Just in Time for the Holidays!
Help Kids Create Christmas Drama by Performing the Readers Theater
Script for Katherine Paterson's Christmas Story
"The Handmaid of the Lord"
"The Handmaid of the Lord"
The art of Readers Theater provides an inexpensive and compelling way to get kids reading! Readers Theater is similar to a radio play in that no costumes or props are required. Readers simply stand on stage--or in the front of the classroom!--and read their lines from a script, using their voices to dramatize the production.
The National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance, in partnership with the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, recently presented a Children's Literary Lights Readers Theater presentation at the 2013 National Book Festival. Following the Festival, the NCBLA has created a Readers Theater Education Resource Guide, as well as several scripts, for adults to share with the young people in their lives.
Katherine Paterson's Readers
Theater script for her Christmas short story "The Handmaid of the Lord" provides an opportunity for young readers to share the suffering and joy of a minister's young daughter who never gets any good presents for Christmas. The story's protagonist Rachel Thompson hopes to change her luck by playing the part of Mary in the church's annual Living Nativity. Paterson's story is included in her newly published collection A Stubborn Sweetness and Other Stories for the Christmas Season (Westminster John Knox Press).To print and share Paterson's Readers Theater script for "The Handmaid of the Lord," click here.
To learn more about Readers Theater and to print our Readers Theater Education Resource Guide, click here.
