Story hour, long a mommy-and-me staple, had never looked so colorful.

She stood well over six feet tall, the reader at the Hudson Park branch of the New York Public Library in Greenwich Village, her height aided by six-inch heels on purple patent leather boots. Her outfit was an oxymoronic neon camouflage bodysuit and a purple tutu. A tuft of fuchsia hair curled from under a spandex headdress with fabric-covered cylinders lined up in a row, like a Keith Haring-inspired Mohawk.

As she entered, the adults clapped politely, but the preschool- and kindergarten-age children huddled on a rug went wild. With the elation typically reserved for a “Frozen” character, one toddler screamed “Yay!” and clapped furiously, squirming in his mother’s lap.

“My name is Harmonica Sunbeam,” the reader said, in a voice used to loud rooms. As a warm-up, she had the children sing “This Land Is Your Land” and then march vigorously in place. “I’m getting you ready for Zumba,” she said to laughter from the over-6 set.

She sat down and read aloud from “Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress” by Christine Baldacchino. The book is about a boy who wore a beloved dress to school every day. At one point, Morris’s friends inform him that he isn’t allowed to play on their imaginary spaceship, because “astronauts can’t wear dresses.”