And by a quiet storytime, I mean that there was no storytime because no kids showed up. I decided to write about it anyway because (a) personally, I got to see a dear friend who I hadn’t seen in about a year who graduated with me from my library science program and is now running (!) a library in the Olympic National Park, and (b) in the literacy/non-profit world, there is a lot of talk about outreach, but sometimes the fabulous outreach program that was planned does not work and it is important to reflect on how to do things differently next time.

Last June, when the Literacy Lab was just a dream in the making and I was finishing up a master’s in library science, I took a Children’s Materials library class in which we had to plan a program. I planned and presented to my classmates a bilingual Spanish/English one around Dia de los Libros, a day that celebrates the importance of reading for children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This past March, my friend Brooke Pederson who was now the Library Manager of the Amanda Park Public Library on the border of the temperate rainforest that is Olympic National Park, asked if I would do a bilingual storytime at her library in the summer to reach the Latino families in her 600-person community. This past Friday, after a busy week attending an incredible professional development workshop for teachers (the Seattle Repertory Theatre’s “Bringing Theatre into the Classroom“), I drove out to Amanda Park, WA. I arrived in the dark, amazed at how much this community was immersed in the Olympic National Park. (Not to mention a little terrified that I would miss the town altogether). The picture below does not convey what it is like to drive in the dark, turn on a road called North Shore, and have faith that you will eventually find your friend’s house thanks to her excellent directions).

We woke up on Saturday, headed to the library, and I prepared my materials for the bilingual storytime, including familiarizing myself with some Spanish vocabulary that I haven’t used recently and making sure the water tornado and various props were good to go. I was ready by 10:00. Brooke had purposely scheduled the storytime at 10:15 to get the after-Catholic-mass crowd (the community is so small that the Catholic church has a service on Saturday since the priest has a Sunday service in the main “town” Aberdeen where everyone in Amanda Park has to go to do grocery-shopping and is an hour away). Unlike the Northwest typical summer of blue skies and no humidity, the skies had opened and I truly got a sense of what living in a temperate rainforest means. 10:15 came…and went. No kids. Since the library was open until 3pm, I told Brooke that I’d just keep my storytime materials ready in case we wanted to do an impromptu storytime for any kids who came into the classroom. I curled up with a book next to the firestove in the library (it was cold enough to warrant a cozy fire)…and waited. Some community members did drop by, but not one single kid came into the library. Just one of those days. One of the challenges of managing a library in a very small community is that summer reading programs are just hard to predict. During the school year, Brooke had storytime with students once a week, but without the predictability of school, there is no guarantee.  We decided that perhaps I should return when school is in session.