The Puppet Lending Libraries are stocked with parade puppets and banners, twenty-foot tall Big City and Mother Earth puppets, twelve-foot dancing cats, enormous flowers, puppet horses for children to ride, and a wide variety of dragons. All these elements are loaned out to enliven school and community events, neighborhood parades, celebrations, and demonstrations in the cities of New York and Boston.
The Puppet Libraries began in Boston, as the Back Alley Puppet Theater, and, later, the Puppeteers' Cooperative created numerous parades for the First Night Grand Procession over the years, starting with First Night's inception in 1976. These puppets were loaned to the public in an informal custom which was gradually formalized as the Puppet Library in around 1995. In 2003, the Puppeteers Cooperative, in collaboration with Flying Bridge Arts, opened the New York Puppet Library in Red Hook, Brooklyn, using the overflow of puppets from the Boston library. In 2004, Prospect Park, in return for a yearly series of free outdoor performances in the park, allowed the library to move into the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch at Prospect Park, where the original puppets were joined by puppets created for a yearly pageant commissioned by the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival and other New York events, as well as more puppets from Boston. For a happy period, see below