Audience Participation

During preschool storytimes, I like to select stories that invite some participation from the audience. I like to ask questions, or ask the kids to make animal noises, or leave the last word in a couplet hanging so the kids can fill it in. Inviting this kind of participation took a little bit of practice for me when I first started doing storytimes, but it really can make the time a lot more interesting when you have some generated feedback from your audience.

Sometimes books make generating this interaction very, very easy by asking questions themselves. Take a book I read this week during my dinosaur storytime: the much-beloved How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?, written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Mark Teague. Each page asks a question about how a dinosaur acts at bedtime: "Does a dinosaur slam his tail and pout? Does he throw his teddy bear all about?" As you read this story out loud it practically demands that that the kids answer the question with a firm "no!" as they pull together with Papa and Mama for very good dinosaur behavior.

But I have to admit that there is one story that has never gotten an audience to be excited about participating in all the times I have read it. What is this elusive book? Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems. A modern classic, and one that has been touted by reviewers and librarians for the very thing I cannot get it to do: get kids to participate. I don't know what it is, but I just cannot get the kids to work with me when I read this story. In this book a bus driver must step away from his vehicle and asks readers to keep the bus safe from the pigeon. Pigeon then spends the rest of the book begging the reader to please, please, please let me drive the bus anyway. Despite the fact that so many grown-ups who are supposedly very good at this sort of thing insist that kids will naturally want to say "no" to Pigeon, I just can't get my kids to do it. Most of the time they are silent, and occasionally they think it would be a great idea to disregard the bus driver and hand over the keys to Pigeon. I've tried this story with different audiences, I've tried adding some additional prompting as I read - nothing works!

What is the moral of this story? Not every book works for every librarian/teacher/parent, and not every trick works with every child. As a librarian I can't just take other people's word for it when I plan storytimes - I have to find books and activities that I'm comfortable with and make them my own. That, not books with great reviews, will make storytime special.