helpful by doing a songtime largely on our own, but the idea of storytime, for us, is that we don't have to work as hard as we do when we're home. We'll keep the kids behavior in check, sure, but not do as much of the entertaining. It was a little like watching a comedian die onstage.

Kids can be tough critics, and they can smell fear. They may not know what to call it, but they know when an adult who's supposed to be in charge really isn't, and they'll go for the jugular. So I feel for the girl, and she may know now that unless you can improvise like Robin Williams or play the banjo, you need to come in with a plan. I simply don't know if I'm going to wait around for the learning curve to kick in.