Children’s Book Week (August 16–23, 2025) is nearly here and, to help celebrate, we’re touring our special story time puppet show across South-East Queensland throughout August.
Ideal for schools, kindies and childcare centres, Story Time With Larrikin Puppets is a colourful and engaging 45-minute show designed especially for children aged 3–7. It features music, laughter, lively puppets, and a beautifully presented storybook reading, showcasing Australian children’s books by authors like Hazel Edwards, Susanne Gervay, Glenn Martin, and Caroline Stills.
Rather than acting out the story, the puppets join in by listening, asking questions and making comments — role-modelling active listening and supporting comprehension, pre-literacy skills, and communication development.
The show also includes:
Funny skits and catchy songs
Lots of fun audience interaction
A behind-the-scenes demonstration of how the puppets work
This year’s Book Week theme is “Book an Adventure!” — and this joyful puppet show invites children to do just that.
If you’re planning something special for Book Week or looking for an engaging experience any time in August, we’d love to bring the show to your centre or school. Enquire now for a quote and to book!
Learn to count and practice moving your fingers with Zietta Elissa, her clever monster friend Moss and a fun-loving crew from Larrikin Puppets.
Help Zietta and Moss put the baby to sleep by singing along to the classic Five Finger Family song with a fun puppet finger family, including Daddy Finger (Troggg), Mummy Finger (Flossy), Brother Finger (Scrambles), Sister Finger (Marina), and Baby Finger (New Baby)!
Larrikin Puppets loves it when you sing along and move your fingers too – children and their grown ups together!
Lyrics: Five Finger Family Song | Baby Finger
Daddy finger, Daddy finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do? Mummy finger, Mummy finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do? Brother finger, Brother finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do? Sister finger, Sister finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do? Baby finger, Baby finger, where are you? Here I am! Here I am! How do you do?
Larrikin Puppets will be taking the stage at Big Little Fest! We are national award-winning Australian children’s entertainers, and will be bringing our colourful and exciting puppet show to Coorparoo Square at 12.00 noon Saturday 23 March, 2024. Interesting Fact! We received training in the USA under Jim Henson puppeteers from The Muppets and Sesame Street. Mark your calendar and prepare for a great day.
Elissa and Troggg presented a talk at the highly acclaimed TEDx Brisbane on 14 October 2023.
The theme for TEDx Brisbane 2023 was ‘The Power of Intention’. What is our intention when it comes to the art of puppetry?
We are super proud of both the delivery and the content of our TEDx Talk. The professional video recording is available to watch on YouTube here.
A big thanks to Juanita, Rob and everyone at TEDx Brisbane for your support in rehearsing and producing our talk. It was an experience we’ll never forget!
We have big news! Elissa and Troggg have been invited to present a talk at the highly acclaimed TEDx Brisbane on 14 October 2023.
The theme for TEDx Brisbane this year is ‘The Power of Intention’. What is our intention when it comes to the art of puppetry?
And don’t be surprised if you spot us on a digital billboard around Greater Brisbane in the coming weeks! If you do, be sure to snap a photo and send it our way.
Discover our suite of NEW THEMED shows for Childcare & Primary School incursions. And we now even have a NEW puppetry program for High Schools and Higher Education (Universities/TAFEs). And best of all, we come to you!
Did you know Grogu (Baby Yoda) from The Mandalorian is a hand and rod puppet? Did you know very few filmmakers in Australia know how puppets are filmed? For Higher Education, we’re stoked to launch our Puppetry Workshops for Stage (live theatre) and Screen (Film & TV) to university and college students of Drama, Theatre and Screen Production. If you’re a lecturer of Drama or Film, please be in touch. Or pass the info on to lecturers you might know! A Higher Education Info Pack and Rate Card is available.
We write with two exciting updates about Hijabi Girl: A Musical Puppet Show. We have a launch date and a theatre, finally and at last! And the show now has a dedicated space on Facebook and on Instagram.
Thanks to generous support from Logan City Council, we will be premiering Hijabi Girl during 2022 Book Week on August 23, 24, 25 at the Butterbox Theatre at the new Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct. Yay!
In late May/early June we’ll also be doing a two-week artist-in-residence at Logan Entertainment Centre to rehearse and refine the show. It was originally going to be at the Butterbox Theatre, but sadly the launch of the new theatre has been delayed due to damage from recent wet weather events in South-East Queensland.
Your patience and support throughout this prolonged creative development process means so much to us. Who knew, when we first started this together, that so many barriers to progress would come our way. The silver lining is that the show will now be bigger and better than we first conceived it would be. At least, we hope so! 🙂
This is primarily a show for early primary children – ages 6-9 – and we’ll be encouraging school groups to attend. For some children, with excursions cancelled for the last few years, this will not only be their first puppet show but perhaps even their first in-theatre show.
Larrikin Puppets is excited to announce the launch of Lovelace, an enchanting puppet built of electronic waste. Believed to be the first professional puppet in the world to be made of ewaste, this is Larrikin Puppets’ first major puppet construction project.
We were wanting something spectacular to add to our Environmental Sustainability Puppet Show – something that would capture the hearts and minds of older children in the audience and their families.
Elissa is passionate about sustainability and is aware of some of the troubling facts around ewaste – including the fact that most ewaste lasts forever – so the idea of an ewaste puppet was born.
We have seen art sculptures made out of ewaste and puppets made out of other types of waste, but we believe this may just be the world’s first professional puppet made out of electronic waste.
Lovelace is named after the most famous woman in technology Ada Lovelace who, born in 1815, was the world’s first computer programmer.
The puppet’s special features:
Mouth plate mechanism is a curling iron with metal mouth plates made from a computer CPU and a red circuit board tongue.
Platted hair is the insides of blue ethernet cables.
Breast plate is a monitor stand and the detail is a fan (it spins!) with a circuit board.
One leg is a rotating monitor stand.
Other leg is a video remote control and speaker bracket.
Eyes are from a computer speaker.
Neck is a computer CPU fan.
Arms are ethernet cables with computer mouse for mitten hands and an RJ45 plug for thumbs.
Green, blue and red motherboards with circuit boards for body and face.
Computer keyboard keys for cheeks.
Gold coloured metal lips from an old video player.
Blue nose is a heat sink from a motherboard.
Design
We – Brett and Elissa – worked together to research what style of puppet would best suit ewaste materials. We decided a Bunraku style of puppet would be ideal, given the likely heavy weight of the materials.
While Larrikin Puppets is accustomed to performing Muppet-style, light-weight foam and fur/fleece hand puppets where the puppeteer is hidden, Bunraku puppeteers appear on stage with their puppet – with their half-life-size dolls. However, given our passion for performing hand puppetry, we were keen to also give our puppet a moving mouth, something Bunraku puppets don’t traditionally have.
Brett drew an illustration of the puppet to highlight how we expected the puppet would move its limbs and its mouth, and where the rods might be placed.
Materials
The electronic waste was donated by ewaste recycling facility Buyequip located in Brisbane’s north.
We decided that – as wonderful as it would be for the puppet to be made entirely out of ewaste – it may need some bones and these bones may need to be made of foam. While we didn’t end up needing to use as much foam for the bones as we thought we would, we did stay true to the nature of the project and, rather than buy new foam, we sourced the foam from unwanted pool noodles and op shop kickboards.
While at the op shop on Bribie Island buying foam, we also found a curling iron in the electricals section thinking it might be a perfect mechanism for a moving mouth. The curling iron is an example of e-upcycling rather than e-waste.
We have lots of favourites when it comes to the features of this puppet, but the moving mouth is high on the list. Rather than makeshift something else, Brett insisted on using the curling iron as it was the easiest way to build a mouth plate with a moving lower jaw – something important in the world of hand puppetry. His stubbornness paid off as it’s the perfect fit.
Tools
Tools we used included a saw (to saw through plastic and metal), an angle grinder (to cut through metal), a drill (to drill holes for screws), a box cutter (to cut foam) and a glue gun. Four different glues were used depending on the material.
Ewaste facts
According to ewaste expert Brett Hyde, when it comes to materials that make up IT equipment, they break down rather than decompose.
This means that, over time, the material just splits apart into smaller and smaller pieces. None of the components are “living things”, so they never actually become one with the dirt.
So the key is making sure e-waste doesn’t end up in the natural environment, including landfill, in the first place.
How long electronic waste takes to break down:
Glass: 1-2 million years
Hard plastics: 1 million years
Aluminium: 200-500 years
Tin: 50 years
Copper: It doesn’t break down
Gold: It doesn’t break down
Palladium: It doesn’t break down
Silver: It doesn’t break down
Iron: It doesn’t break down
Zinc: It doesn’t break down
Iridium: It doesn’t break down
Book an Environmental Sustainability Puppet Show featuring Lovelace
Keen to see Lovelace up close and personal? Book an Environmental Sustainability Puppet Show featuring Lovelace! This 45 minute puppet show is suitable for children aged 5 and up and their families. Alternatively book a special 20 minute visit from Lovelace for an educational presentation about ewaste suitable for children aged 10 and up including high school and adult audiences.
Acknowledgements
Larrikin Puppets received an RADF Continue Creating 2021 Grant to help make this puppet project possible. The Regional Arts Development Fund is a partnership between the Queensland Government and Moreton Bay Regional Council to support local arts and culture in regional Queensland.
Big thanks to:
Buyequip for donating the electronic waste.
Brett Hyde for always taking the time to educate Elissa and others about ewaste recycling.
Adrian Jenkins for lending us his workshop and tools.
