From Children's Literature to Readers Theatre

Book excerpt: How do you get children excited and engaged with books? Get them onstage! Readers Theatre is a staged reading of literature with participants reading from scripts, conveying the book’s story using voice and facial expressions. In this book Poe introduces and shows how to implement the concept, demonstrating how Readers Theatre offers educators an innovative opportunity to acquaint children and young people with quality literature, develop their public-speaking skills, and teach teamwork in an activity that is as entertaining as it is educational. A veteran of many Readers Theatre programs, she explains how to create successful programs, providing Detailed instruction for ways librarians can help children and teens develop and perform their own Readers Theatre scripts An annotated bibliography of 100 books suggested for their Readers Theatre potential, with excerpts from scripts and the passages from which they were adapted Programming ideas that can be adapted for use across different age levels, from preschool to YA Comments from prominent children’s authors who have shared Readers Theatre experiences with Poe Combining the theoretical and the practical, Poe’s book helps children and YA librarians assist young people in developing a lifelong love of literature.