"LITTLE CREATURES"
Young Children's Festival - 2019
Laurie Salameh, Director, Seraj Palestine
Seraj celebrated it's fourth annual Young Children's Festival - 2019, a highly anticipated event that brings together local artists and small children. The theme this year was "Little Creatures," and each artist was given a story about a small creature and asked to create a performance and an interactive activity for the young children.
We began the event in the village of Kufor Ni'ameh, where the artist Alaa told a story about dreams as living creatures. The children watched as he used a drop in ink to turn cups of water blue which they used to paint their own dreams to make them come alive.
From there we traveled to the Aida refugee camp next to Bethlehem, where two young musicians, Mira and Jalal, proposed the idea that music notes are living creatures. The children sang and danced all morning with the music notes, flying to different lands and meeting different people.
Our next stop was the village of Taybeh where the ballerina Marmar introduced the children to a little imaginary dancer named Ayoush... the children danced with their new imaginary friend on the hilltops of their village.
In our new library in Tubas the children were treated to a performance by Sunduq Al-Ajab, a well-known and beloved storyteller in Palestine. He delighted the children with stories about ants and other insects living in the grass among us.
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We traveled from there to our other new library in the village of Abu Falah, where the well-known children's book illustrator Lubna read one of her own stories to the children and helped them to create their own illustrations to accompany the story.
From there we visited the neighboring village of Al-Mizra Al-Sharqiyyeh, where our very own Fida'a performed a story about a little spider who was hungry because his web kept breaking and he couldn't catch food. With some encouragement from his mother he finally succeeded! The children created spider masks and acted out the story with Fida'a.
We celebrated the end of the festival in the village of Burham, where the artist Yara created an outdoor activity for the children. They looked around their world and listened to all the little creatures around them to see what they had to say.
The communities look forward with anticipation each year to the Young Children's Festival which is very important in encouraging imagination in children while connecting them with stories. It also encourages young artists to create something beautiful and meaningful for a younger audience. As with most of our activities, they are simple but meaningful.
(Each month, the various Seraj libraries have opportunity to participate in a cultural program organized by Laurie Salameh, Director & Fedaá Ayata, Program Coordinator. The Young Children’s festival is the April offering). | 
Nasser is a Palestinian-American who lives in Michigan City, IN. His job, with the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership at National Louis University (NLU) has him traveling all around greater Chicagoland. He has a bachelor’s degree in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from Indiana University, a master’s degree in early childhood education from Dominican University, and is currently a doctoral student at NLU in the Curriculum, Advocacy and Policy program.