Our regular Origami Cool Zone workshop fell this month on June 4, the day of our Summer Reading Program kick-off.
Since the theme of our kick-off was “Explore the Sun,” I decided to repeat our star books workshop. But this time I chose molten solar colors for the books!
I found some beautiful marbled paper for the covers. Look at the radiant results!
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Because our Summer Reading Program theme this year is “One World, Many Stories,” and because the theme of our branch’s SRP kick-off was “Explore the Sun,” I created a shadow puppet play, How Maui Snared the Sun, for our kick-off event.
I introduced my story with a traditional chant, or mele oli, by Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole.
Then I began to tell the story, which I had woven from a number of different Pacific Islands stories about the trickster and culture hero, Maui. I was particularly influenced by the wonderful artwork of Gavin Bishop’s retelling, Maui and the Sun.
And I was inspired by the beautiful shadow theater that Stuart built for me.
Some people say that, long ago, Wakea and Tonga-iti both claimed to be the father of a little baby. Wakea tried to pull the baby away from Tonga-iti. “The baby is mine!”
But Tonga-iti pulled back, “No, he is mine!” As they fought over the child, the baby split in two!
Wakea took his half baby and patted it and shaped it into a ball, and threw it up into the sky. It was huge and bright and golden and beautiful, and it raced across the sky at top speed.
No one had ever seen such a brilliant sight. Tonga-iti was jealous. He took his baby half and patted it and shaped it into a ball too. Then he too threw it up into the sky! But Tonga-iti had waited too long. The lifeblood and energy of his baby half had drained away, so his ball was silvery white and moved across the sky very, very slowly.
Because the Sun went so fast, and the Moon went so slowly, the nights were long and the days were short. Children didn’t have time to play after school. Men didn’t have time to finish their fishing. Women didn’t have time to dry the kapa cloth they were making. Everyone had to cook in the dark and eat in the dark and tell stories in the dark. 
One night when Maui and his brothers were roasting their fish in the dark, Maui said, “I’m tired of having to do everything in the dark. We should catch the Sun and compel it to travel across the sky more slowly.”
“What nonsense, Maui-Topknot! No one can capture the sun!” said one of the brothers.
“Yes, Maui-of-a-Thousand-Names! You’re full of such tall tales!” agreed another brother.
“That’s right, Maui-Usurper, even if our mother does love you the best, that doesn’t make you some kind of hero,” grumbled another brother.
“Go ahead,” said the last brother, “You might even gain a new name: Maui-Burnt-to-a Crisp!”
Maui turned into a bird and flew up into a tree. Then he flew back down and turned back into himself.
“I have brought fire from Mahuika, I have caught the biggest fish in the world and turned it into islands, I have journeyed to the underworld and come back to tell the tale. With the magic jawbone of my ancestor, and especially with your help, I know we can succeed! Why should we be slaves to the Sun?”
After a few more weeks of stumbling around in the dark every day, Maui’s brothers began to think it might be worth a try. But they would need a plan.
“Maui-Full-of-Tricks, do you have a plan for accomplishing this crazy idea of yours?” the brothers asked him.
“Yes! my brothers, we must gather the entire village and make more fishing nets. And then we must tie all of the nets together into one gigantic net, Then we must go to Haleakala, the House of the Sun, and set the trap. But we must do all of the work in the dark, so the Sun does not suspect what we are up to!”
The brothers agreed, and soon the village was hard at work, braiding new ropes and netting them into one gigantic net! And some people say that this was when the designs for braiding the strongest types of rope were invented. And other people say that Maui-Teller-of-Tales invented the string game that we call cat’s cradle, whose name in Hawaiian means “to snare.”
When the gigantic net was finished, Maui and his brothers set out for the tall volcano, Haleakala, whose name means House of the Sun. They traveled at night to escape the notice of the sun. They climbed up the great mountain, carrying the huge net, and then they spread out around the edge of the crater where the Sun slept, and they stretched their net across the deep chasm.
Then they built a rock wall to hide behind for protection from the angry Sun.
The next morning, when the Sun began to rise up out of the crater, they were ready. Exactly according to plan, the Sun became entangled in their net. He sputtered and struggled and crashed from side to side in the chasm, causing rockslides and earthquakes, but the brothers held tightly to their net.
Then, grabbing the magical jawbone of his ancestor, Maui began beating the Sun in the face!
“Who dares to attack Tama-nui-te-rā?” the Sun thundered.
But the Sun had inadvertently granted a special power to Maui: for now Maui knew that the name of the Sun is Tama-nui-te-rā!
“Tama-nui-te-rā!” Maui shouted. “I will release you only if you agree to move more slowly through the sky, blessing my people with longer days.”
“Yes, yes! I will agree to anything!” the Sun raged. “Just free me!” And the Sun began to creep through the sky as slowly as a snail.
At first, Maui and his people reveled in the long, sunny days. But soon they could see that the angry Sun was exacting a terrible revenge. Water holes dried up, trees died, and their crops shriveled and withered.
One day, Maui was out working in his dry and dusty field. It was blazingly hot, and he was tired and thirsty. He stood up to wipe his face, and, shielding his face against the glare, he glanced up at the Sun.
The Sun was watching. To show off his power, he quickly set, plunging the world back into darkness.
This enraged Maui. “I will fix this problem once and for all!” he vowed.
So Maui took his magical fishhook and hooked the Sun, and then he tied the line to the Moon. Now the Sun can no longer go too fast, nor the Moon too slowly, for one must rise as the other sets.
And all because of Maui-Full-of-Tricks!
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The theme for our branch’s Summer Reading Program kick-off on June 4 was “Explore the Sun.” I was brimming over with happiness all day because I felt that no branch, anywhere, could have had a more exciting introduction to the joys of reading and learning for fun.
What a line-up we had! Through our partnership with the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (and through relationships forged by our branch manager’s volunteer participation in the museum’s monthly Solar Sunday programs) we had educators from the museum with three telescopes set up for safe sun viewing, and a host of fun experiments and activities.
Everyone could take a rare, safe look at the sun and observe sunspots!
Kids could arrange colored metal train cars along a track according to their prediction of how the colors should line up from hot to cool. Then they could check the temperatures with an infrared thermometer and adjust the cars to match their actual temperature. They could also dress up in a white shirt and white hat, or a black shirt and black hat, and measure the temperatures of each.
They could make sun prints and bracelets of white UV-sensitive beads that changed into colored beads in the sunlight.
In the morning, they could attend a special shadow puppet play of the Hawaiian folktale, “How Maui Snared the Sun,” and in the afternoon, they could participate in our monthly Origami Cool Zone and make solar star books!
We had a record gate count, and lots of enthusiastic comments from our patrons. My favorite was from a single mother with three young daughters, two of whom were adopted Russian children who were still learning English. She told us that our activities were so educational and fun and stimulating for her children’s emergent literacy. And, best of all, everything was free! She said that, as a single mother, she didn’t have much time or money, and that it was fantastic to have all this going on for free right in her neighborhood. Her kids shyly signed up for the Summer Reading Program and, with glowing faces, checked out books with their new library cards.
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For my last Page Presents class of the season (as I prepare to be furloughed for at least three months), I chose the Hmong folktale, Nine-in-One, Grr! Grr!
This is a delightful story, told by Blia Xiong and adapted by Cathy Spagnoli, with gorgeous illustrations by Nancy Horn based on Hmong embroidery.
Everyone admired my puppet, which was dressed somewhat authentically in an actual piece of Hmong embroidery, as well as a special mask Stuart that had created for it!
In the long ago time, when the Earth was much closer to the Sky, the First Tiger was very lonely because she and her mate did not yet have any cubs. Tiger brooded about this and decided to journey up to the Sky, to ask the great Shao how many cubs she would have.
Shao comes out to meet her.
“O, wise Shao,” she says, “I am so lonely. Will you please tell me how many cubs I will have?”
Shao thinks for a moment, and replies, “Nine each year.”
Tiger is overjoyed. But Shao cautions her that his prediction will only come true if she remembers his words.
As Tiger journeys back to her home, she begins to worry about her bad memory. What if she forgets Shao’s words? So she makes up a song:
“Nine-in-one, grr! grr!
Nine-in-one, grr! grr!”
As she goes along through the jungle singing her song, none of the animals pay any attention to her…except one. A big clever black bird wonders, “What does Tiger mean, singing this song and grinning to herself? I will go and ask the wise Shao!”
When Bird finds out what Tiger’s song means, he is dismayed and begs Shao to take back his words. But Shao refuses, saying only that his prediction holds only as long as Tiger remembers. This gives Bird an idea, and he flies swiftly back after Tiger.
Clever Bird tricks Tiger into forgetting her song. When she snarls at him for making her forget, he helpfully offers that he heard what she had been singing:
“One-in-nine, grr! grr!
One-in-nine, grr! grr!”
“Oh, that’s right,” says Tiger. “Now I remember, yes! Thank you!” And she continued singing:
“One-in-nine, grr! grr!
One-in-nine, grr! grr!”
And that is why there are not too many tigers in the world!
Here are a lot of Tiger cubs! Caitlyn, who has been coming for over a year but is always very shy and solemn, suddenly got in touch with her inner Tiger and hugely enjoyed scaring me with her ferocious roars! I love it when bashful kids shed their shyness and start participating fully in the fun. One of the mothers reported that her son has started making up his own puppet plays. She said he first announces the play, then goes off and rehearses it, and finally summons everyone to the performance!
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I fell in love with Aaron Shepard’s version of this African story, which is sometimes called The Daughter of Sun and Moon.
For quite a while now, I’ve been wanting to design a puppet show instead of cobbling together a mismatched set of puppets from my collection and my branch’s collection.
I didn’t have time to make new papier-mâché puppets, so I decided to make masks for my puppets!
Kimana, a man of Earth, decides that he wants to marry the Sky Maiden.
So he writes a letter to the Sun Chief and asks his friend, Rabbit, to carry the letter up to heaven for him.
“What?” Rabbit exclaims, “I cannot go to heaven!”
So Kimana takes his letter and goes to see his friend, Antelope.
“You can run so fast, Antelope!” he says, “Will you take this letter to the Sun Chief for me?”
“I may be fast, but I cannot go to heaven!” Antelope retorts.
So Kimana goes looking for his tallest friend, Giraffe.
“Giraffe, will you take this letter to heaven for me?” Kimana begs. “I want to marry the Sky Maiden.”
Giraffe cranes his neck and says, “I can reach halfway up to heaven, but I cannot reach all the way!”
Then Frog hops up and say, “I will take the letter for you.”
Kimana laughs and laughs. “How can you, a frog, take a letter to heaven?”
“Whatever it is, I can do it,” says Frog. “But only if I try!”
Now Frog lives by a well, and every day he hears the singing of the girls who serve the Sun Chief as they climb down the spiderweb that Anansi the Spider built long ago. Their song sounds like this:
Good day to you, my sister. Good day to you.
Then they fill their water jugs at the well and climb back up the spiderweb to heaven.
Frog takes the letter and hops into one of the jugs when they aren’t looking. He waits until they put their jugs down and leave the room. Then he hops out, places the letter on a bench, and hides in a corner.
The Sun Chief comes in to get a drink and sees the letter. He reads it. “How can this be?”
He asks the girls, “Did you bring this letter?”
“No, we did not!”
He reads the letter to his wife, the Moon Lady. “What should we do?”
“Don’t ask me, ask your daughter!” the Moon Lady suggests.
His daughter says, “Let us see if he can bring a wedding gift.”
So the Sun Chief writes a letter and leaves it on the bench.
Frog takes the letter and hides in the water jug again. When he gets back home, he takes the letter to Kimana. Kimana reads: “You may marry my daugher if you bring a purse of money.”
“This I cannot do,” Kimana declares.
“Then I will take it for you,” says Frog.
Kimana laughs, but Frog takes the purse of money and figures out a way to fetch the bride home in this delightfully repetitive story. No matter what is asked of him, Kimana always says, “This I cannot do.” And he always laughs mockingly at Frog. And Frog always says, “Whatever it is, I can do it. But only if I try!”
In the end, when Frog offers to escort the Sky Maiden to her bridegroom, she too laughs at him and says, “How can a frog fetch a bride?”
“I took a letter to heaven,” Frog answers sturdily. “And I took a purse of money, and then I fetched a bride. Whatever it is, I can do it. But only because I tried!”
The Sky Maiden replies, “Then it is you whom I will marry!
The Sky Maiden and the Frog went back up to heaven, where they got married with much happiness and rejoicing. They lived on and on.
But Kimana is still waiting for his bride.
I had been saving discarded CDs for a while. We used some on the robot bodipuppets we made in March. It occurred to me that they would make wonderfully bright eyes for Frog masks, and they did!
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I was discouraged and depressed tonight because the Albuquerque City Council just voted (5 to 4) to fund a lot of new construction projects, while cutting 6 or 7 library positions. The library system has sustained a 25 percent cut in personnel since 2007 relative to an 8 percent cut in personnel city-wide. If you go back ten years, it’s more like a 40 percent cut. Yet the mayor insists that library hours must be maintained.
The City of Albuquerque is forcing the library system to use the unfair practice of employing permatemps to keep the libraries open. Temporary librarians, who have master’s degrees in library and information science and years of experience, are making $11.67 per hour with no benefits as they work side by side with regular city employees who make a regular salary with benefits. Every two years, the temps are laid off for 3 months and then rehired.
Since I am a temporary youth services librarian, and about to be laid off just in time for the Summer Reading Program, you may understand my frustration.
When I happened upon a recent interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I felt a blaze of happiness as I read:
“Getting kids interested in science is not the challenge. Kids are born interested in science.”
The challenge, Tyson believes, is to get out of the way of their curiosity, let them develop their skills, use their creativity.
“There is no greater education than one that is self-driven. You go to the library, visit museums because you want to learn, and your quest for knowledge outside of school magnifies what happens when you are in school.”
Yes! Neil deGrasse Tyson knows that libraries are places where kids get to explore their passions, feed their curiosity, and be creative. And librarians are guides, creative catalysts, mothers and fathers of invention, and fellow explorers.
The mayor and his cronies, on the other hand, (who, under pressure from library supporters, grudgingly penciled in a lame, cockamamie proposal that might add in some money for library positions dependent upon the fluctuation of the price of gasoline if the city is able to lock in a favorable price) don’t seem to understand or care how libraries work together with the schools to support education. In a state in which 80 percent of fourth graders don’t read at grade level, the summer reading program is a crucial backup to stop summer reading loss.
As Councilor Garduño told the mayor—after pointing out that Albuquerque was next to last in per capita dollars spent on libraries among a list of “best cities to retire to”—you can keep building those big houses up in the hills while letting the infrastructure crumble, but you can’t keep on fooling the people. Speaking of fooling the people, Channel 7 news reported that the council voted to restore the library positions. It will be interesting to see what the Albuquerque Journal reports tomorrow.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, thank you. 
City Council members Sanchez, Garduño, Benton, and O’Malley, thank you for your support for libraries.
Thank you for taking the long view.
Thank you for believing in our children. Tomorrow night I’ll be at the Inez Elementary School’s Family Summer Reading event talking up our library’s Summer Reading Program, which will be missing a youth services librarian.
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The Name of the Tree, retold by Celia Barker Lottridge and illustrated by Ian Wallace, was our featured story at the May 13 Page Presents class.
Since our story was from Africa, Mr. Matt got the kids going with body percussion to the African market place rhythm. Then he handed out shakers to some of the kids and added a steady shaker rhythm to the mix. Finally he handed out claves to another group of kids and taught them a clave rhythm.
Maestro Matt had THREE rhythms going all at once, played by preschoolers, meshing perfectly!! It was thrilling.
Then I taught them the Small Tortoise’s chant:
Ungalli, Ungalli! The name of the tree is Ungalli!
My staging for the story was fairly elaborate. The stage was covered with desert camouflage and colorful textiles. Bantu, the chimpanzee puppet, was sitting above the stage and began telling the story of the animals starving during the long dry time.
Finally, the animals resolved to go in search of food. As they walked across the savannah they noticed a small bump far away on the horizon. The bump grew bigger and bigger until they could finally see that it was a great tree. (At this point in the story, I produced the tree’s canopy and placed it in the top of the pole, thus magically transforming it into the great tree. Then I took up the story…)
When they reached the tree, the animals were overcome with the scent of its delicious fruits. But they discovered that the tree was too tall for even the giraffe to reach, and its trunk was too slick for the monkey to climb. The animals sat down at the foot of the tree and cried. But the Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Tortoise spoke up and told them that she remembered hearing of a wonderful tree that would bend down and offer its fruits if its name was spoken. She was sure that the King would remember the name of the tree.
The Zebra is the fastest, and successfully finds out the name of the tree, but forgets it when she falls into a rabbit hole on her return trek. The Elephant, with the longest memory, goes next. He, too, succeeds in finding out the name of the tree, but gets his foot stuck in the same rabbit hole and can’t remember the name. Finally, the Small Tortoise takes up the challenge, even though everyone says she is much too slow and too young to succeed. But she keeps putting one foot ahead of the other, and all the long way home she chants to herself, over and over:
Ungalli, Ungalli! The name of the tree is Ungalli!
(At this point, the kids took up the chant, too.) She too falls into the rabbit hole, but she never stops chanting. She slowly marches right up to the great tree and says, in a very loud voice:
Ungalli, Ungalli! The name of the tree is Ungalli!
And the animals saw the great tree bend down and offer its delicious fruit to them! (Here I lowered the umbrella and helped the Monkey up into the canopy.)
And, to this very day, all of the animals still remember the name of the tree.
Ungalli, Ungalli! The name of the tree is Ungalli!
After the story, the kids made fabulous Tortoise shakers from paper plates (with a paper bowl for the carapace, and a small paper plate for the plastron) decorated with African textile designs, with beans and popcorn stapled inside.
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Our monthly Origami Cool Zone for May featured modular origami flowers and the star box model used as a flower basket.
The origami flowers were made from three miniature versions of the module for the money lotus, simply connected with a pipe cleaner stem. There were several variations available, depending on how many modules were used.
The traditional star box made a perfect basket for these lovely flowers for Mother’s Day.
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May 6 marked the premier performance of the Tony Hillerman Library Story Theater at our Page Presents class!
While we were chuckling over Mo Willems’ marvelously silly book, I Broke My Trunk, Gail (our adult services librarian) got the idea that we should present a readers’ theater performance of it. Especially since our personalities rather closely match that of Elephant and Piggie.
So we had a ball bringing the story to life, wearing the Gerald and Piggie masks I made for us—out of paper plates, naturally!
As you can see, this also inspired a new READ poster in my continuing series!
Afterwards, the kids could choose to make an Elephant mask or a Piggie mask. I was a little worried that a disproportionate number would prefer one over the other and that there might be tearful expressions of woe. But happily I had enough for everyone, with an equal distribution of Elephants and Piggies.
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Carlo and the Really Nice Librarian, by Jessica Spanyol, was our featured story for the April 29 Page Presents class.
Carlo the giraffe and his friend, Crackers the cat, visit the library for the first time. The library is amazing! But Mrs. Chinca, the alligator librarian seems a little scary at first.
But Mrs. Chinca introduces Carlo and Crackers to such cool books, and her enthusiasm is so infectious, that the pair soon get over their shyness.
Some reviewers have seen this as a negative stereotype of librarians. I prefer to view it as the shyness that many kids experience when meeting any new adult. I don’t think we should be that literal-minded, especially when animals are the anthropomorphized protagonists!
It was fun to get to use my alligator puppet, and to collect a number of small books that would fit snugly into her mouth. I also reused the library backdrop that I had created for my puppet show of The Library Lion last fall.
For Mrs. Chinca’s favorite book (which is discovered to have a bite out of it) I used a small pamphlet of recommended children’s books that was produced by my local library when I was a young child! It seemed like a wonderfully à propos synchronicity.
The kids made giraffe paper bag puppets afterwards, and they had fun playing with them in the puppet theatre.
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