NEWPORT BEACH : Libraries Will Hold Peter Rabbit Parties

Delores Bowles, a retired schoolteacher and Peter Rabbit expert, will present Peter Rabbit parties at all four branches of the city library this week.

The free program is offered as part of National Children’s Book Week, Nov. 13 through 19.

“Children just sit there entranced and don’t move when (Bowles) does this,” said Judy Kelly, the library’s children’s services coordinator. “She’s a wonderful storyteller and sets up a whole table of Peter Rabbit paraphernalia, including dolls and a Beatrix Potter’s house.”

Bowles, 75, is a Newport Beach resident whose ties to the rambunctious rabbit date back to her childhood, when she and four younger sisters listened to the story.

“I have a lifelong love of Peter Rabbit,” she said. “I sleep on Peter Rabbit sheets and eat off Peter Rabbit dishes.”

Bowles, who taught school for 45 years, said she has collected information on Peter for the past half-century and lectures nationwide.

“It wasn’t until my 50s that I became an authority,” she said. “Now it’s grown like Topsy.”

The Newport library program will consist of a discussion of author Potter, who wrote 23 stories, and a reading of a Peter Rabbit story amid props of life-size mice, rats and cats, Bowles said.

Morning programs for preschoolers will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday at Corona del Mar and 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at Newport Center.

Afternoon programs for early elementary schoolchildren will be at 3:30 p.m. Monday at Balboa and at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday at Mariners library.