Library Grabs Kids by the Tale

In a corner of the Las Virgenes Library, near the children’s books section, imagination is flying wild.

“Show me that you’re the wind, the Mysterious Wind,” performer Judi Garratt tells a group of 12 children standing on the carpet before her.

They whirl and twist, arms in the air, like modern dancers in need of a choreographer.

“Now let me see some claws, you’re a cool lion,” Garratt says as the children strut, hands balled into fists. “I want to see somebody make me believe.”

By the time the workshop ends, the children have transformed themselves into the sun, a tree and various jungle animals.

Now they are ready to perform. The audience is an eager bunch, about 60 kids seated closely together on the floor, ready to hear a story.

The troupe performs three stories of Anansi the Spider, a character from the legends of the Ashanti people of West Africa, a lovable trickster whose escapades now appear in children’s books. With a recorded version of the story playing in the background, the children and Anansi, played by Garratt’s partner Walter Segalo, mime the parts and win the crowd hands down. The children clap and laugh, completely engrossed.

But entertainment is only part of the goal.

“The main thing is to get children to read books,” said Azar Hazrati, children’s librarian at Las Virgenes.

And with all the high-tech, bang-bang competition for their attention, it sometimes takes more creativity to get children to read than it does to invent a tale.

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The performance is part of the library’s Summer Reading Program, sponsored by the Friends of the Las Virgenes Library. Activities are offered every Wednesday through the end of August. Children will learn about Native American dancers one week and mask making another. One week they will meet an armadillo.

“At a time when libraries are in dire situations, it is a blessing really to have supportive friends groups like the one we have at Las Virgenes Library,” Hazrati said.

If there’s any doubt that such efforts reap a weighty dividend, meet Irene Yeh.

Yeh does volunteer work at the library while she waits to hear about her applications to medical schools.

This day she is ready to listen to children deliver book reports. For every two books the children read, they write their names on an animal cutout and place it on a jungle mural that hangs on the walls of the library. It proclaims: “Library Kids Are Wild About Reading.” Then they get a prize.

This is familiar ground for Yeh.

“I grew up in this library,” she said, “and I did the summer program too.”

And she was here in winter, spring and fall. As a child, Yeh devoured books and eagerly discussed them with librarians, who would recommend more.

She kept reading as she grew older. She read and studied her way to MIT, and graduated in June.

Now Yeh is the one who listens as children discuss the stories they’ve read, and she is reminded of stories long forgotten.

“This place hasn’t changed much,” Yeh said as children streamed up and down the aisles of the tiny library. “It’s outgrowing its space, but it’s still cool.”

Much cooler than the stark, somber libraries at MIT and most other universities, she said. Those hallowed halls probably never had a visit from Anansi the Spider. And the staffs aren’t nearly as hospitable as the folks at Las Virgenes, Yeh said.

“Some of them have seen me since second grade,” she said.

But somehow, it is easy to see the road that connects the two.

Like Yeh, today’s “Library Kids” will probably grow into adults who will know the joy of staying inside on a rainy day with a good book and a hot cup of tea. At least once in their lives, they will utter the words spoken and felt by nearly every serious reader: “The movie was OK, but the book was so much better.”

And if they are lucky, they will live stories they help create, write plots for their lives and then live them, making allowances for the inevitable twists and turns.

Nintendo, the Internet, TV be damned, some kids are already sold on the joys of reading.

After the performance, Erin, 12, who played a stunning Mysterious Wind, and her friend Janneke, 8, stake out a spot on the floor beneath the wire racks of paperback books for teens and preteens. They debate which ones to check out.

“I’m a major readaholic,” Erin declares after crawling from beneath the racks. “I call myself not a bookworm, but a book millipede.” Her favorites are the classics “A Wrinkle in Time” and “The Phantom Tollbooth.” And they both love the R. L. Stein mysteries “Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots” and “Santa Claus Doesn’t Chew Gum.”

Eleven-year-old Rose Razeghi, who played the part of the Fat Old Fish, reads because “it’s fun and it takes you into a world of fantasy. It’s better than watching TV and other stuff.”

Between a good book and zoning out in front of the tube, Colin Hendricks says the same: Give him the book. When you read, he says, “you can imagine what it should be”--not the filmmaker or the actors.

It doesn’t change as you get older--especially since most adult novels don’t come with pictures. The author weaves the plot, describes scenes, creates dialogue, but our minds are put to work too. The story needs us to live.

So we fill in the gaps, add color and depth to even the most vivid descriptions, put flesh on the bones of even the most developed characters.

And always we are present in the story, a silent participant. We live in the town, listen in on the rumors, sit at the kitchen table. We walk alongside the heroine as she begins the most important journey of her life.

Author Toni Cade Bambara once commented: “Stories are important. They keep us alive.” The reading program at Las Virgenes is an example of that.

The program is about reading and summer fun, but it is also about a few other things, like possibilities and potential.

Reading demands imagination, and imagination is a step toward creation. Make-believe is how the journey begins.

If a kid can turn herself into the Mysterious Wind or see it rise from words written on a page, then becoming a teacher or owning her own business is not an impossible task. Or becoming a doctor, maybe.

Just ask Irene.