Of course, I almost gave up on the idea after I realized how difficult it was to search under the television subject heading at the library without getting a bunch of Disney spin off and Star Wars spin off books. I persevered, though, and put together a nice stack of fun stories.

Here’s what will be in my bag of tricks tonight:

Penny Lee and Her TV by Glenn McCoy

Sock Monkey Goes to Hollywood by Cece Bell

Charlie Hits it Big by Deborah Blumenthal, illustrated by Denise Brunkus

Todd’s TV by James Proimos

TV Rex by John Nickle

A Song for Jamela by Niki Daly

and

Josefina Javelina by Susan Lowell, illustrated by Bruce MacPherson

Oh, and of course a remote control so that a member of  my audience can “change the channel” at the end of each book.

In my bag of tricks for tonight’s reading are What the Sun Sees/What the Moon Sees by Nancy Tafuri, The Dog Who Loved the Moon by Cristina Garcia, Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes, Stars! Stars! Stars! by Bob Barner, How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers, Sun & Moon by Lisa Desimini, The Sun’s Day by Mordicai Gerstein, and Star Climbing by Lou Fancher.

Had I miraculously figured out a way to bring my iPod back from the dead, I might have entertained the kids with one of my favorite They Might Be Giants tracks, “Why Does the Sun Shine?” and perhaps for scientific accuracy, their follow-up song “Why Does the Sun Really Shine?” but since neither will quite work for an  a capella tune I will probably stick with old standbys like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” (because the sun comes out to dry up the rain.)

Do you have a favorite celestial bodies story? A favorite celestial bodies tune?

I’m bringing along a nice stack of stories and depending on the patience of my attendees I’ll be reading some fish tales: The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen and Shark in the Dark by Peter Bentley. Then there’s a story about a snail and a whale called appropriately enough The Snail and the Whale by Julia Donaldson. Penguins love the water too so I’ll be reading the classic Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester and one that’s new to me, Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers. You can never go wrong with a Froggy book so on tonight’s agenda is Froggy Learns to Swim by Jonathan London. I found a fun and slightly more challenging counting book about a backyard pond called Splash! by Ann Jonas. Finally, I saved the gators for later with A Girl and Her Gator by Sean Bryan and Egad Alligator by Harriet Ziefert.

We’ll be tracing our hands to make our own octopi, and since some smart aleck will likely point out that alligators (update: thank you, Sarah, for picking up on this goof. I have yet to meet any 8-tentacled alligators, and I don’t want to either!) octopi have 8 tentacles and not 5, I will explain that our pictures will be all a matter of perspective. Those other 3 tentacles are simply hiding behind the other 5.

I hope that tonight’s storytime as well as your day goes swimmingly!

This was staged (we don’t regularly go on boat rides down the library stairs!) and taken for a bulletin board we put up when the summer reading theme was Get a Clue at Your Library. The bulletin board’s theme was library lawbreakers, and in case you were wondering the law being broken here is that universal library law, No Boating in the Library! Of course, it works just as well for this year’s summer reading theme, Make a Splash at Your Library, well except for the fact that there’s no water and the fact that what you can’t see in this picture is the big pillar that was smack in from of me at the bottom of the stairs. Had we actually gone for a ride down the stairs we probably would have made a crash, but not a splash.

Anyway, for tonight’s storytime I’ll be reading about some vessels that actually travel through water, well and one that winds up in a tree (The Boat in the Tree by Tim Wynne-Jones). Some of my favorites are included in the mix like Sheep on a Ship by Nancy Shaw and Class Three at Sea by Julia Jarman, which didn’t get returned in time to be used for my pirate storytime last month. Some other new to me books include Little Bear’s Little Boat by Eve Bunting and Alistair and Kip’s Great Adventure by John Segal. I’m rounding out the mix with a not quite boat story, the fish out of water tale Dear Fish by Chris Gall.

The boat theme also gives me the chance to use one of my favorite flannel boards, Sing a Song of Bathtubs! since one of the verses is, “There’s a sailboat in the tub, in the tub.” Just for fun we’ll be making some boats of our own by putting some of my mother’s large wine cork collection to good use.

Do you have a favorite boat story?

Pirates being popular I wasn’t able to get all of my favorite pirate stories, but here are some treasures I’ll be bringing with me:

Dirty Joe the Pirate by Bill Harley, illustrated by Jack E. Davis

Pirates Don’t Change Diapers by Melinda Long, illustrated by David Shannon

Blackbeard: Pirate for Hire by Matthew McElligot

You Can Do Anything, Daddy! by Michael Rex

Peg Leg Peke by Brie Spangler

The No-Good Do-Good Pirates by Jim Kraft, illustrated by Lynne Avril

Don’t Mention Pirates by Sarah McConnell

and

Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo and Harry Bliss

Do you have a favorite pirate story?

Remember the conundrum that ensued when someone declared it opposite day in school? Because of course by the very rules of opposite day declaring it so means that it isn’t opposite day. You would have to go and declare it not opposite day to make it officially opposite day. It hurts my brain to think about it. So, I think I’ll make this evening’s storytime with an opposites theme much less confusing.

Tonight’s lineup kicks off with the simple picture book Big is Big (and Little, Little) by J. Patrick Lewis with illustrations by Bob Barner.

Then we’ll have some fun with Otto Grows Down by Michael Sussman and illustrated by Scott Magon. It tells the story of a boy whose unfortunate birthday wish leads to him growing younger and everything (even going to the bathroom!) suddenly happening in reverse.

I just discovered Hip & Hop, Don’t Stop by Jef Czekaj. It’s a fun picture books about a turtle and rabbit who are both rappers but have very different styles. Hip the turtle (of course) raps very slowly and Hop the rabbit raps so fast that no one can understand her. This should be a fun one to read aloud.

The illustrations above come from a nice simple lift the flap book called Black? White Day? Night by Larua Vaccaro Seeger.

I figured I could work in a classic Goldilocks and the Three Bears story to my opposites theme and chose one with beautiful illustrations by Gennady Spirin.

Fellow library story lady (and fellow 2011 debut YA author) Kathy McCullough suggested Once a Mouse . . . by Marcia Brown, which is perfect because I love to always have at least one classic picture book in my pile. I once got to read Where the Wild Things Are to someone who had never heard it before, how cool is that?

Finally, I’ll wrap things up with Big Cat, Small Cat by Ami Rubinger. It’s another simple one, but I like it because it has a rhyming style with a little bit of a fill-in-the-blank thing going on so that my audience can join in. (Completely off topic here. We have a flannel story at the library to the rhyming song “A Hunting We Will Go” with verses like “We’ll catch a snake and put him in a cake and then we’ll let him go.” I always sing the first part and let the kids supply the second part. So I’ll say, “We catch a snake and put him in a . . . ” and they shout “Cake!” So partway through the song we get to the verse about the whale who goes into a pail. I sing, “We’ll catch a whale, and put him in a . . .” as the pail flannel piece goes up on the flannel board and all the kids shout, “Bucket!” “Or pail,” I toss in before moving on with the rest of the rhyming song.)

In case I get too many restless little guys for my storytime. My back up books are A Garden of Opposites by Nancy Davis and Maisy Big, Maisy Small by Lucy Cousins.

Hope my story time goes awfully! (What? It’s opposite day, remember?)