Libraries take story hour to Allied Drive

Munching on cut-out cookies in shapes of fish, cracking open a frog piñata and letting a live parrot rest on their arms are just a few things children of the Allied Drive neighborhood have had the chance to do in the past few months, thanks to UW–Madison Library staff.

The program was created in response to a series on the Allied Drive neighborhood by the Wisconsin State Journal. The Water Resources Library on campus started holding a story hour in the Allied Drive neighborhood last August. Other campus library programs have joined in the effort.

Each story hour revolves around a theme illustrated by the books read to the children. During story hour, the children have the opportunity to make arts and crafts projects, read books, have books read to them and even see live animals. In August and September, the children learned about fish, frogs and parrots of the rain forest, each during a different story hour and each with a different book.

“We were delighted when children told us that they enjoyed reading. Some knew the books that we were reading to them, and they would tell me what would happen next and how the stories would end,” says JoAnn Savoy, librarian for the Water Resources Library.

The idea for story hour began with Savoy and Mary Lou Reeb, assistant director for administration and information of the Water Resources and Sea Grant Institute. They were brainstorming ideas for an outreach project for the library and thought of holding a story hour for children in the community.

“Then we read about the Allied Drive neighborhood in the paper,” said Savoy, referring to the Wisconsin State Journal’s series. “So we started thinking that we should do something with the Boys & Girls Club.”

The Water Resources Library held the first two sessions in August and a third in September, and named them “Water Critters for Kids.”

For the first meeting in August, Savoy, Reeb, Good and a few others from UW Sea Grant headed to the Allied Drive Boys & Girls Club. When only three children arrived for story hour, Savoy, Reeb and Good went into the neighborhood and recruited 10 more children.

Word traveled fast. When the group went back the next week for a second story hour, 68 children welcomed them.

Since then, approximately 40 children attend story hour each month, now held at the Allied Learning Center, 2237 Allied Drive, in collaboration with the Madison School and Community Recreation program. As news of the program spread around campus, the School of Library and Information Studies and other small specialized campus libraries got involved by holding story hours relating to their library collections.

SLIS had an early Halloween celebration with the children in October, and the Data Program Library Service held a story hour about numbers in November. Three other libraries also have agreed to present upcoming story hours.

“We are starting with one a month,” says Savoy, “and hope to get more library staff involved, so that we can host the story hours more frequently.”

To help ensure the continuation of the story hours, Savoy plans to apply for a grant to fund a SLIS graduate student who could coordinate the program.

“The story hours have been really fun,” she says. “And hopefully this will grow into something that will continue.”