by Steve Lilienthal

Music blares, and men and women sway to the beat of “The Rock and Roll Freeze Dance.” A young woman in a purple shirt is holding a much younger, shorter partner while a man wearing an orange T-shirt and bandana guides a vivacious fellow dancer. Suddenly, the singer commands everyone to “freeze.” The dancing stops.

It’s not a scene taking place at 1 AM at a downtown dance club like the Denim Lounge or The Walnut Room although this place is just as lively and, arguably, offers more honest-to-goodness fun, particularly to a 1-year-old child.

The dancers are mostly mothers, caretakers and a few men, and their children, some as young as 6 months, at the Friday morning Mother Goose Lap-sit Storytime at the Philadelphia City Institute branch library, right off Rittenhouse Square at 1905 Locust Street.

Pied Piper to this above-average crowd of more than 50 is Karen Fleck. “Miss Karen” is an outgoing, book-lover who can shift from a children’s librarian singing nursery rhymes to a substitute adult reference librarian answering questions about arcane subjects, and then back to talking about children’s books such as “The Bee.”

Baby boomers may remember librarians who shushed children at the slightest sound, but Miss Karen takes a different approach. When it comes to the branch’s youngest users, she says, children’s rooms are not silence-only zones.   

“Remember when Miss Karen taps you on your shoulder, it means it’s story time,” she tells the children, holding a wand, right before she starts reading from books laden with colorful illustrations and catchy-sounding texts. Soon, she is mooing like a cow, quacking like a duck and buzzing like a bee. Chattering babies, some barely able to walk, stride up to her, eager to mimic her sounds and point at their favorite animals and insects.

Later, Miss Karen explains that there is a well-grounded motivation behind the seeming bedlam. “We want to use many rich-sounding words that speak to children. We’re introducing print-awareness, narrative, colors, language, awareness of the world that’s around them,” Miss Karen explains, holding a pamphlet from the American Library Association detailing six skills essential to literacy that parents can start developing in their children from very early ages.

“I’m a traditional librarian. My first goal is to foster a love of reading, an appreciation of books and what they can do for us,” Miss Karen explains. Many parents, she believes, have focused on careers and often lack familiarity with the books their youngest children will enjoy. Storytime introduces them to those books. Parents also see the events as a way to bond with other parents and to introduce their children to other youngsters.

Anna Evans, a young mother and former elementary school teacher, has come to Storytime because she wants to expose her daughter, 18-month-old Piper, to books and reading but she also appreciates the “social part.” And Darren, a tall young man who has brought his young daughter to their first Storytime desires the chance to “co-mingle” with other parents.

When Rhona Gerber, Fitler Square resident and mother of 11-year-old Avigail found out she was pregnant again, with Eitan, now 20 months old, she told Miss Karen how excited she was because it meant she could come again to Storytimes.

Miss Karen is known throughout the Free Library of Philadelphia system as a leader in children’s librarianship. Joseph M. Paradin, branch manager, notes that other library branches will send their children’s librarians to learn from her.

But Paradin also says the Philadelphia City Institute branch, as welcoming as it is to Rittenhouse Square’s youngest, is not just for kids. About seventy percent of the circulation comes from the adult collection. Not only Rittenhouse, Fitler Square and South of South Street residents use the branch, but so do commuters from the suburbs who work in Center City (the Free Library extends borrowing privileges to anyone who pays the city wage tax). Moreover, he is proud to say that this library branch ranks fourth highest among the city’s public libraries, including the Central Library and regional libraries, in terms of overall circulation.

Philadelphia City Institute, which has a large collection of foreign films available in DVD and VHS, draws many users who are sophisticated about literature and the arts. “People would come in on Monday with the New York Times Book Review in hand, asking if we had the latest books,” says David Ninemire, a former branch manager at the Philadelphia City Institute. Paradin makes it a point to know the desires of the branch’s most frequent users, actually putting aside books he knows will match their tastes.

Activities are constant at the Philadelphia City Institute. It shows films regularly with each month devoted to a different theme. And besides the morning lap-sit Storytimes for children between 6 months and 2 ½ years old and the afternoon pre-school Storytimes for children from 2 ½ to 5 years old, there are Pajama Storytimes, featuring milk and cookies, in the evening, which draws many fathers with their children.

Formed in the 1850s, before the city had a public library system, the Philadelphia City Institute library was originally for young men of disadvantaged backgrounds. Now, the founding organization, the Philadelphia City Institute, still provides generous financial assistance to the branch. (Most other public library branches in Philadelphia lack strong sources of independent financing.) Paradin says the library is indeed fortunate to have such generous support, including an active Friends group. “It’s a very demanding branch,” he says, noting the sophisticated, often difficult-to-answer reference and reader advisory questions he and his staff are presented with daily. “But there is a great deal of reward for the effort we put in.”

Anyone who doubts that the Philadelphia City Institute branch is not serving the needs of its users need only watch Miss Karen command the audience during Storytime: “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!”

Invariably, the crowd applauds.