I came to work at the Nashua Public Library over thirty years ago and have had the privilege of working in the Children's Department for my entire library career. I often tell customers and friends that I have the best job in the place and I truly believe that is so. When I first started as a library assistant in 1976, my boss asked me if I knew how to sew. Fortunately my grandmother had taught me on a Singer treadle machine at age 10 as subsequently I was asked to make puppets for a "Three Little Pigs" puppet show as well as several other shows that the Children's Department staff would perform to throngs of happy storytime attendees. So began my absolute love and admiration of puppets, puppetry, and puppeteers.

Over the years I have seen a variety of professional puppeteers perform, attended puppetry workshops for teachers and librarians and even ventured into teaching a puppet-making workshop with youngsters on my own. What I discovered early on is that puppets are magical. They truly are magical. Children (and many adults like myself) simply love puppets. Library storytime would just be storytime if it weren't for the anticipation of our amateurish puppet shows that culminate the end of each of five family storytimes we do each week. People call us specifically asking at what time we do the puppet show not necessarily the stories!! And I have discovered that if I start a storytime with a puppet on my hand, my young audience will have rapt attention on that hand and will listen to every word I say because the puppet commands such devotion.

A couple of years ago I decided to reintroduce a service that I had worked on in my early years at NPL. I called it "Puppets-to-Go" in the 70's but now we call it the "Puppet Tree". This is a collection of over 100 puppets that circulate for a three week loan period from the Children's Department. On an average day there may be 12-15 puppets hanging on the rack but never many more than that. To view the entire collection one simply has to do a Subject Browse from our catalog and use the term "hand puppets" to scroll through the entire collection. And although I no longer churn these out from my sewing machine as I have found wonderful suppliers of puppets perfectly sized for small hands, the magic of puppets is always new and available to any child that wants to try their hand at bringing a puppet to life.