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Community Corner

PJs, Summer and Reading: An Awesome Combination

Children's storytime at the Woburn Public Library continues this summer, with weekly night programs.

Half of Cynthia Fordham’s audience Tuesday evening in a downtown public building wore pajamas: Mario and Luigi, Spiderman, Tinker Bell. Fordham wore her Donkey slippers, he of Shrek movie fame. She read three stories about worms, including “How to eat fried worms.”

So it seemed perfectly natural when Fordham asked her audience this question:

“Would you eat a worm?”

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For about 10 years, since she came to the library, Fordham, the children’s librarian, has run PJ storytimes on Tuesday evenings in the summer.

Tuesday's program, the second of this summer, for children age 4 and up, drew about 25 children and 25 adults.

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Jirina Koduvalil brought her sons, Joshua, 5, and Daniel, 3, to their first library PJ storytime. A nurse, Jirina usually works on Tuesdays, she said. This week, with the holiday, she worked Monday instead and had Tuesday off. “I thought it would be fun to come,” the Woburn resident said. The boys “really enjoyed it,” she said. Joshua will be going to first grade at the this fall.

James Breeden, 7, who is going into second grade at the in the fall and his sister, Kate, 5, who’s going into kindergarten at the Reeves School are also PJ storytime veterans. They’ve been coming to the library “for a long time,” according to their dad, also named James Breeden.

Melissa Venceslau used to frequent the library’s children’s room when she was a child. Now the mother of two sons and a daughter, she came with them to her first PJ storytime Tuesday there. Venceslau, from Miami, is visiting her mother, library trustee Joanne McNamee, for the summer.

Shilpa Atnoor brought her son, Sohum, 6, from Lexington. They’ve been coming for years, she said, “because the program is so good.”

Librarian Fordham said she got the idea for PJ storytime from a colleague at another library.

People who come once to one come back again and again, she said. If she reads scary stories, she’ll “pack the house” even fuller than this program, she said.

Fordham painted pictures of the stories she read with her voice. She also showed the audience the books’ illustrations. She invited them to pick up a snack before she began to read. The program lasted a little over half an hour.

Would you eat a worm, like the character in one of the books Fordham chose?  When she finished reading an excerpt from the book, she dramatically selected a pastel-colored “worm” and slid it down her throat.  Her audience wasn’t fooled. They knew the “worm” was candy and most accepted one or two to sample for themselves.

How many worms did you eat? Woburn Patch asked Sohum Atnoor.

“Zero,” he replied.  No real ones, he elaborated, but two candy ones.

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