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Headline: About

Books, Puppets, Fun,
and Literacy too

It All Started with a Puppet… and a Passion for Storytelling. Our journey began on a tiny stage with a big imagination. Puppets brought our earliest stories to life—sparking laughter, curiosity, and connection.

But what started as a love for puppetry grew into something even more lasting: a passion for creating children's books that inspire and uplift.
Television Screen with cacti in the forground and an open book.
Today, we craft imaginative stories that help kids grow in confidence, kindness, and creativity. Each book is lovingly written and illustrated to turn reading time into a moment of joy, discovery, and heart. Whether shared at bedtime, in the classroom, or as a cherished gift, these stories are made for growing minds and loving families.

We Are Puppeteers is an Arizona company offering award winning children’s books, interactive story times, workshops, and custom made puppets to stimulate the creative puppeteer in all of us.

Story times are always fun. We work with librarians, teachers, parents, and book store owners to create the most appropriate story time experience for their audience. We bring puppets along with us to help tell the story. We provide paper puppets as a make and take craft to reinforce the story or for the children to make up their own story.
Workshops provide hands on opportunities to explore creativity. We love to create puppet shows with children in a workshop setting. The show can be an established story or can be created spontaneously with the participants. We have tools to create presentations using a shadow puppet stage or improvise a stage using cardboard boxes.

Children are the puppeteers, they participate in many roles such as, author, narrator, puppeteer, sound effects engineer, puppet designer, puppet construction, and scenic artist. The puppet show is a collaboration of their imaginations to create a unique production for their audience. We encourage students to try as many roles as possible.
Children and Mothers
Book event at a school

Story walks are another fun way to explore books by yourself or with a group. Our books can be configured for any number of story book stations.
Montage of reading books with children in a library setting

We Are Puppeteers works on location in schools, libraries, book stores, churches, theaters, gardens, parks, museums, and homes.
Sharing the love and fun of books is our most important goal. Literacy is obtained when a person is inspired and wants to read.

Your support means everything. Every book you purchase helps keep the stories flowing and fuels our mission to bring more magic into the lives of children everywhere.

Want to learn more? The Mesa Tribune Newspaper featured article is available at this link.

In 2025 Vicki and Sonia created their first dual language book, Dear Grandma and Grandpa / Queridos abuelos. Check out the article on AZ Central by Paula Soria's where she talks about We Are Puppeteers and our new venture into dual language book creation. Click on this link to view the article.

Author Vicki Riske has been interested in puppetry and storytelling for many years. She has worked in television, movies, animation, instructional design and produced online instructional products for text books at Pearson. She now writes and illustrates children’s books, designs and builds custom puppets. She has written five books and illustrated four of them. Sonia Elizabeth Soto translated four of the books into Spanish. Together they have created four dual language books.

Author Sonia Elizabeth Soto is a Bilingual Family Childcare Specialist for the Family, Friend, and Neighbor program of United Way of Pinal County. She has worked in family and child services for more than 20 years, including owning her own in-home preschool.

Originally from Ciudad Juárez, México, Sonia earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Centro Teresiano de Estudios Superiores before moving to Arizona and obtaining her Early Childhood Education certificate from Central Arizona College.

Sonia has two beautiful children and a very supportive and fun husband. In her spare time, she enjoys going to concerts, cooking, spending time with her family and rollerblading.
“The We are Puppeteers artist in residence proved to be an amazing experience for our students. We spent one week, creating, then learning a performance to present on Friday.

This particular experience combined art, theatre and language arts and students were able to thrive depending on their strengths while learning new skills.”

Karen Danesi
Librarian SCIS
Shanghai, China