This Monday was the one-year anniversary of the Pajama Storytime program I started last fall. Some excited loyal regulars came in their jammies and slippers with their stuffed animals, and a brand-new family came too (they heard about it from a grandparent who visits the library weekly). We had cocoa and cookies and read some new books and some old favorites:

• All At Once Upon A Time by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by Gladys Jose
• Sleep: How Nature Gets Its Rest by Kate Prendergast
• Cub’s Big World by Sarah Thomson, illustrated by Joe Cepeda
• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (yes, everyone’s read it before; no, we hadn’t read it at Pajama Storytime yet. And I just read this cool article about it by picture book makers Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett. Pay attention to the moon!)
• Hoodwinked by Arthur Howard
• Endlessly Ever After: Pick Your Path to Countless Fairy Tale Endings! by Laurel Snyder and Dan Santat

Endlessly Ever After has become a mandatory staple since last December; it’s the book we always end with, but it’s different every time because of its pick-your-path nature. (Our storytime group is beyond excited that there is going to be another one in, I think, 2026? Laurel and Dan, if you need beta readers, we are at your service.)

Here are a few other books we’ve read more than once at Pajama Storytime:

• Dim Sum Palace by X. Fang (this has Night Kitchen vibes)
• The Yawns Are Coming by Christopher Eliopoulos
• Goodnight Veggies by Diana Murray and Zachariah Ohora
• Night in the City by Julie Downing
• Tell Me What to Dream About by Giselle Potter
• Telling Stories Wrong by Gianni Rodari and Beatrice Alemagna
• Are You Awake? by Sophie Blackall
• Knight Owl by Christopher Denise
• Just Because by Mac Barnett and Isabelle Arsenault



• The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess by Tom Gauld
• If You Come to Earth by Sophie Blackall
• Inside the Slidy Diner by Laurel Snyder and Jaime Zollars
• Mama in the Moon by Doreen and Brian Cronin
• There’s a ___ in Your Book by Tom Fletcher

As you can see, we lean toward bedtime books and fairy tales, including fractured fairy tales. I can already tell All at Once Upon A Time is going to be a repeat read; it goes so well with Endlessly, and the kids – and grown-ups! – who come to Pajama Storytime are old enough to understand and enjoy the humor. That’s something I love about Pajama Storytime: I get to read some wonderful books that are simply too long or complex for my morning storytime, which is mostly toddlers. There are great picture books for that age, too, and I love them, but Pajama Storytime lets me share more books with a different audience.

Allons-y! But not next week, the library will be closed on Monday for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

When I first started as the children’s librarian at the public library where I now work, I wasn’t sure if book clubs for kids would be popular, so they weren’t the first programs I added; that honor went to Lego – a slam dunk if there ever was one – and Comics Club, which is still going as Comics & Crafts.

But then – I forget where, and I’m sorry because I’d love to give credit for this – I heard about a “My First Book Club” program at another library, and I decided to give it a try. We had our first meeting in July; I was thinking that people might have a bit more free time in the summer, and it could also help rising kindergarteners meet each other and get used to a semi-formal aducational environment if they hadn’t already been in a preschool program.

For “My First Book Club,” there is no need to read the book(s) ahead of time; I request enough copies for everyone to follow along as we read together. In July we read Meet Yasmin by Saadia Faruqi, illustrated by Hatem Ali, and the Geisel award-winning See the Cat: Three Stories About A Dog by David LaRochelle, illustrated by Mike Wohnoutka. I asked the kids to make some predictions, observations, and ask and answer questions about the story; then we decorated bookmarks with a flower pattern like Yasmin.

Here’s the “I Heart Back Matter” part of this post: Back matter is the stuff you find at the end of the book, after the story. It’s more common in nonfiction (think glossary, sources, index), but a lot of picture books, early readers, and especially graphic novels also throw in a little bonus content: a recipe, an art project, step-by-step instructions for how to draw the main character. This is where I got the model for Yasmin’s flower-patterned bookmark. (More on back matter later.)

In August we read Fox and Chick: The Party and Other Stories by Sergio Ruzzier and What About Worms?! by Ryan T. Higgins, and colored some What About Worms?! coloring sheets provided by the publisher.

In September we read Flubby Is Not A Good Pet by J.E. Morris and Fox the Tiger by Corey R. Tabor, and made paper plate masks with crayons, markers, dot paints, feathers, and glue, to disguise ourselves like Fox. The craft drew in extra kids who hadn’t attended the book part of the program – the more, the merrier!

Now that a book club for younger kids was up and running, I figured I ought to have something for the eight- to eleven-year-old age group as well, and a Graphic Novel Book Club seemed like the best choice because graphic novels are so popular and accessible. (Graphic novels are a format, not a genre, so we can still have plenty of variety – realistic, historical, fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, nonfiction, memoir, etc.).

I decided to start us off with Batcat by Meggie Ramm, a short, funny book with a strong theme of being yourself (and that you can be more than one thing). I requested about ten copies of the book (plus a few copies of the sequel, Batcat: Sink or Swim) and kept them in a stack on my desk for people to borrow in the weeks leading up to our first book club meeting.

For the first meeting, we started off with introductions (name, pronouns, grade/school, and favorite ice cream flavor), then a discussion of the book with questions I prepared. I had also prepared some comics vocabulary on a whiteboard, but all these kids were already fluent readers of the format and knew what panels, speech balloons, thought bubbles, and emanata were, so we moved on to some drawing activities. Here again, I found helpful back matter – how to draw Batcat and Al the Ghost – and we looked at the endpapers as well, which showed a map of Spooky Isle. Kids could choose to try drawing the characters, create a map of a real or imagined place, or make an 8-page minicomic.

Finally, a perk of coming to the first meeting: the kids got to vote on what they wanted to read next. I pulled three books from our collection: Bedhead Ted, Things in the Basement, and Witches of Brooklyn. Witches of Brooklyn won the vote, so that will be October’s book!

Do you have a book club at your school or library? What are your favorite tips and tricks? What about favorite early readers or middle grade graphic novels?

At the MSLA conference in 2021, Melissa Sweet presented her “Tips and Tools for Nonfiction Read-Alouds,” and since then I’ve been mindful of trying to include nonfiction picture books in storytime programs, as well as in displays and readers’ advisory. This week I had so many to choose from that I didn’t even get to them all!

We ended up with a nice mix of fiction and nonfiction around a loose springtime theme. Today’s weather made Rain! by Linda Ashman and Christian Robinson a shoo-in for the lead-off book. Next we read  Shake A Leg, Egg! by Kurt Cyrus, which connected to our craft (see photos below). Shake A Leg is fiction, but the illustrations of different types of birds and the pond scenes are realistic and detailed. (I also had Whose Egg Is That? by Darrin Lunde and Kelsey Oseid; we skipped it for today, but I’ve had success reading all of their “Whose __ Is That?” books at storytimes. Preschool, kindergarten, and even first and second graders enjoy making predictions and guesses.)

Next we read Ahoy! by Sophie Blackall (and I’m just now realizing that four out of five of today’s books have exclamation points in their titles). A new Sophie Blackall book is always exciting, and this one features imaginative indoor play – perfect for a rainy day. Next we read Play Like An Animal! by Maria Gianferrari and Mia Powell, which features lots of unusual animals and plenty of active verbs and fun facts. And finally, the kids voted for Raindrops Roll for our final book. April Pulley Sayre’s photography is gorgeous, and every word is carefully chosen and necessary, with nothing extra.

The craft for today was inspired by the egg books, and also by the generous supply of die-cuts in the art room closet. I cut cracked egg shapes from pale gray paper so that kids could draw creatures hatching, and they were so creative! One kid made hers a lift-the-flap by only gluing down part of half of the eggshell; another (with help from Dad, I think) draw a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, pizza slice in hand.

What nonfiction read-alouds do you use in storytime?