Banned Books Storytime

      To honor the last day of Banned Books Week 2013, I held a special "Banned Books Storytime" today.  Featured books include H.A. Rey's Curious George, The Family Book by Todd Parr, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (of course), Brown Bear Brown Bear by Bill Martin, Jr., and Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford.  Each of these titles were challenged for various reasons.  My favorite has got to be Curious George and the reasoning behind its challenge: the monkey is not portrayed as anatomically correct (he's missing his tail).  The book to leave most patrons dumbfounded, however, is Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  What could it possibly have wrong with it? Bill Martin's name was confused with another Marxist Bill Martin. 

In addition to reading these books, I created some rhymes and flannel board activities for the kids to do.  I made 5 felt balloons for Curious George and asked the little ones to help me count them so George could fly away, followed by Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.  I have a flannel board activity where I hide a felt mouse underneath one of five different colored houses and have the kids guess until they find him.  For Banned Books Storytime, I thought who better to hide than Waldo?  Finally, I had the kids do "Wild Thing Wild Thing" (turn around... touch the ground... etc.) and "If You're a Brown Bear and You Know It".  The little ones really seemed to enjoy this storytime as banned books are often classics and they got to see a lot of familiar characters.  At the end, I even had a child who wanted to take a picture with my Wild Thing stuffed animal, in front of all the banned books.  The theme was probably a lot more important to parents than children, but I did try to help kids understand the theme by opening the storytime by asking them if they could imagine the library without Curious George and various other characters.  None of them thought it was a good idea!