Friday, May 04, 2007

A Celebration of Stories


I’m excited about this new show for 2008. I spend two years developing my presentations. The first year is research and development. I spend this time reading books on the subject and writing material. Then, I spend a year testing the material to make sure it is actually entertaining. That way I can guarantee a great show for a summer library kick off. The picture above is from a test show in Oklahoma.

Usually my goals in my shows are to have fun, while talking about a theme, while encouraging children to read. This time the theme is READING. This show will combine magic and puppetry to teach children what all the parts of a story are. Children will enjoy reading more if they know what it takes to make a good story. I’ll give fun examples of character, setting, action, and conclusion. This show also encourages children to write stories of their own.

While children are laughing along with a magic or puppet routine, they will learn about the different parts of a story. Here’s a taste of what that will be like.

Some stories focus on character. For example the story of the Three Happy Hamburgers has talking hamburgers and a vicious hamburger eating kangaroo.

Other stories focus on setting. The Haunted House is one of these stories. The setting is the front yard of a haunted house that has strange things in it such as pickles and porcupines.

Then there are stories that focus on action. I get to tell the story of How I Saved the World. Can I, Brett Roberts, save the world from an alien invasion by doing magic tricks? You’ll have to wait and see.