Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Halloween in the Library?

The casual visitor to the Boyertown Community Library today (Halloween) saw a few changes in the usual attire. We had a Blues Brother, 2 Pirates, a Spider Woman, a Halloween Alien, and a Pumpkin instead of our normal business attired staff. We had quite a few double-takes, several laughs and we awed many children, but I don't think we actually scared anyone. Which is (as Martha would say) a good thing.

While handing out treats to our visitors who came in dressed for Halloween (many children and several adults, as well) we had a discussion every once in a while about the pros and cons of dressing up and celebrating this "holiday". We had prepared a story time that would be satisfactory for either type of family. If there were children present whose parents preferred to not have Halloween as the theme we had stories, songs, rhymes and finger plays all about pumpkins instead of the usual Halloween stories (which were also available) such as Cliffird's First Halloween by Bridwell, Corduroy's Best Halloween Ever! by Freeman or Halloween Cats by Marzollo. The pumpkin stories we had to offer were Where is Baby's Pumpkin by Katz, The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Kroll, and Pumpkins by Ray.

In the end, everyone had fun when they came to the library today. The staff and the regular visitors, as well as the new people coming in for the first time. I guess we didn't scare anyone away.