C is for Cotsen

Posted on by
C is for Canoe 4

From African A.B.C. by Norah Senior. Pan-African Books. ; West African Publishing Co., 1959. Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University Library.

It’s time for the annual #ColorOurCollections, hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine! Each year libraries, archives, and cultural institutions around the world share free coloring sheets based on their collections. You might recall the Coloring Feathers post we did in 2021…but this year, we went alphabetical with “C is for Cotsen,” celebrating some of the cool alphabet books we have in our special collections vaults!

Our coloring pages consist of seven images spanning 1805-1959, including this hilarious one from 1840, “C is for Collision.” It was so completely random for an alphabet book, Katie and I had a good laugh over it

C is for Collision 2

R. Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet by Robert Cruikshank. Darton and Clark (Holborn Hill), c1840. Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University Library.

You can see our complete coloring pages here. In addition to the coloring activity, we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our fun alphabet posts. Here there are, in no particular order, starting with some tabletop topiary letters:

so very verdant

A story time where we rounded up some letters on the ranch!

hey uA popular DIY keychain project we designed for a community event table:

red letter day Our review of some awesome spelling straws:

sip n spellWe discover the cutest alphabet tactile toys, ever:

alphabet playtime

A gorgeous letter art activity for teens and tweens:

We test out some amazing vanishing paper for some free floating fun:

laserjet-testAnnnnnnd there was that time we filled our library with 130 giant inflatable alphabet letters:

balloons in entry 3

So Fortunate

Posted on by

The time was summer. The place was Wisconsin. Katie was shopping at an antique mall when she discovered The Good Fortune Cookie (Chronicle Books, 2015) inside a dealer nook. After flipping through a few pages and laughing at the unique format, she knew the book belonged at our library. As an added bonus, it included recipes to make your own fortune cookies, so to the literary testing kitchen we go! Take it away Katie!

The book itself is simple and adorable. The spiral-bound pages divide into three sections, which you can flip to create hundreds of fortunes (very similar to the Shakespearean insult book Dr. Dana reviewed here). What’s especially cute is that each section is backed with brightly colored paper, as you can see above. But the most intriguing part for me were the recipes in the back of the book. I’ve never made fortune cookies!

A quick glance let me know that I had most of the ingredients on hand. But there was something listed I have never encountered before: superfine sugar. I stopped by three different grocery stores and none of them carried it. Turns out superfine sugar (also called caster or quick-dissolve) is required when the sugar needs to melt and mix faster into batters or creams. It’s not recommended to substitute regular granulated sugar. Thank goodness we had a small food processor in the back of our pantry…I was able to grind the granulated sugar to superfine.

sugar 3

The recipe instructions are very concise, and it didn’t take long before I was ready to  bake the cookies. I carefully scooped four blobs of batter onto a greased baking sheet, spread it out roughly four inches. Checking in on their progress, I was surprised to see the four squares of batter had expanded and had come very close to combining into one enormous cookie!

I separated the dough as best I could and added an extra few minutes of baking time for the edges to turn brown. The recipe specifically states to keep a close eye on your cookies because overcooking can happen very quickly, which I can confirm happens in a split second if you aren’t paying attention.

Once I felt the batter was baked, I tried to fold my first fortune cookie. The dough was hot! Very hot! Somehow I missed the author’s wise suggestion to invest in a pair of candy gloves, which would have protected my fingers from getting burned. Not deterred, I followed the folding instructions with nimble fingers while singing a rendition of “Hot Hot Hot” by Buster Poindexter. The fortune cookies looked great, but they were HUGE!

Lesson learned. Make smaller spreads of the batter and be speedy when folding.

The book’s estimate of about 20 cookies per batch was spot-on as I went through the baking and folding steps an additional four times. With each attempt, the size of the cookie got smaller and I was faster folding the hot dough. The final two rounds of baking, I was confident enough to add the paper fortunes created from the book, and folded the cookies around them.

By the end, I was pleased my fortune cookies were almost the same size as a cookie you would receive from a restaurant. Moving from left to right in the image below, you can see the timeline of my cookie progress. On the far lower right is a restaurant fortune cookie for size comparison.

After sampling one (okay, three) cookies throughout the baking process, I can attest that they are really delicious. In the future, I think I’ll replace the almond extract with vanilla, or add some lemon or orange zest to enhance their flavor. There’s also a recipe for chocolate fortune cookies which basically reduces the amount of flour and adds cocoa powder.

Note: as far as making the paper fortunes for the cookies, I found instructions for an online template in the book, but the link no longer works. However, the book does tell you the correct size of the fortunes so you can easily do it on your own.

The Good Fortune Cookie – both the book and the recipe – receive my seal of approval!

The Professor of Shadowology

Posted on by

vincent bal 2It began with a spontaneous teacup doodle, and has steadily grown into printed postcards, calendars, two excellent books (Shadowology and Shadow World), and a dedicated Instagram following! Today, we’re delighted to chat with Belgian artist Vincent Bal, who has an extraordinarily playful and unique eye for life, light, objects, and shadows.

When did your relationship with shadows first begin?

It started by accident in the spring of 2016. I was working at my desk and noticed how the shadow of a teacup looked quite like an elephant. So, I completed the image by drawing some legs and ayes and took a picture. When I shared it on social media, people reacted very enthusiastic.I thought it was funny too, so I decided to try and make 100 of these ‘shadow doodles’, I have not stopped since.

How have your interactions with light, shadow and objects changed over the past five years?

In the beginning I was happy with every image I could extract from the shadows. I was constantly looking through the drawers in the house to find new objects to work with. At this point I think I have exhausted the supplies in my own house. I must have tried everything. Also, I set the bar higher. I don’t want to repeat myself, so sometimes it takes me longer to come up with something new.

Also, I have developed little videos a bit more. It can be satisfying to see the image created before your eyes and it is fun to add an extra layer with sound effects and music.

Is there an unusual story or connection behind one particular drawing?

They are all special to me. But I remember the first time I discovered I could use the shadow as a setting for a scene. So not really use the outer shape of the shadow, but rather the nuances in the grey inside. I was sitting on a terrace of a house we rented in Italy. Every morning around seven the sun would shine on that specific place and give beautiful long shadows.

So I went there and starting experimenting with some of the glasses from the cupboard of the rental house. And suddenly I saw a beach. I just added two small silhouettes and some seagulls, and it came to life. The image was called ‘Love On Shadow Beach’. That was a wonderful discovery, and I have made a few beach scenes since then.

Many of your illustrations use natural light. But others appear to use artificial light as well. Do you also have a set of particular lamps and lights you use…similar to a painter using different types of brushes?

The Sun is definitely the best light source, she gives wonderfully crisp shadows. So in the first months I always drew with sunlight. But that has a few disadvantages as well. The sun moves, and so you must draw quick, because the shadows really change in the course of one minute. That way I could never do drawings that were a bit more elaborate.
And I live in Belgium, we don’t have a lot of sunshine here. I should have invented some way to draw with rain!

So I started working with lights, and it was quite a search to come up with the perfect light source. It had to be a very small source, so the shadows are sharp. The bigger the light source, the less focused the shadows are.

In the beginning I used a clear light bulb, but they get very hot, and I once almost burnt some cushions that way. Now I have a little LED light standing on a flexible arm and that works well. But whenever the sun shines into my office, I feel the urge to see what I can do with that light.

Is there one object you have that you can’t quite capture the shadow/concept of yet?

Maybe in the future I would like to make something bigger, but the logistics scare me a little.There is practically no planning in my work now. I discover and create at the same time, and with bigger objects and shadows that might be more difficult, but who knows?

Images courtesy of Vincent Bal