Once Upon a Story: Fifth-Graders Extend Picture Books through Theatre

The colorful illustrations and vivid animal imagery of children’s author Jan Brett came to life as fifth-grade students celebrated Read Across America Day by turning her stories of The Hat, Cozy, and The Mitten into a live theater performance in Swain Library.

Led by theater teacher Lisa Daly, the students performed for their Kindergarten buddies along with PreSchool and PreKindergarten students.

“The beauty of her illustrations and the weaving of a story within a story takes readers on a journey through a magical world,” said Ms. Daly. “The students really gravitated towards the different animals and brought them to life for the performance.”

Dressed in all black attire with animal face masks, a small group of students performed the first story, The Hat, which tells the story of Hedgie the hedgehog's misadventures on a farm. As Hedgie finds a lost stocking in the snow, it gets stuck on his head and all the animals poke fun at him. The second story details how Cozy, a musk ox in Alaska, gets separated from his family. A group of animals notice him and want to burrow together under his fur.

The third and final story, The Mitten, tells the story of a young boy whose grandmother knits him a pair of mittens for the winter. He loses them in the snow and animals in the forest make their home in his mitten. They pack themselves tight, but not before a small mouse tickles the bear’s nose and he sneezes causing the boy to find his mittens.

It was a cross-curricular event as the students followed up the play with a musical performance of the song The Mitten with Lower School music teacher Rachael Jungkeit on guitar. The students also created artwork inspired by Jan Brett with Lower School art teacher Sue Bennett 1973. The cutouts of mittens, hats, and scarves were placed along the windows of the library and even included hidden drawings of the animals featured in the stories.