Hello, everyone. Welcome to Storytime With The Met. My name is Miss K, back again to read you
another story today. I hope you can join us every Thursday at noon when we read a book together,
do a song or activity, and talk about some of the wonderful art we have at The Met. As you
know, we like to start with our Storytime song. Or if it's your first time joining us, we like to
start with our Storytime song. If you've heard it before, please sing along, it goes to the tune
of This Old Man. Let's sing in three, two, one. [singing] 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 now with our book. Thank you, everyone, so much. Our book today is very special to me.
This book is called Corduroy. I bet some of you have this one at home.
I've been hearing this story ever since I was a little girl and my mom used to read it to me.
And special treat for you today (and for me), because that's my name and this is the very
same book my mom used to read to me. So I'm very excited to get to read it to you today.
It's a little old, so it might be a touch dirty in one or two places, but that's okay because
that's how I learned to be careful if you're gonna eat and read books at the same time.
Alright, so we are starting today with Corduroy. The story and pictures are by Don
Friedman. [reading] Corduroy is a bear who once lived in the toy department of a big store. Day after day,
he waited with all the other animals and dolls for somebody to come along and take him home.
The store was always filled with shoppers buying all sorts of things,
but no one ever seemed to want a small bear in green overalls.
Then one morning, a little girl stopped and looked straight into Corduroy's bright eyes.
"Oh, mommy," she said, "look, there's the very bear I've always wanted. "Not today, dear," her mother said. "I
spent too much already. Besides, he doesn't look new. He's lost a button on one of his shoulder straps."
Corduroy watched them sadly as they walked away.
"I didn't know I'd lost a button," he said to himself. "Tonight I'll go and see if I can find it."
Late that evening, when all the shoppers had gone
and the doors were shut and locked, Corduroy climbed carefully down from his shelf and
began searching everywhere on the floor for his lost button.
He stepped off the escalator as it reached the next floor, and there before his eyes was a most
amazing sight. Tables and chairs, lamps and sofas, and rows in rows of beds.
"This must be a palace," Corduroy gasped, "I guess I've always wanted to live in a palace."
He wandered around, admiring the furniture. "This must be a bed," he said, "I've
always wanted to sleep in a bed." And he crawled up onto a large thick mattress.
All at once, he saw something small and round. "Why, here's my button!" he cried, and he tried to
pick it up, but like all the other buttons on the mattress, it was tied down tight. (How many
buttons do we have here? At least one, two, three, four. I bet it has even more buttons than that.)
He yanked and pulled with both paws until off came the button, and off the mattress Corduroy toppled-
bang!- into a tall floor lamp. Over it fell with a crash. (I don't think he liked that sound.)
Corduroy didn't know it, but there was someone else awake in this store. The night watchman was going
his rounds on the floor above. When he heard the crash, he came dashing down the escalator.
"Now who in the world did that?" he exclaimed. "Somebody must be hiding around here." He flashed
his light under and over sofas and beds until he came to the biggest bed of all. And there he
saw two fuzzy brown ears sticking up from under the cover. "Hello," he said, "how did you get upstairs?"
The watchman tucked Corduroy under his arm and carried him
down the escalator and set him on the shelf in the toy department with the other animals and dolls.
(What other animals and dolls are up there with him? He's got a friend he's sleeping on.)
Corduroy was just waking up in the morning when the first customers came into the store
and there, looking at him with a wide, warm smile, was the same little girl he'd seen
only the day before. "I'm Lisa," she said, "and you're going to be my very own bear.
Last night, I counted what I've saved in my piggy bank, and my mother said I could bring you home."
"Shall I put him in a box for you?" The sales lady asked.
"Oh no, thank you," Lisa answered, and she carried Corduroy home in her arms.
She ran all the way up four flights of stairs, into her family's apartment, and straight into her
own room. Corduroy blinked. There was a chair and a chest of drawers, and alongside a girl-sized
bed stood a little bed just the right size for him. The room was small, nothing like that
enormous palace in the department store. "This must be home," he said, "I know I've always wanted a home."
Lisa sat down with Corduroy on her lap and began to sew a button on his overalls. "I like
you the way you are," she said, "but you'll be more comfortable with your shoulder strap fastened."
"You must be a friend," said Corduroy, "I've always wanted a friend."
"Me too," said Lisa, and gave him a big hug. The end. Thank you all so much for listening. That
was Corduroy by Don Freeman, one of my favorite books and I bet a lot of people's favorite books
around the world. So, you- bet you're wondering: we read a book about a toy, do we have toys at The Met?
In fact, we do. We have a few toys at The Met. No teddy bears that I could find, but we do have
a toy horse and sleigh from around 200 to 250 years ago in our American wing.
And the sled was actually made in the Netherlands in Europe. Uh, it's made of painted wood, it's about
eight and a half inches tall, maybe a little taller than our corduroy book, the sled is. And the horse
is a palomino horse, so it has a bra- light brown coloring with a blonde mane, and it's standing on
a little cart on wheels, I guess so someone could pull it around. And it's connected its bridle
and all its accoutrement, means the stuff that goes around its face and hooks up to the carriage.
Is-the carriage is decorated with painted bows and it has a small window
in the door. And there's even a cowboy in a striped shirt, holding the horse's reins.
And which of these toys do you think you might like? And what are some of your favorite toys?
And do you think any of those toys could ever end up with us at The Met 200 years from
now? Maybe if you take very good care of them, maybe they will. Alright, and so before we go,
our activity today is gonna be very yummy. In honor of Corduroy, we are making teddy bear toast.
So for teddy bear toast, you need peanut butter, you need blueberries, you need a banana,
and you need a piece of bread.
So to get started, you're going to take- oh, i forgot you also need a knife
because you're going to spread peanut butter on your piece of bread: see, I've already did
it here because peanut butter can be pretty messy and I don't want to get it on my couch.
But spread the peanut butter on your piece of toast, or if you don't like it toasted your plain
bread. And if you're allergic to peanuts or any kind of nut you can use any kind of butter you
want: you can use a seed butter, you can use an almond butter, you can use a no-nut butter, or you
can even try jam or something else that's sticky, if peanut butter doesn't work for you. And then
you take your banana and you cut it into little slices like these. And then you'd stick your slices
out on the edges, right here, of your toast and peanut butter is very sticky and actually so are
bananas so it should stay on there pretty well. And then you stick one more for a nose you should have
something like that. This next part's a little tricky because you got to take your blueberry
and get a little bit of peanut butter on it you can either take it out of the jar
or use it on here and then you'd stick the blueberries on for eyes, and then stick one more
on the banana, hopefully this works- ah, yes- for a nose, and now you have teddy bear toast. And I made
another one too, so I could have two Corduroys. And that's our activity for today, everyone!
I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you enjoyed our story and learning more about the weird
collections we have- that includes toys- down at The Met. And have a good day and we'll see you next
time. Bye!