Counters Attack

Veteran storyteller and librarian Helen Muller hopes to figure out by Saturday how to explain the new millennium to mostly preschool-age kids who will visit her at a Tarzana bookstore.

“It’s kind of tricky for this age group,” Muller said recently as she prepared for the millennium story-time event with store owner Darlene Daniel.

They got together last week at Pages Books for Children to figure out what kind of visual presentation, readings and craft activities could communicate the meaning of a concept that seems to have confused many adults lately.

“We’re going to talk about numbers. Numbers that are important to you, such as ‘How old are you?’ and ‘Are you 1 or 2 or 3?’ ” Muller said. She will demonstrate the numbers with finger puppets as the children respond.

She will read “Another Important Book” about numbers by Margaret Wise Brown, author of the classic “Goodnight Moon.” It begins “I am 1. Important things to do when you’re 1.” By the time the story gets to 5, the important things to do are “learn lots of tricks and how to count.”

Then comes the millennium. If this seems abrupt, just after raising the mere idea of learning to count, Muller’s experience urges her to get to the point without delay.

“You can begin by mentioning something they won’t understand at first, but then they’ll hear it again and again and you can build an understanding,” she said.

She will continue: “A week ago, we celebrated the birthday of the new year. It was one year older. We also celebrated a century, which is something 100 years old. But this time it was also something 1,000 years old--a millennium.”

Then it’s time for another illustrative story: “I have a story about big numbers like this. Very big numbers.” The tale, by author-illustrator Wanda Gag, involves lots of cats, shown in successively larger aggregations--10, 100, 1,000--and finally in the numbers that give the book its title, “Millions of Cats.”

“We’ll do some stretches to get out the wigglies before I read the other stories,” Muller said.

One of these will be Nancy White Carlstrom’s “How Do You Say It Today?” which introduces the concept of days, grouped into weeks, then into months and eventually into years.

The grand finale of Saturday’s intellectual odyssey for the post-diaper set will be an audience-participation activity that involves a flannel board.

Fabric stars marked with various numbers representing years, decades and centuries, will be passed out to the children. They will also receive party horns, which they will be told to refrain from blowing until given a cue.

Daniel, a veteran of staging story times for tots, anticipates they will be patient and sit quietly until everybody has a turn to put something on the board.

The children will go up row by row to put 10 stars marked “1” up, then 10 stars marked “10,” then 10 marked “100.”

Muller will then put up a “1,000” star and another marked “2,000,” which will be the cue for the children to blow their horns and shout “Happy Millennium!”

BE THERE

“How Much Is a Millennium?” story time with Helen Muller for children ages 3 to 8 and their parents, Saturday, 11 a.m. Free. Pages Books for Children and Young Adults, 18399 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana. (818) 342-6657.