I’ve been playing with apps at my library for a few months now. I use them most frequently in my Preschool Storytime. The apps that feel like the most natural fit are book-based apps because in essence, they’re just a REALLY big “Big Book” with a few moving parts. Occasionally, when I’m feeling brave, or if I’ve found an app that I’m just so excited about that I have to share it with my storytime families, I’ll try out a non-book-based app.

Recently, I did a storytime about fairytales and, although there are a ton of classic fairy tales retold in app version, I really wanted to introduce a new app I’d discovered called “Infiniscroll.” This is a unique storytelling app in which you choose 5 pictures to stack on a sort of virtual “totem pole,” and then you can create (with the option to record) a story that goes along with the 5 images you’ve chosen. I was a bit nervous about the live improv-storytelling concept, so I practiced using the app a few times at home with my son for his bedtime story. (We took turns telling the story. He loved it! Check out our story in the video below.)

a story with infiniscroll from carissaabc on Vimeo.

During my fairytales storytime, I introduced the app by talking to everyone about how, before they were written down with words, stories were simply told and passed down from person to person. I also talked about how all of the fairytales that we read (and indeed ALL books) were stories that at some point came out of someone’s imagination. I then reminded the kids that each of them have an imagination that they can use to create a new story, but sometimes it’s hard to come up with an idea for a story and that’s where Infiniscroll comes in handy. I had the kids help me choose which images to “lock” into our story’s totem pole, and then I told a story (I didn’t bother to record it) about the images they had chosen. It was a lot of fun to use this app in storytime, and I’m looking forward to future developments from Infiniscroll.

Carissa Christner is a librarian in Wisconsin.