Live storytelling for young listeners · Austin, Texas
Twenty minutes, no screen and no slideshow — a story read aloud, and a room of kids listening. Currently touring Patrick Cactus.
Two programs
Run times, ages, group sizes and what each of us brings — so you can check it against your room and your calendar without emailing first.
Libraries · festivals · community rooms
Patrick Cactus, read aloud, live. No equipment and next to no setup — a voice in the room does more at this age than anything plugged in.
Elementary schools · classes or assembly
The story first, then the science that makes its ending true. Bees and butterflies work the day shift; moths and bats take the night — and a cactus flower that opens after dark really is pollinated by bats, not butterflies. Kids sort the visitors onto the right flowers and work out who turns up when.
Something else in mind — a summer reading kickoff, a museum afternoon, a storytelling festival slot? Ask. The story travels well.
Why a story with no pictures
A story made for listening asks a child to build the picture themselves. That turns out to be an advantage rather than a gap: it works for kids who are still learning to read, kids who read differently, and kids who take in far more by ear than they ever will off a page.
It also travels light. There is no book to pass around, no projector to find, and nothing that stops working when the wifi does.
The story
Patrick is a cactus. He would much rather be a flower — flowers get the butterflies, the photographs, and dramatically fewer shrieks — so he sets about fixing that with a few petals borrowed from a nearby sunflower.
What follows involves one spectacular misunderstanding of the phrase “sleep on it,” a rose with excellent boundaries, and a late-night visitor who is definitely not a butterfly.
For every kid who has ever tried pinning on petals.
Hear a sample
44 seconds · read by the author
About
TC Schilling writes tales of whimsy — absurdist slices of life meant as reminders to stop and smell the flowers. He’s been writing words for dozens of years and reading them out loud for even longer, most often to a room that won’t sit still.
He lives in Austin with his wife, their son, a dog who thinks she’s a mountain goat, and a cat who considers all of this beneath her.
Available across Central Texas. Longer trips considered.
Booking
Tell me the venue, a rough date and the age of the group.
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