An Interactive Children’s Story Experience at St Barnabas Library

Children are invited to climb inside Mister Tootles Storychair and be transported to a magical woodland, a snowy mountainside, a small island in the middle of a silver lake, a mystical library. Mister Tootles Storychair tells stories of magic, being lost and the triumph of an outsider with stories from eight local, national and international authors including Michael Morpurgo, Chris Wormell and JM Barrie.

The Storychair invites children to enter a secret, underground, woodland world. Once inside, the child will trigger a range of sound effects that will enhance their imaginative response. Children will be able to interact with parts of the chair and release a story from the roots of the Baobab tree. Children will be able to choose from a range of stories. There are secret doors hidden within and once opened will reveal a miniature world of the story and will trigger the chair to tell that story.

Manya Benenson - St Barnabas Library Artist in Residence, and originator of the Storychair explains "The Storychair emerged as a response to seeing large numbers of unaccompanied children - lost boys and girls - come into the library, particularly in school holidays, and stay for long periods of the day, without necessarily knowing what to do. I realised that something that I had taken for granted in my own family, the part of every day when I snuggled up with a child in the same comfy chair and read them a story, probably wasn't available to many of the children. I wanted to create something in the Library that would offer children this opportunity, whenever they wanted for as long or short a time as they wanted."