Children who want to play with instruments and read stories can hear live music and read books at the special musical storytime 10 a.m. Saturday at Booth Library in the reference reading room in the northwest corner of the library.

The members of Eastern’s music department will play music, and the Ballenger Teachers Center Staff will read.

Ann Brownson, reference librarian and coordinator of Ballenger Teachers Center, said several musicians will provide musical entertainment with low brass instruments.

“They will be here doing several numbers,” Brownson said. “And we will be reading three stories that are related to music and trombones and tubas.”

These stories are “Trombone Shorty” by Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews,  “Squeak, Rumble, Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!: A Sonic Adventure” by Wynton Marsalis and Paul Rogers, and “The Owl and the Tuba” by James H. Lehman.

An “instrument petting zoo” will be available for children to try out new instruments and practice instruments that will be presented by the Eastern Crossbones and Professor Erin Wehr from the University of Iowa.

Brownson said she believes children will be coming in costumes since the storytime is on Halloween.

“Usually we do a Halloween-themed (storytime) but since we have an opportunity to work with the music department we chose to do that,” Brownson said. “We’ve done that before and it’s been a great success.”

Brownson said the past couple of years they have done it on Family Weekend, but this year it coincided with a conference the music department was taking part in.

“We hope that a lot of people will come to it, it’s been advertised fairly widely,” Brownson said. “We have a storytime regularly.”

Parents are invited and encouraged to come with their children, as well as college students to hear the storytime.

If the children are with their parents and interested in music, this will be a great experience, said Brownson.

Brownson said the amount of people who come to storytime varies.

“Generally we have about eight to 20 children,” Brownson said.

These children are from Charleston families and families containing university faculty and students.

These storytimes typically happen during mid to late September through Thanksgiving, and then again in the spring from late January to Spring Break.

Brownson said the storytimes were successful.

“We’ve been doing them for a long time,” she said. “I think the children who come really enjoy it.”

Brown said generally when they have storytimes, they have storytimes and crafts.

Some storytimes have themes, such as when the Latin American Student Organization came to read to children from books with a color theme.

“The children learned the names of the colors in Spanish,” Brownson said. “So that was fun.”

Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or cjbuchman@eiu.edu