Hi all. This is Heather. I'm the children's librarian at the
St. Matthews Library 
and i'm going to do a little story time
for you guys today. We miss you terribly!
I can't wait to see my families and our
our little ones again. Hopefully we'll have story time
again one day here at the library, but
for today
i am going to be reading you a couple of
books from my
very favorite author. His name is Neil
Gaiman and he's amazing.
I would highly recommend all of his
books. He writes in every section.
For adults, caregivers, and parents -  he
has great adult books, he writes graphic
novels. He has teen books, he has school age
like elementary-age books, 
and picture books, which I'm gonna read
you two of my favorites today.
So to get started I'm gonna do a little
opener I like to call it
one of my warmer uppers and we're
going to do
"Open Them, Shut Them" and you can do it at home with me if you'd like.
So this is open - open your
hands.
This is shut. Let's practice one more
time.
Open, shut. Here we go. 
Open them. Shut them. Open them.
Shut them. Give a little
clap, clap. Open them. Shut them.
Open and shut them, 
put them in your lap.
Now can you creep them, 
creep them right up to your chin?
Now open your mouth wide, but do not
let them in!
Open them. Shut them. Open and
shut them, give a little clap, clap.
Very nice. Now we're ready for a story.
For our first book today, we're gonna
I'm going to read Chu's Day
by Neil Gaiman, and it's illustrated by Adam Rex.
As you can see Chu is a little
panda
and sometimes Chu sneezes.
Can you pretend to sneeze? Do you want to
practice with me?
Here we go:
Now when Chu sneezed bad things happened.
In the morning he went with his mother
to the library.
There was old book dust in there. "Are you
going to sneeze,"  said his mother.
Here we go. Ah, Ah....
No said Chu. At lunch time Chu went
with his father to the diner.
There was a lot of pepper in there. "Are
you gonna sneeze?" asked his father.
Ah, Ah... No, said Chu.
Later that day Chu and his parents went
to the circus.
"I will tell you something," said Chu. 
"Guess what?" said Chu, but nobody listened.
They were watching the circus. "I think
i'm going to sneeze," said Chu.
AHCHOO!
Oh no!  Look what Chu's sneeze did!
He blew everyone away in the diner and
everything away at the library
and the circus. "Oops," said Chu.
After the circus, Chu went to bed.
"Yep," said Chu. "That was a sneeze alright." 
Good night. That was Chu's Day by Neil Gaiman.
Now I'm going to do one of my favorite rhymes.
That I usually use in every one of my story times. You can do it with
toddlers or even babies and older children.
It's called "Big, Big, Big," and it's all about opposites
because I love opposites - it's my favorite concept.
The first thing we're going to do - 
you can do this at home with me - you're
gonna reach out your arms
really really really big like you're
gonna give somebody a really big hug 
(if we could give hugs right now)
It goes like this: 
This is big, big, big.
This is small, small, small.
This is short, short, short.
And this is tall, tall, tall.
This is fast, fast, fast.
And this is slow, slow, slow.
This is yes, yes, yes and this is no, no, no.
Let's do it one more time. Let's
practice it. We'll go a little bit faster
this time. 
Again you can do it with me at home.
I'm gonna reach out those arms really big. 
This is big, big, big.
This is small, small, small. 
This is short, short, short.
and this is tall, tall, tall.
This is slow, slow, slow
This is yes, yes, yes
and this is no, no, no. 
You just did some opposites
So parents and caregivers today I'm
talking about letter knowledge.
Letter knowledge is knowing that
letters are different from each other
and that the same letter can look
different ways. Uou don't need an
alphabet book to talk about letter
knowledge with your kids or to
teach them letter knowledge, but we are
going to do an alphabet book.
Today we are going to read Neil Gaiman's The Dangerous Alphabet,
which is one of my very faves as well. 
First,  just talking about letter knowledge
you can teach your children about
letters in really simple ways like the
toys that you have around the house
like when a child's playing with a
ball and they feel
its roundness that's going to teach them
about roundness and how later that will
mean a circle and then later that will
mean the letter O.  Same thing like this kind of toy
or even triangles you can use for like
the letter A.
Again, you can use things around the
house just to emphasize that letter
knowledge with your children. 
For my second book today I'm going to be
reading "The Dangerous Alphabet" by Neil
Gaiman
and this is illustrated by Gris Grimley. 
This is a super fun creepy alphabet book
you can do with your kids.
We're also going to sing the alphabet.
A is for Always
that's where we embark. Looks like we
have a couple children
and they're in a boat getting
off somewhere, on a dock.
B is for Boat. They're getting on the
boat.
C is the way that we find and look
D is for diamonds - the bait on the hook. 
E is for evil that lures and entices
F is for fear and it's many devices. 
Can you show me a scared face?
Oh my goodness, you guys have some good scared faces out there. I'll show you
mine. Ready? Here I'm gonna hide because I'm scared.
G is for good as in hero and morning.
H is for help - a cry and a warning. 
I am the author who scratches these rhymes.
J is the joke monsters make of their crimes.
K is but a kiss, lovers glow with elation. Can you blow me a kiss?
L is l'heaven, their last destination. M
is for mirrors you'll stare in forever.
N is for night and for nothing and for
never.
O is for ovens far under the street. P
is for piracy, blunt or discreet.
Q is for quiet bar one muffled scream.
R is a river that flows like a dream. 
S is for somewhere a skull and it's smile.
T is for treasure heaped into a pile. U are the reader who shivers with dread.
Oh, we have to shiver now ready? 
I'm gonna shiver.
W's warnings that went over your head.
V is for valdez done in the night.
X mark the spot if we read the map right.
Y is your last question the end of the ring.
And Z waits alone and it's not worth a thing.
That's Neil Gaiman's "The Dangerous Alphabet."
We're going to sing the alphabet song which also goes along
with our letter knowledge.
We're also going to sing it to a
different tune. First we're going to
start with the original that we all know
which is actually to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle."
And then we're going to try singing in a
different way so first let's start out
the one we all know
here we go: a b
c d e f g
h i j k l m n o
p q r s
t u v w
x y and z. 
Now I know my ABCs.
Next time once you sing with me.
So now we're going to try saying the ABC
song to a different tune and this is
actually really great for kids
because it helps them identify the
letters even more. You can try it to
lots of different tunes but we're going
to do it to "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and
this is a lot more trickier than you
would think. It takes practice
so you can practice with me. We're going
to try and do it twice. We'll see how it
goes.
a b c d
e f g h i j
k l m n o p
q r s t u v w
x y z. Very nice. Let's try, I actually did
it really good there!
Like I said it's pretty tricky, so let's
try it one more time. Let's practice
again. We're going to do Mary Had a Little Lamb again.
Here we go a b c d e f g
h i j k l m
n o p q r s t
u v w x y z
Very nice now you can do it to
lots of different tunes. You can do it
to London Bridge is Falling Down, you can
do it to
Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.
This Old Man is another good one to try,
but it's a really great way to help kids
even clearly identify those letters even
more than the regular ABC song. 
Just a reminder Summer Reading has been
extended to August 25th
and you can keep reading. Keep going,
get your prizes. These books count that I read today,
so you can add both of these. I'm also going to do a quick little
goodbye song that I always do at the end
of my story times and
before I end I just want to thank Neil Gaiman and HarperCollins
for letting me read these wonderful
books today. Now I'm going to sing my
goodbye song for you. This is a song that
I like to end all of my story times with.
It's called The More We Get Together. I use a little bit of sign language in
it. I'm going to teach you that first
and you can do it with me at home.
The first one I use is more. 
This is more - a lot of kids already
know this one. The second one is together -
kind of make little fists.
The next one is happy.
And the last one is friends. Kind of hook
your fingers a little bit.
So here we go I'll sing it
to you, you can sing with me if you know it.
The more we get together,
together, together, 
the more we get together,
the happier we'll be. 
For your friends are my
friends and my friends are
your friends. The more we get together
the happier we'll be. 
Hopefully i'll see you soon.
Bye.
