Guerrilla Storytime

We strongly encourage anyone attending a library or educational conference, or planning professional development within their library or school to put on a Guerrilla Storytime. How do you do that? It’s REALLY EASY. Here is how we do it, but you don’t have to do it that way! And, in fact, if you come up with something else you love, we’d really like to hear about it.

All you need for our method is:

1. Some challenges that mix together behavior management (act out how you deal with a kid/parent doing x in the middle of storytime), early childhood development stuff (what’s your favorite way to incorporate letter knowledge/print motivation/phonological awareness into storytime) and actual activities (sing your favorite 5 little whatever song/lead the group in your favorite wiggle song). We got some great suggestions from Twitter, like people wanting to see transitions from one activity to the next. Also we noticed people love to see how you incorporate parent tips smoothly. We put the challenges on tongue depressors and stuck them all in fancy cups, but that’s really a matter of taste.

2. A bunch of YS librarians

3. A facilitator who  reads off the challenges, at which point people get up and share their best tricks.

4. It’s rad if you can bring shakers/parachutes/scarves/etc. and have people show how they use them.

If you want to facilitate a Guerrilla Storytime, just add your name to our calendar! If you’re going to a conference and want to know if anyone else is having a Guerrilla Storytime that you can attend, that’s on the calendar, too.

Once you’ve decided to facilitate a GS, the only thing left to do is figure out when/where and then get the word out. We suggest tweeting with the hashtag #guerrillastorytime before, during and after.

When it’s over, we strongly encourage you to send us pictures, videos and your thoughts on how it all went.

Are you interested in planning a Guerrilla Storytime and have questions? Want to get your Guerrilla Storytime on our master calendar? Or maybe you’ve already done Guerrilla Storytime and want to report back. Tell us about it here.

What Guerrilla Storytime Looks Like

The Guerrilla Storytime Inventor with her sparkly cup of challenges.

Sometimes there are ukuleles (this is Amy rocking hers)

There are rhymes! Anna doing Five Peas

There are youth librarians! Look at that happy crowd.

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