Montgomery County Public Library Hosts Miss September & Friends Event

The Montgomery County Public Library hosted a Miss September & Friends event on Wednesday, May 28, in Mount Vernon, as a part of the library’s summer programming.

The show, titled “Life is a Rainbow of Emotions”, featured September Cardiff and Lisa Rosario teaching children about various emotions and how to speak and manage them through the use of magic tricks, puppetry, song and dance. 

“I hope that they can learn that it’s okay to feel feelings,” said Cardiff. “It’s okay, and it’s good to feel our feelings, and we need to get our feelings out, and we need to talk about our feelings.”

The show highlighted six emotions: anger and frustration, represented by red; excitement, represented by orange; happiness and positiveness, represented by yellow; contentment, represented by green; sadness and boredom, represented by blue; and knowledge, represented by purple.

Cardiff featured two puppets in the show: Indigo the parrot and Rerun the tennis ball, both performed by Cardiff. Several attendees also had the opportunity to participate in magic tricks, and Cardiff would occasionally have the audience break out into a dance between sections.

“I want kids to learn that you don’t push your emotions down, that you get them out and you feel them, and even anger is okay, but you need to figure out why are you angry and what is it that’s making you angry and those sorts of things,” said Cardiff.

Cardiff’s 20 year career in children’s programming began in Kentucky, when the librarian of her childrens’ elementary school needed help encouraging reading, so Cardiff would dress up as various characters to read to them. This evolved into writing the book “Stella the Snowgran”, named after Cardiff’s mother, as well as performing for neighboring schools and commercials.

She would later begin studying magic tricks and ventriloquism, forming her own children’s programming company Miss September & Friends, which offers library programs, magic and drama camps, books based on the library programs and songs. In addition to the “Life is a Rainbow of Emotions” program, Cardiff offers programs about anti-bullying, anti-drugs, recycling and more.

The “Life is a Rainbow of Emotions” program will be supplemented by a purchasable book and soundtrack, similar to Cardiff’s previous programs.