Hey, hello. Welcome, everyone, to Storytime with The Met. My name is
Kamaria. you can call me miss Kay, and so glad to see everyone here today.
I hope you'll stop by every Thursday at noon and join us. We
sing songs, read stories together, and do activities, so if you're ready for
a story, make yourself cozy and comfy, and we start with our
Storytime song. It goes to the tune of this old man.
Welcome, friends! Get ready, get set, for Storytime With The Met,
where we love to read and sing and look at works of art and picture books.
We use our eyes to look and see. We use our ears to hear stories. Now
we'll take a seat and give a shhhhh....
Let's begin with our first book. And our story today is the Fantastic
Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, and this book is written by William
Joyce and the pictures are by William Joyce and
Joe Bluhm. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.
Morris Lessmore loved words. He loved stories. He loved books.
His life was a book of his own writing, one orderly page
after another. He would open it every morning,
and write of his joys and sorrows, of all that he knew and everything that
he hoped for. [Aside: That's him writing.]
But every story has its upsets. One day the sky darkened.
The winds blew [*makes wind noises*]
and blew... [*makes more wind noises*]
till everything Morris knew was scattered—
even the words of his book.
He didn't know what to do or which way to go.
So he began to wander. And wander.
Then a happy bit of happenstance came his way.
Rather than looking down, as had become his habit,
Morris Lessmore looked up. Drifting through the sky above him,
Morris saw a lovely lady. She was being pulled along
by a festive squadron of flying books.
Morris wondered if his book could fly. But it couldn't. It would only fall to
the ground with a depressing thud. The flying lady knew Morris simply
needed a good story, so she sent him her favorite. The book
was an amiable fellow, and urged Morris to follow him.
The book led him to an extraordinary building
where many books apparently "nested." [Aside: They nested there like birds.]
Morris slowly walked inside and discovered the most
mysterious and inviting room he had ever seen.
It was filled with the fluttering of countless pages
and Morris could hear the faint chatter of a thousand different stories,
as if each book was whispering an invitation to adventure.
Then his new friend flew up to him and landed on his arm. It held itself
open, as if hoping to be read, and the room
rustled to life. And so Morris's life among the books began.
Morris tried to keep the books in some sort of order, but they always mixed
themselves up. The tragedies needed cheering up and
would visit with the comedies. The encyclopedias, weary of facts, would
relax with the comic books and fictions. All in all it was an agreeable jumble.
Morris found great satisfaction in caring for the books,
gently fixing those with fragile bindings and
unfolding the dog-eared pages of others.
Sometimes morris would become lost in a book
and scarcely emerge for days. [Aside: This is Morris lost in a book.]
[Aside: Looks fun.]
Morris like to share the books with others. Sometimes it was a favorite that
everyone loved, and other times he found a lonely little
volume whose tail was seldom told. "Everyone's story matters," said Morris.
And all the books agreed.
At night, after all the stories that needed telling had been told
and everyone had settled down to their proper places on the shelves,
the great big dictionary would get in the last word.
[Aside: There's a bunch of Z's which as we all know means- *snores and yawns*]
It was then that Morris Lessmore would once again
write in his own book. He wrote of his joys and sorrows
of all that he knew and everything that he hoped for.
The days passed. So did the months
And then years. And years... [Aside: What's happening to Morris?]
... and Morris Lessmore became stooped and crinkly. [Aside: He got older.]
But the books never changed. Their stories
stayed the same. Now his old friends took care of him
the way he had once cared for them, and they read themselves to him
each night.
Then one day he filled the last page in his book. He looked up and with a
bittersweet sigh,
"I guess it's time for me to move on."
The books were sorry, but they understood. Morris put on his hat and took his cane.
As he went to the door he turned and smiled,
then waved goodbye. "I'll carry you all in here," he said,
and pointed to his heart. The books waved their pages and Morris
Lessmore flew away. And as he flew he changed back
into the way he'd been that long ago day when they'd
all first met.
The books were quiet for a while. Then they noticed that Morris Lessmore had
left something behind. "It's his book," said his oldest friend.
Inside was Morris's story. All of his joys and sorrows, all that he
knew and everything that he hoped for.
Then the books heard a small expectant sound. [*says "hmm?" curiously*]
There in the doorway was a little girl. And she looked around with wonder.
Then something fantastic happened. Morris Lessmore's book flew up to her
and opened its pages. The girl began to read.
And so our story ends as it began...
... with the opening of a book.
The End. Thank you all so much for listening, it's great to have you listen
to that story. It's one of my all-time favorite stories. I'm a librarian
and i love books, and it's one of my favorite stories I've ever read, so I'm
so happy you could read that with me today.
And so the place where Morris lived with the books reminds me of something we
actually have at the museum, called the Gothic Library in the
American Wing. And this is an entire room of the museum
and was made in New York by Frederick Clark Withers,
and this was in 1859, so it was made over a hundred and fifty years ago.
And back then people had libraries in their homes as places to relax and
places to feel cozy, and maybe some people even read stories
to their children in there, like we read today.
And this library isn't big like a public library, it's small.
There's lots of warm light and brown colors and big windows, it has wood
furniture with leather. It has lots of intricate
patterns and pretty designs in the wood on the furniture.
But what do you think of this room? How would you change it? Would you change it
to make it more cozy for you? Do you have different chairs or maybe
paint it a different color? Would you want to add more books and
bookshelves? Because that's what I would do, I don't
think there's enough bookshelves in there for me.
But before we say goodbye, I want to show you a project you can do at home
for your books and we're making bookmarks, and so if you've ever heard
the phrase "have your nose in a book" that's what
these bookmarks do they have little noses
so you can slip them over the pages in your book.
So to get started, you're going to need a piece of paper
and some scissor,s or grown up to have big scissors, or
a craft knife, an x-acto knife to cut out the nose.
And then you're going to need a glue stick, and then whatever you like to draw
or color with, so I have pencils and pen, there's markers,
whatever you like to color with. And then also, if you have
googly eyes, if you have glitter, you have stickers,
bring those too, if you want to use those to decorate your bookmark.
So first you're going to take your piece of paper make sure it's wide like this,
and you're going to fold it in half.
And then once you've done that you're going to fold the edges
into that crease— that line in the middle is called a crease—
and once you've done that you should get something that looks a little like a
door. See? And so you close the door
and fold the door in half, and now you're ready for the fun part.
So from here you can take one of your drawing tools, I'll just use a pencil so
I can show you. You can draw your eyes up here. You can color
it, draw it however you want. There's only two- three things to remember. Make your
eyes up here, like that.
Make your mouth down here, like that, because right in the middle here, you're
going to draw a big U, like that.
Doesn't it look like a really long letter U? That's how you're going to want your
nose to look. And so once you have that
you can unfold it, and to cut the nose out you can either take a pair of
scissors, fold it just a little bit and snip right
there to cut up the sides. Or you can use- have your grown up use a
craft knife or an x-acto knife to cut it out for you.
They'll know what that is. Alright, so once you have that cut out
like so, open it all the way back up, and you're going to take your glue stick
and you want to glue this side. And you want to glue right here, but not the nose.
Don't put any glue on the nose. So once you've glued that you close your
doors again, and then you're going to glue this part.
You can do one or both sides. Glue this part
and then close it again. And then after that you're all done, and I'll show you
on Morris Lessmore.
You just slip them over the page like that.
And you saw on mine, I added and used some yarn, some string, and gave mine
a little hair. I used purple to color eyes. You can also use colored paper,
construction paper. I made this one out of origami paper that has two colors, so
when you lift the nose, has a different color inside. Gave him
some hair too. So however you'd like to do it, just make
some fun bookmarks for your friends. Your friends, the books that is. Alright,
thank you all so much for coming. We look forward to seeing you next time.
Hope you enjoyed our story and our activity today.
Bye!