Enchanted Library

We “borrowed” an idea we found in a few library magazines and created a HUGE event for our library we call “The Enchanted Library.”  It can be difficult to explain, but think of a haunted house, but focused on children’s literature and not so scary.

Each year we pick a theme – for example, we’ve done a fairy tale theme,  a books to movies theme, a Dr. Seuss theme, and this year’s theme was all about villains from fairy tales, similar to Jon Scieszka’s book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.  Each villain got to tell their side of the story in our Fairy Tale Mythological Prison.  Let me back up and explain the idea first, and then I’ll explain this year’s theme.

Once a theme has been chosen, we create a one page script for each skit and in our library we’ve created eight skits that are spread throughout the library for the tour.  Our middle school group acts both as the characters in the skits as well as the guides that take each group of families through the library.  We also create all of our own props and settings, mostly using things like large furniture cardboard boxes and things we can find at thrift stores.  Then we create a registration list for tours that run every 10-minutes form 6:00 – 9:00 pm.  At the end of the tour the kids each get to take home a piece of candy and a bookmark with books that fit into each theme.

Again, this year’s theme featured Villains – the wolf from The Three Little Pigs, the evil queen from Snow White, the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, the troll from The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Malificent from Sleeping Beauty, and Mother Gothel from Rapunzel.  We also included a judge who was the character to hand out the candy and bookmarks.

This year was our fourth year creating this event and we had about 400 people come through in tours on Friday night and although it takes a lot of work getting the settings, props, and costumes together as well as providing practices for the middle school kids – it is completely worth it for the huge crowd we get for the event.

For more information on where we got the idea check out Ellwood City’s PaLA’s Best Practices in Early Learning for their Haunted Library.