STORIES, SUNSHINE AND ICE CREAM… “It started with a seed, and that seed was me. And, over time, laughter filled my garden…” The Parkes Library tree created from recycled packaging material was a big hit for this year’s National Simultaneous Storytime book called Family Tree. Children from preschools, family day care and library groups attended the annual event on Wednesday.
The Parkes Library staff members honoured its National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) tradition on Wednesday with a beautiful re-enactment of this year’s picture book called Family Tree.
The library filled up with little ones who joined the rest of Australia at 11am for the 22nd year of NSS. This year’s book by Josh Pyke and illustrations by Ronojoy Ghosh, is a heartfelt celebration of family, community and the seasons of life to cherish and to share.
With Debbie Gould as narrator, Emma Brown and Veronica Shaw acted out the story around the tree they had created.
“We’ve started a tradition in Parkes of role playing the book and create a script and props every year,” said Debbie. This year they went a step further and created a tree using recycled materials. “We used packaging from our book deliveries to make a tree as our main prop.” Debbie said they had leftover packaging for the children to take home if they wanted to make their own trees.
The kids loved the tree with many of them getting a photo standing under it before they went into the sunny courtyard for a helping of gelato from Packed Cones.
“National Simultaneous Storytime is one of our big days in the library world as it unites us all together as everyone reads the same book at the same time,” said Debbie.
In 2021 over 1.98 million participants took part at over 33,000 locations!