Besides having exquisite taste in socks, these two clever girls came up with a book project that was much cooler than my book project. It involves giants, snoring, caves, and castles perched in a precarious place. It was for To Be Continued, our story time for 6-8 year-olds.

We read The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, written by Jennifer Trafton, and illustrated by Brett Helquist (Puffin, 2010). Persimmony Smudge has lost her hat, and her way, in a woods filled with poison-tongued jumping tortoises and restless mangroves. Little does Persimmony know that she is about to be a part of a much bigger dilemma – one that involves a castle, a bratty king, a mountain that rises and falls according to the time of day, and rumors of a snoring giant under said mountain. And then there’s the revolt at the pepper mill, the prophecy of the Lyre-That-Never-Lies, and the growing indignation of the most terribly polite Leafeaters. Will the island be shaken to pieces by the giant? Or will Persimmony and her friends be able to stop this terrible fate?

In the book, elderly Theodore the Potter makes Giving Pots. Basically, there are pots that give you what you need, not what you want. Persimmony’s pot, for example, gives her a single feather (and it turns out later she really, really, really needs it!). I loved the idea of making Giving Pots, so I brought out a slew of Model Magic. Love this stuff. It’s light, no mess, and it dries beautifully (it makes great mandrakes too).

Before the kids started sculpting, I asked them to recall a passage from the book that described the beautiful artwork of the Leafeaters. Here’s the passage:

“The walls were elaborately painted with glorious pictures of trees. There were coconut palms bent sideways from the wind. There were clusters of mangrove trees as they grew at the forest’s edges along the shore. And there were stately willows with boughs drooping to the ground like green waterfalls.

The dome above was painted to look like the sky with the sun and moon and stars. Farther down were hundred of pictures stretching in a circle around the room – pictures of Mount Majestic, of fields ripe for harvest and orchards ripe for picking, of fishing boats on the sea and brown seals on the rocks, of goats and squirrels and pelicans.”

Here are the beautiful nature-influenced Giving Pots the kids created:

When the kids finished their Giving Pots, I dropped a single white duck quill feather into them. Because like Persimmony, you never know when you might need it!

So that was my project. However, two story time attendees were trying to guess what the Mount Majestic book project would be, and decided to send in one of their own! It was a contest to see who could keep the castle on their belly the longest while holding up the Snoring Cave. It’s a perfect match to the book (the giant originates in the Snoring Cave and the castle is located directly above him on Mount Majestic). Awesome.

Did you recognize the castles from a previous To Be Continued? They were the project for Castle Hangnail. Nice to see them make a triumphant return!