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A History of Best Practices in Storytimes
What do you think of when you picture storytimes from decades past? Do you see rows of children sitting silent and attentive as a story is read aloud? Are parents in the room, active participants in their child's early literacy experiences, or are they banned from storytime and relegated to the stacks?
An understanding of the storytimes of the past enriches those of today. Research into early examples shows surprising similarities to modern storytimes, which owe much to the techniques and methods developed during these early years.
The concept of today's preliteracy skills is rooted in concepts (such as reading readiness) and storytelling techniques (such as repetition and rhyme) originally used in the 1940s. Other concepts, such as dialogic reading, are a more recent innovation, but nearly every aspect of the best practices and standards of today's storytimes has evolved over decades, using both timetested techniques and modern research and development, to provide children with storytimes that entertain, educate, and make them lifelong learners and readers.
The Evolution of Literacy
In the 1940s and early 50s, librarians began to understand their value as a resource for children learning to read. Libraries began offering a form of story hours in the early 1940s as a response to the emerging theory of "reading readiness."1 Reading readiness was the theory that children needed to be mentally prepared for reading by being exposed to literature before being given physical books to read.2
The stated goal of these first story hours was to begin a child's socialization with peers, as well as to foster a love of books and facilitate a child's adjustment to school.3 It was not until the mid 1950s, however, that libraries and librarians across the nation began to use their skills and resources to actively participate in helping children learn to read. This wide- scale effort, which resulted in literacy- focused story hours for preschoolaged children nationwide, was the library's first step toward becoming a major player in early and emergent literacy. It is in these early story hours that the framework for today's best practices can be found.
Story Hour in the 195Ds: Selecting Stories for Story Hour
Fifty years ago, story hours began using many developmental^...