Posts tagged Portland

Finn not only enjoyed the snow, but also really dug Kirby's Epic Yarn

On Wednesday January 12, 2011, Portland, ME got walloped with snow.  It wasn’t the biggest snowstorm the town has ever seen, but it did shut everything down.  Part of that shutdown was the call I got at 7:00am saying that the library was closed.  While I was bummed that our patrons couldn’t get into our building on a snowy day to relax and unwind, I was a bit giddy inside knowing that I got to spend the day with my family.

Two days before, I had borrowed Kirby’s Epic Yarn from my library.  It was my favorite game of 2010 even though I didn’t get to spend too much time with it.  This time around, I set my goal on completing the whole thing….with some help.  Teaching your two year old about video games and all the talk around that has been swirling around in my head long before 8BitLibrary existed.  Some will say it’s good, some will say it’s bad.  I try to listen to both sides of the story and take a balanced approach.  My son Finn and I have played Beatles Rock Band quite a bit before taking on Kirby’s Epic Yarn, but it was just for a moment or two.  I’d play 2-3 songs on the bass guitar while Finn drummed along.  He picked up some tunes from the game which he can be heard singing (with great alternate Finn lyrics) at the top of his lungs in our apartment almost everyday (EX: BE!   SEA!  OCTOPUS’ GARDEN!  SHAVE!).

Kirby’s Epic Yarn, on the other hand, wasn’t going to be a 15-20 minute thing.  I approached playing this game as a story time between myself and Finn.  I’d do the playing (unless of course, he wanted to) and as the cut scenes were occurring I’d read them to him.  I’d point out interesting things happening on the screen and try to craft an on the fly Kirby narrative as I played the game.  I used Kirby’s apartment as a place where Finn and I could experiment with him getting the hang of the controls.  We dabbled in placing our found items in the house.  Finn wasn’t too interested in this and instead really got into it when I was playing the game.  We gave names to some characters and locales in FinnSpeak©.

All in all, I had a blast playing Kirby’s Epic Yarn and I think Finn has a new found love for Kirby as a character.  While I can’t see a practice like this being adopted for story times in a public library setting (prove me wrong, please!), for one on one interaction with a child it is a great way to both teach them about video games and get some story time in there as well.