C.H. Booth Library Presents Cool Drinks And Cool Stories

Young adults going into grades 6 through 12 are invited to relax and beat the heat with a delicious fruit smoothie, then settle back and listen to timeless stories that prove adolescents have been the same for hundreds of years, Monday, June 30, from 3:30 to 5 pm at the C.H. Booth Library.  Connecticut’s nationally known storyteller Tom Lee will present worldwide folktales to kick off the ‘Tweens & Teens Summer Reading 2008. 

Mr Lee has told stories professionally for 15 years. His interest in traditional stories began while he was working as a cook in a tiny fishing village in Scotland. Mr Lee’s first storytelling performances were tales from Grimm, told in the tiny theater in the London pub called, appropriately, The Man in the Moon.

“Traveling in Europe I collected many stories and observed first hand their relationship to the people who created them,” Mr Lee states on his website. “I learned that a country’s language and traditions, its history, geography, architecture, and even its food are all expressed in its stories.  The world began to look like one enormous collection of stories and storytellers.”

In the United States, Mr Lee has worked in classrooms with young people of all ages. “When it comes to stories,” he says, “children have taught me everything I know.”

A roster artist with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and vice president of the Connecticut Storytelling Center, Mr Lee uses storytelling for educational outreach at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale Center for British Art, and Hartford Stage.

‘Tweens & Teens Summer Reading for rising grades 6 and up runs from June 30 to August 11.  Readers can win prizes such as food, tickets, and gift certificates from local merchants in the weekly drawings.  Full details will be available at the kickoff program and in the library.

The program is limited to 50 young adults going into grades 6–12.  Sign up at the main floor circulation desk of the C.H. Booth Library, or call 426-4533. The event is very popular, according to young adult librarian Margaret Brown, so early registration is encouraged.