Little Ada Williams placed her hands on Mickey Gallagher’s knee.

“I’m three,” she announced to the children’s librarian on Tuesday at the Mill Creek Library. “Are you going to read us a story today?”

Armed with a guitar and “magic” book bag, Gallagher informed Ada and the other 30-or-so preschool aged children sitting cross legged on the floor in front of him that he was in fact going to read a story — several stories that the children brought from home.

Tuesday mornings at the library are Gallagher’s favorite. For 45 minutes, beginning at 10:30 a.m., the bearded librarian with long gray hair is in charge of the Preschool Ready Readers Program.

“It’s important to help kids associate fun with the library from a young age,” he said. “We want the kids, as well as their parents, to feel at home here and know it’s a place they can come to interact with friends and books. It’s a place to get away from the television and video games.”

Gallagher’s overseen the preschool story time in Mill Creek for seven years, and seems an expert at keeping the easily distracted youngsters under the spell of his stories and guitar.

“It’s like live theater for them,” he said. “I think that personal interaction – the validation of their curiosity – is very important in helping them develop strong imaginations.”

The children screamed with laughter as Gallagher read a handful of stories and pulled his puppet friend, Soupy the snail, from his magic book bag.

“How do we get Soupy to wake up,” he asked the children. “Can you remember?”

After a moment’s pause the children shouted back in unison, “We have to scream. Wake up Soupy.”

For 4-year-old Jack Simonson, the cuddly, brown snail is the best part of story time at the library.

“I love Soupy,” said Simonson as he carefully removed a book from the shelf. “I like it here because we get to read stories and look at the books and we get to scream in the library. It’s fun.”

Story time also is an exciting experience for parents, who beam at the sight of their children interacting with the colorful librarian.

Katie Williams, Ada’s mother, revels in the joy her daughter gets from reading.

She had to stifle the youngster’s enthusiasm once or twice, as Ada leaped to her feet several times to share her observations about the characters and illustrations in the stories.

“If it were up to Ada, I think she’d have stories read to her all day long,” Williams said. “She’s loved books ever since she was a tiny baby. The time we spend reading together, I think is very special.”

It’s easy to plop a child down in front of the television or computer screen for a couple of hours of entertainment. But, Gallagher said, children get so much more from sharing in a book with a parent or a loved one.

“You can see the excitement on their faces as you turn the pages and the enjoyment they get from the attention you’re giving them,” he said. “While the story time program is part of the library’s initiative to get children ready to read by the time they go to school, I think the most important thing they take away from the experience is the sense that their questions and ideas are valid.”