If the warmer weather has got you craving some quality time outside with your family, try stopping by a Delaware County District Library StoryWalk®. A StoryWalk is a disassembled children’s book featured on different panels around a path or trail. These paths are currently in the outside common spaces surrounding all four of our current locations: Delaware, Orange, Ostrander and Powell.
Children’s librarians at DCDL have created these trails to promote reading and physical activity together in one interactive, family-friendly activity. Every month or so, a new picture book will be displayed along the trail with fun literacy tips and activities for families to enjoy.
If you make a journey to one of our locations this weekend, you’ll catch the last few days of our April stories before they’re changed over to a new display for May.
Coming this May, some books you’ll discover include “Little Blue Truck” by Alice Schertle at the Delaware Main Library, “Help Wanted: Must Love Books” by Janet Sumner Johnson at the Orange Branch Library, “Pearl” by Molly Idle at the Powell Branch Library, and “Bear Wants More” by Karma Wilson at the Ostrander Branch Library.
Visit www.delawarelibrary.org/storywalk to learn more about each book, including how you can check it out to read your own copy at home, as well as bonus activities to accompany some of the stories. For example, the current display at the Powell Branch Library is the book “Counting on Katherine” by Helaine Becker. The story centers on a young Katherine Johnson, who would one day become a leading mathematician at NASA. To accompany her story, you can download a rocket template and instructions to create your own rockets at home.
You might also discover an entire month’s worth of activities as a “Road Trip Challenge” to accompany Alice Schertle’s “Little Blue Truck” StoryWalk. This particular title will make an appearance at all DCDL locations this summer. Check out the booklist on the DCDL StoryWalk website to see what titles will be coming in the future and their planned locations.
Curious about the titles you could be exploring this spring and summer? Read the summaries below, then stop out on a sunny day.
• “Have You Seen My Dragon?” by Steve Light. Traveling among taxis and towers in the heart of an intricately detailed cityscape, a small boy requests help finding his missing dragon, in a story that invites young children to practice counting to 20 and spot the dragon hiding from his friend.
• “Counting on Katherine” by Helaine Becker. An introduction to the boundary-breaking mathematician, Katherine Johnson, reveals how her love of mathematics started at a young age led her to a job at NASA where she calculated the course of moon landings and helped sace the Apollo 13 mission.
• “G is for Goat” by Patricia Polacco. Letter by letter, meet cart-pulling goats; clothes-munching goats; head-butting, hill-climbing, tail-wagging goats! From A is for Apple to Z is for Zoe, these rascally animals just won’t stop until they’ve romped through the whole alphabet.
• “Little Blue Truck” by Alice Schertle. Beep! Beep! Beep! Meet Blue. A muddy country road is no match for this little pick up, that is, until he gets stuck while pushing a dump truck out of the muck. Luckily, Blue has made a pack of farm animal friends along his route. And they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get their pal back on the road.
• “Help Wanted: Must Love Books” by Janet Sumner Johnson. Shailey loves bedtime until her father gets distracted by a new job, so she advertises for a replacement “Bedtime Storyteller” and finds herself interviewing her favorite fairytale characters.
• “Pearl” by Molly Idle. Longing to help tend the beaches, coral reefs and kelp forests of her vast ocean world, mermaid Pearl is disappointed when she is given the task of caring for a single grain of sand before discovering how small, persistent actions can achieve great things.
• “Bear Wants More” by Karma Wilson. When spring comes, Bear wakes up very hungry and is treated to great food by his friends.
