Arabic Story Time II

We made it to the library for Arabic story time again and it went a lot smoother than last week. It was a different storyteller/librarian, who was much more...excited...about story time than last week's librarian (who, granted, was filling in for someone else). 

Here's Zoë in a little reading nook while waiting for story time to start:

Although the librarian did stop me at the door of the room to tell me that it would be in Arabic, she didn't dwell on the fact that I was clearly an out-of-place English-speaker. She just dove right in in Arabic. And none of the parents were concerned when they saw me either (even the mother who kept asking everyone if this was really Arabic story time) because this librarian rang a bell and announced that Arabic story time was commencing and whoever wanted to participate should come to the multipurpose room. So there was no confusion.

And when she noticed that I was following along with what she was saying, she simply asked whether I spoke Arabic. 

I told her I spoke a little. She smiled and said she would use simple words. 

And it was great! 

She was enthusiastic, she acted out words very dramatically so we could understand more, she had games for the kids to play. It was quite a lot of fun! 

Our story was about a girl who was short and needed to jump to reach a lot of things (and was bullied at school for being short) so she had various kids come up to jump to see if they could reach her hand. Even Zoë took a turn (none of my other kids wanted a turn). She played another game where kids had 15 seconds to name as many prophets as they could (that was a surprise for me). She read the story very enthusiastically, with lots of excellent body language, which helped the kids—from the smallest to the biggest, from the most fluent to the least—stay engaged. 

Phoebe was fidgety on my lap, so I told her a little translation of what was happening—a child was too short to reach the sink when she brushed her teeth, too short to get a cup of milk from the counter, too short to see out the window in the car. And she was teased at school for being short. Something about jumping rope. And then a footrace where she proved she was faster than the big ol' meanie who teased her so much. She learned to hold her head up high and be proud of who she was. 

Something like that. 

The other kids didn't have the benefit of my translation, inadequate as it was, but they listened for words they knew. And Zoë made this lovely sketch of our librarian telling the story (the book is open to the page about the footrace) while she listened:

I love that Zoë put scribbles in for the words...and that the scribbles are read from right to left (as indicated by the punctuation).

At the end of story time another staff member brought in a whole stack of books (about a rocket ship) and gave one to each child in attendance. The librarian was concerned because the books were in Arabic, so she went away and found a selection of books in English for each of the kids to have, which was really a considerable kindness since we haven't been able to check any library books out for weeks now (still waiting on residency status)!

Here are the kids with their books in front of the library (Benjamin was a little embarrassed by his book—Dig, Dig, Digging!—which he didn't feel was quite on par with his reading level as a 14-year-old, but he just offered it to Phoebe, who was more than happy to have a book about trucks).

And here are the girls playing story time this morning (with Zoë being the librarian and Phoebe being the mom; dolls and stuffies playing the role of children):

That's evidence of a successful outing, I think!