LibraryCon Year 2: Revenge of the Con: Geeky Storytime

With LibraryCon 3 only two months away, it's about time I wrote about last year's event! Sheesh! But I'm back with lots of LibraryCon notes!

You can read about planning LibraryCon Year 2 here.

I thought I would devote an entire post to Geeky Storytime at LibraryCon since it's one of the things I get asked most about. 

Toddler GreenBean as Batman

I have tried hosting Geeky Storytimes as a special evening storytime before (I wrote about those here, here and the LibraryCon 1 edition here)

For year 2, we decided to utilize our StoryHour Room as a tabletop gaming room, which meant we needed a new spot for Geeky Storytime to kick off LibraryCon. We opted to host it just outside the children's department, as we have an open area there, we could fit more people, and we hoped we could draw more attendees this way. All of that worked out perfectly and just as we had hoped!

I started off the storytime with welcoming everyone to LibraryCon and Geeky Storytime by playing Hedwig's Theme. This worked great as drew people to the area and let them know something was going on. 

Then I had the kids join me in a geeky rhyme I wrote just for Geeky Storytime (feel free to use in your Geeky Storytimes too!)

I am geeky

Yes it’s

true

I am geeky

How about

you?

There are

many things

I love to

do

And no

one can tell me

They are

not cool

So stand

up proud

And shout

hooray

For all

the geeky things

We’ll do

today!

I had a hard time deciding what books I wanted to read as I wanted fandom based stuff, but also general fantasy/science fiction stuff too. I opted to go with a newer title, A Unicorn Named Sparkle by Amy Young as I wanted something new that my audience had most likely not read yet.

Then it was time for a song. I tried to get the kids up and moving with We Are Monsters by The Learning Groove, but most of my crowd wasn't interested in getting up and dancing. So I might cut out more action oriented songs next time as they were feeling a bit shy.

Next, I read one of my new favorites, Bedtime for Batman by Michael Dahl. This one was a huge crowd pleaser. Since it had just been released right before LibraryCon, I knew my audience would be delighted to discover this book and they loved it. I had several parents comment about how much they enjoyed this book and wanted it for their kids. (I'm happy to say Mr. Dahl has continued the series with Good Morning, Superman and Be a Star, Wonder Woman)

Rhyme time again! I used Did You Ever See a Superhero from Storytime Katie.

Since 2016 was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, we decided to hold special TrekTalks throughout the day. I wanted to included something Trek related in Geeky Storytime too, so I created a flannel for Star Trek: The Next Generation and made up a Five Little Crewmen Jumping on the Bridge Rhyme in which Picard of course calls Doctor Crusher for help.

(Pattern from Julie Bell-Etsy)

Sadly, I don't think I had any kids that even knew the characters, but the adults had a good laugh. The kids thought Worf was Chewbacca and Troi was a princess. But hey-this is why I do Geeky Storytime! We need to fully educate our future geeks!

Since I had mostly Star Wars fans, and the local Garrison cosplayers were at LibraryCon, I had to do a Star Wars song too. I took the tune of BINGO and changed it to "V-A-D-E-R"

There was a Jedi

Who turned dark

And Vader was his name-o

V-A-D-E-R

V-A-D-E-R

V-A-D-E-R

And Vader was his name-o

I used the white board pictured above to spell out Vader and on the other side was a picture of Darth Vader to signify when to clap that letter. The kids of course loved this one.

Since LibraryCon 2 was happening shortly after Pokemon Go had just been released, my amazingly creative husband wrote a parody version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See with Pikachu, Pikachu What Do You See

I added his words and some pictures of each Pokemon to some cardstock and created big flashcards to sing along with. This was another very popular one, especially since we had some cosplayers for Pokemon and many kids catching Pokemon in the library.

To finish our very special Geeky Storytime, I brought out of huge parachute and tossed the TARDIS around to the Doctor Who theme.