Alice and Joanie B. by Laurenjoan: 100+ Years of Children's Storytimes at the Public Library

"The story hour is. . .becoming universal,
and librarians should co-operate with primary teachers,
but should not be expected to give too much of their time
for the mere amusement of children."

-- Alice Whitlock, librarian,
speaking at the 1914 California Library Association Convention held in the office
of the Santa Clara County Library Librarian at the Hall of Justice, San Jose, CA.
(San Jose Mercury News, October 25, 1914)

******************************

Alice and Joanie B. were two happy library-hens - it was storytime day and Peanut Butter and Jelly jumping with Greg and Steve was on the schedule.

"Peanuuutt, Peanut Butter
And JELLY!!!"

Alice: Bawk! I love to jump really high to Peanut Butter and -- JELLY!!

Alice (taking a moment to catch her breath): What's our theme for storytime today?

Joanie B: Why chickens, of course . . . which calls for. . .

Alice and Joanie B: . . .the CHICKEN DANCE!!

Alice and Joanie B.
love all their stories and storytimes.
Whether preschool
or toddler,
baby,
or family -
These library-hens know with certainty
that library storytimes define
the best way to spend anyone's time!

Joanie B: Ahhhk, library storytimes always give me the warm and fuzzies. . .

Alice: Mawwwk! I wonder how library storytimes were invented? SCCLD is 100 years old . . .back in the day 1914. . .

Joanie B: Wrawwwt did library hens 100 or 50 or 25 years ago - do for their little chicks and early-literacy?

Alice: Bawk! Time to put on our library-histori-hen-hats...

Joanie B: ...And fire up the SCCLD databases!

Alice set to work searching the San Jose Mercury News Historical Archive (1886-1922).

Joanie B. took up the Academic Search Complete and the New York Times.

Both library-hens squawked with other librarians (old, young and in-between) about their storytime history. Then they piled up all the articles, antedotes, quotes, and old faded photos and scratched through for seeds and worms of information to puzzle together the story of storytime for children at the library.

Alice: Bawk! Looks to me that the first storytimes were called story hour - and were for school-age students. Look at this article from 1913 in the San Jose Mercury (Alice pointing her right-wing at the computer screen) "Saturday Story Hour at Library is Enjoyed - Object is to Stimulate an Interest in the World's Best Literature."

Joanie B: Beak-cause the early library-hens didn't have picture books. They told stories from from Longfellow or Greek myths or fairy tales and other legends. . .

. . .or from school readers, like:

Alice: Bawk-in-the-day, in 1914 when SCCLD was a baby library district, Children's library services in America were only about 10 years old.

Joanie B: In the really old libraries, before SCCLD, children were not allowed to come inuntil they were old enough to read! Thank goodness for library-hens like Anne Carroll Moore - who created the first libraries for children and got publishers to publish story books for them. . .

Alice: ... like Frederic Melcher, book editor, and the children's librarians who started. . .

. .the John Newbery Award, in 1922, "to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. . . ."

Joanie B: And then, finally . . .

Caldecott medal

Caldecott Award, starting in 1938, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children!

Alice: Sook, sook, after that, in the 1940s and 1950s, story hour became storytime, full of little chicks, but only preschoolers.

Joanie B: Bawk the time the children's author, Ruth Tooze, came to the Milpitas Library, at the old Calaveras Branch, in 1967. . .

**Author Ruth Tooze Tells Stories in Milpitas, 1967**
	Courtesy of Santa Clara County Archives

Alice: . . .Storytime was a regular feature of libraries everywhere - for preschoolers (pre-Kindergarten) . . .but, Library-hens didn't squawk for toddlers and whole families, until the late 1980s.

Joanie B: Wrawwk, newly hatched baby chicks had their first storytimes in the 1990s and 2000s.

Alice: Ahhawk we've been jumping to Greg and Steve's Peanut Butter and Jelly since 2002 - it's historical!

Alice and Joanie B flapped their wings and jumped -

NOTES FROM LAURENJOAN -

Libraries and storytime - are like peanut butter and jelly - they belong together. Could it be there was a time when this wasn't so? Apparently. Storytime, something so sweet, nourishing and natural, actually took time to properly evolve. Even as library service to children has been tied to society's (sometimes out-of-step) overall view of children and what was "good for them" - as children (and their parents) responded to whatever libraries offered them, then libraries responded back -- usually with more and more and more.

It is hard to fathom that libraries did not always provide this deeply enriching service. Thank goodness for savy and caring librarians (to this day) who felt (and feel) compelled to reach outside the box of current thinking to bring a creative force of service to our libraries!

Lucky for us, Santa Clara County Library was formed in 1914, riding a wave of library enthusiasm that had grown country-wide since the late 1890s -- in good part thanks to Andrew Carnegie and his love of books and reading -- and the investment of his wealth in building public libraries open to people of all ages and backgrounds.

For more information on Andrew Carnegie - try:
How Andrew Carnegie Turned His Fortune Into a Library Legacy

The article above is from a series on Public Libraries:
npr.org - Keys to the Whole Wide World: American Public Libraries

For more information on how to raise a reader - from the start of a child's life (in addition to regular library storytime attendance, of course) - try: