My Colleague and I took Test Subject V to the Salem Public Library today for her first library storytime. On Wednesday mornings at 10am, the library holds a “Babies and Books” storytime, targeted at children 11 months and under.
When My Colleague was around 40 weeks and change pregnant, I dragged her out on a walk. We stopped at the library because when you’re that pregnant, you can’t go more than fifteen minutes without hitting a restroom. While we were there, we decided to check out the Childrens’ Room, where we saw a sign about the infant storytime.
I’d never heard of a library story time targeting infants, so I’ve been curious. With V’s increased sociability and engagement, we decided she might be ready to check it out. (Plus, the weather today was gorgeous—a high of 50° is ridiculous for New England in February.)
I had no idea what to expect from programming like this, but it ended up being a lot of fun. There was singing, some clapping games, two very short picture books were read, and toward the end, Miss Maura, the librarian, turned on a bubble machine, and all the little babies went APESHIT. It was all kinds of adorable.
Test Subject V wasn’t as mobile as a lot of the kids—there were a lot of kids crawling, toddling, and cruising. But she was super engaged, and loved staring at all the new faces.
After storytime proper ended, a lot of the parents stuck around and chatted—I have been looking for opportunities to meet other stay at home parents, so I really liked that part too. And Miss Maura gave us a goody bag with information about programming and resources for young children in Salem, which struck me as a great piece of outreach.
Overall, I really liked it, and V seemed to have a blast. We’ll definitely be going back again.
