I love a theme.  There is something about focusing on a theme that brings out the best in me creatively.  And I’m still focused on chickens for some reason.  The last Monarch book that I read with the students was The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington.  I seem to have been on a chicken kick ever since.

My grandparents kept chickens.  They kept chickens years after they should have given them up.  They lost money feeding those chickens… but it was important to them.  So I have many years of memories stored up related to their farm (just down the road) and chickens.  My chicken experience paid off as I read Harrington’s book aloud – one second grader actually interrupted the story to tell me that I “do a good chicken”.  My “pruck, pruck, pruck” was apparently very realistic. 

Every class voted for the 2009 Monarch as soon as we were done reading Chicken-Chasing Queen so we didn’t spend much time in extended discussion.  This meant that all my good chicken stories were wasted!  The students really enjoy it when I follow a read aloud with what they refer to as one of my “true stories”.  Personal narrative is a branch of the storytelling art and my students seem to value and enjoy it.  With this in mind I picked one of my favorite books from recent years for the next read aloud, Lisa Campbell Ernst’s Zinnia and Dot. 

I LOVE to read this book aloud.   As I mentioned last week oral reading, done well, is dramatic and Lisa Campbell Ernst has built in plenty of dramatic opportunities in this narrative.  I don’t often “do” voices with books because it is difficult to do well, but Ernst gave Zinnia a drawl and I jest luv to do a drawl!  (I didn’t grow up in West Central Illinois for nothin’!)  Dot’s dialogue lends itself to a slightly snooty tone, so I can really give these two old hens some personality. 

I’ve heard good readers describe the book experience as “a movie in my head”.  Good readers know what this means, but struggling readers of every age never get the mental film rolling.  Bringing a book to life in a read aloud session is an important model.  If I can bring Zinnia and Dot to life for the students, then I am modeling good reading.  My all time favorite phrase in this book:  “It was poultry pandemonium!”

I followed this wonderful book with some of my own chicken stories.  Some of the teachers who also grew up on farms chimed in with their own memories.  Most of us shared the amazement that our grandmothers could reach right under those old hens when gathering eggs, but the old biddies would peck a kid every time.  In my childhood I solved that issue by gently harassing the hens with a stick until they got off the nest.  In retrospect this probably did not improve my relationship with those hens, but it allowed me to get the job done without getting pecked.  (Those old hens sensed my fear, I know!)

Kids not only like personal narrative storytelling, but they love knowing facts so I made sure they had their chicken vocabularies in order:  rooster, hen and chicks.  But no one was familiar with the term for young female chickens – pullets. 

Sharing that term with the students made me remember an old trick of my grandfather’s so I introduced it to the kids, telling them that I would teach them how to remember the chicken names the way my grandfather taught it to me.  I implored them to concentrate, because this was a memory game.  “Rooster” is the forehead, “pullet” is the nose, and “hen” is the chin.  You repeat this several times, then quiz their memories, leaving the nose for last.  When they answer “pullet” for the nose, of course, you pull the child’s nose.  It is a silly game.  If you distract them by convincing them it is a memory test they never see it coming!

I will turn 50 this coming November.  The fact that I am in the final third of my career is reflected in my storytelling.  The combination of experience as a reader and storyteller along with a healthy bank of memories and life experience has changed the way I relate to the students.  I’m not the “mom” librarian now, I’m the “grandma” librarian.  And I like it!  It is freeing!  I can be silly or sentimental and it only strengthens my relationship with the students.  And that is what storytime is about for me – building relationships.  Relationships with the students and myself and with good books.  And it pay great dividends – my student to hug ratio seems to go up every year!