Storytimes in Our Languages

We hope you have been enjoying the virtual storytime videos that our staff have been sharing recently through our YouTube channel

Today, we would to highlight a couple of these awesome storytimes in languages from our communities, and share some of our favourite books in Spanish & Mandarin!

Firstly, the wonderful Blanca and Isabel from Karori Library share a sweet story called  ¡Me Rompí la Trompa! by Mo Willems:

Up next, Qiyu and Joseph at Arapaki Manners Library share a bilingual telling of the fantastic Ruru’s Hangī written by Chris Gurney and translated by Juechen Shao:

To keep up to date with Our Languages For Kids you can ‘save’ this playlist of our videos on YouTube.

Language Collections at Our Branches

Almost all of our branches have children’s books available in Chinese, Spanish, German, French, and Samoan (along with English and Te Reo Māori). Many more languages are available at branches across our system! Here is a picture of the recently updated languages section at Karori Library, ātaahua!

Karori Language collections

Karori Library has books in Arabic, Chinese, French, Filipino, German, Greek, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and languages of the Pacific for you to enjoy!


Chinese language book picks from Khadro

Our wonderful librarian Khadro at Newtown Library has chosen some of her favourite books in Chinese to share with us today. We also love the beautiful decorations on the wall at Newtown Library, celebrating Chinese language and culture.

The War of Colours / Heller, Eva

This book explores the complexity of colours and all of the ways they enrich our everyday lives, from the yellow of the stars to the splashes of indigo in the sky!


How Animals Sleep / Bartíková, Petra 

Take a short flick through the jungle, the swamp and the outback to explore all of the different ways wildlife catch the Z’s. from the seagulls squawking at the beach to the Giraffes that lounge the safari.


Go Home Already / Jory, John

Bear and Duck have one mission: get back home safely. But what happens when they take a few bad turns?


Spanish language book picks from Rogelio

Our librarian Rogelio at Arapaki Manners Library has also chosen some of his favourite Spanish-language books for kids to share. Find more recommendations for wonderful children’s books in Spanish on our blog: ¡Nuevos libros en español! | New Books in Spanish!

Gustavo : el fantasmita timido / Drago, Flavia Z
“Conoce a Gustavo. Él es un fantasma y como a cualquier ser paranormal le encanta hacer lo que le es normal: atravesar paredes, hacer volar objetos y brillar en la oscuridad. También le encanta tocar el violín. Pero Gustavo tiene un problema. Él es muy, muy tímido, y aunque su deseo más grande es tener amigos, nunca se ha atrevido a hablarle a ninguno de los monstruos en su pueblito. Con el Día de Muertos cerca, ¿se atreverá Gustavo a dejar que lo vean?” (Catalogue).

¡Hermanos! / Bonilla, Rocio
“Un libro fantástico para hablar del amorodio entre hermanos. Un relato muy original y divertido que se lee en ambos sentidos. ¡Tener un hermano es muy molesto! Parece un mono, siempre haciendo payasadas. ¡Tener una hermana también es un rollo! Todo le parece mal y no me deja jugar a lo que quiero. Pero, a veces, los hermanos son una gran ayuda y juntos viven momentos muy divertidos. Quizás, tener un hermano o una hermana no está tan mal. Pero, ¿ser tres hermanos? ¡Eso sí que no!” (Catalogue)

The boy who touched the stars = El niño que alcanzó las estrellas / Hernández, José M.
“Juan Marcos is eager to continue his studies in the United States and rents a room from family friends living in El Barrio, or Spanish Harlem. Soon, he has a job wrapping packages at a department store that pays as much as he made teaching high school at home. As he interacts with the Puerto Rican community in New York, he witnesses the problems his compatriots encounter, including discrimination, inadequate housing, jobs and wages. Despite these problems, friendships and romances bloom and rivalries surface, leading to betrayal and even attempted murder!” (Catalogue)

Bedtime Storytimes to Send You Off to Dreamland!

Because lots of children are back at school, kindy or daycare now that we’ve entered Level 2, we thought we’d change up some of our virtual events to suit people’s new schedules! So, our beloved Virtual Storytimes will now just be happening three times a week (on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10.30am, and Saturdays at 2.00pm), rather than six — but we’re also adding some special evening Bedtime Storytimes to help send you off gently to dreamland!

Every evening at 7.30pm, we’ll be sharing a few chapters from some of our favourite chapter books for you to listen to and enjoy as you snuggle in with your teddies. Our first Bedtime Storytime is happening over on the Wellington City Libraries Facebook page tonight, and will feature The Great Piratical Rumbustification by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Quentin Blake.

Join us nightly at 7.30pm for our special Bedtime Storytimes!

Feel free to tune in at 7.30pm each night, or you can catch the videos after they premiere in our special Bedtime Storytime playlist on Facebook.

Stories to listen to!

I love listening to a good story! There are many ways to listen: cassette tape, CD, IPOD. You can even listen to video story-times on the internet! You probably already know about our library’s online story-time, but did you know that the Screen Actor’s Guild of America have produced an online story-time too? Stories on the Story Online website are read by famous actors. For example, Lord of The Rings stars Elijah Wood and Sean Austin both read a story. How cool is that?!