For Stephanie Katz, manager of the children’s book department at Borders Books and Music at Nassau Park in West Windsor, showing your children the importance of reading is one of the most important things a parent can do. “Trying to inspire kids with the habit of reading is really what I am all about,” she says. “For me, this job is as much about teaching as it is about selling.”
For the past two years, nearly every Tuesday morning at 10 a.m., Katz can be found leading the weekly storytime for kids of all ages in the children’s department at Borders. (The only time when they do not meet is between the Thanksgiving and New Year’s holidays.) “My passion in life is getting children to read books,” says Katz, a West Windsor resident. “I want the kids to have a good time with storytime and that is really the most important thing. Sometimes I will have a child sitting in my lap telling me a story because the book we are reading relates to their life in some way. We are very patient, listen, then get back to the book we are reading.”
Each storytime revolves around a predetermined theme (on Tuesday, September 5, the theme will be “back-to-school”) and generally lasts an hour. Katz usually starts things off by reading two or three stories to the kids. This is followed by a group activity, often involving craftwork, but sometimes including music, song, or dance. “Whatever activity we do, it somehow relates to the stories that we read,” says Katz. The program then winds down with milk and cookies provided by Borders Cafe for $1.
The stories selected can range from the newest hot books on the children’s market to beloved classics. “We sometimes actually do the newer mass produced stories like ‘Dora the Explorer’,” says Katz. “They are not great literature but the children love them. They are very easy for me to act out the stories and they are a little like watching the TV shows.”
But other more refined literature is also routinely offered, including Dr. Seuss’ “Cat in the Hat,” Ludwig Bemelmans’ “Madeline,” or Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight’s “Eloise.” Katz also tries to feature some of the best of the new children’s stories.
A recent storytime (based around a theme of “strange animals”) consisted of a reading of “Winston the Book Wolf,” (by Marni McGee) — a story about a wolf who likes to eat words — followed by Doreen Cronin’s highly acclaimed “Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type.” After the reading all the children made up songs about the books and created their own Playbills for the performance.
But working with dozens of children can be a risky enterprise for anyone. For Katz, flexibility is the key to success. “We can have anywhere between 3 and 30 children and of a wide variety of ages,” she says. “I usually choose five or six books in advance and then I decide which are most appropriate for the audience. You never really know. In the summer we get quite a few six, seven and eight year olds, but after school starts it is often wall-to-wall toddlers.”
Strictly speaking, Katz doesn’t so much read stories as perform them, often highlighting them with a waving of arms, a curl of a lip, or a birdlike screech as a good sound effect when appropriate. “I try to make the stories come alive in some way,” she says. “We want to make sure the kids are having fun. I am quick to edit a story if the children are restless or add a bit of physical action to something in order to make it that much more real to them.”
While Katz usually leads storytime there are exceptions. A recent visitor was West Windsor resident Ana Lomba, who runs Suenos de colores LLC, a Spanish program for children 18 months to 8 years in Princeton. “Ana was absolutely amazing,” says Katz. “Ana spoke the entire program in Spanish and every child and every parent understood every word she said. She was so emotive and carried a bag of tricks with her to show everyone what she was saying. Everybody loved her.” (There will be a special appearance on Tuesday, September 12, when “Kids’ Music Round” features singing, dancing, finger plays, and rhythm instruments.)
There are also a few traditions that Katz has introduced to the storytime. “Each year for Chinese New Year I bring in this 30-foot long dragon kite that I made with my younger son when he was in kindergarten,” she says. “It’s just immense. We go on a parade through the entire store wishing everybody we see a Happy New Year in Chinese. But it is a very good time for everyone.”
Born and raised near Philadelphia, Katz’s mother was (and still is) an artist and sculptress, while her father worked as an engineer. Katz studied textile arts at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia.
A resident of West Windsor for over 30 years, Katz is married to longtime West Windsor-Plainsboro school board member Stan Katz (who is currently serving his fourth term). They have two children. Jeffrey is a graduate of High School South and a former all-star hockey goalie. He currently is a junior at the University of Denver and will be spending his fall semester studying abroad in Rome. Her younger son, Daniel, now a junior at South, plays both lacrosse as well as goalie on the Pirates’ ice hockey team. “Both my sons are longtime goalies,” laughs Katz. “It’s like a disease.”
Throughout the decade and a half that her two children have been in the WW-P schools, Katz has become known as something of a book expert. She has headed over 45 book fairs in the district and in area pre-schools. “I took the idea of book fairs to a whole higher level,” she says. “I would read a couple dozen books a week and then go into the classrooms and do book talks. I’d get the kids really excited about some books that maybe were not the ones that they’d already been hearing about.”
In fact, Katz’ presentations were so successful that they occasionally caused some mild havoc among area bookstores. “I found that I really needed to be careful because the books I recommended would all of a sudden start selling like hotcakes.” Katz remains involved in the school district’s reading habits by contributing to the district’s summer reading list.
Katz says that as children grow older and reach new maturity levels, it is a good idea for parents to encourage them to take on more serious literature with more difficult language styles. “My younger son is reading ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ (by Oscar Wilde) and he is loving it,” she says. “When kids become proficient readers, everything is open to them.”
For Katz, working at Borders offers her the chance to make a positive impact on the lives of a lot of area families. “The children’s department isn’t like working in any other part of the bookstore. Children don’t fit the corporate image,” she says. “Parents are involved and most are very zealous about their children and are very involved in what their children are reading.”
It is really all in a day’s work for Stephanie Katz. “There is no underestimating the positive impact books can have on our children’s lives,” she says. “We want to make sure that we have another generation of children who will read books as well as computer screens.”
Storytime, Borders Books, 601 Nassau Park, 609-514-0040. bordersgroupinc.com. Story and craft activity. Tuesdays, at 10 a.m.
Barbara Lysenko presents an interactive musical enrichment program for toddlers. Tuesday, September 12, 10 a.m.
