Stranded Inside a Submarine: A 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Virtual Escape Room

dreamstimemaximum_199472607_cropped1We are delighted to present our newest Katie-designed escape room! While on vacation with your family, you take a tour of the SS-010 Goby, a decommissioned military submarine. But what unfolds is an unexpected adventure! Solve the puzzles to navigate the sub and make your escape…

Ready to begin? Click here!

Interested in our other virtual escape rooms? Solve a case with Sherlock Holmes here, search for pirate’s gold here, and step inside a museum of scientific discovery here! Want to try to design your own room? You’ll find Katie’s helpful tutorial here.

Studio Snapshots: Jarrett & Jerome Pumphrey

Today we’re visiting the studio of Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey, talented brothers with amazing combined backgrounds of creative direction, entrepreneurship, graphic design, technical writing, illustration, and fatherhood. Their delightful picture book, The Old Truck, utilized a colorful stamping technique – you can read more about it, as well as try it yourself, on their website! Based in Texas, the two are hard at work on their second picture book The Old Boat, which will be released next month.


Photo 1: We each have our own studios. This is Jarrett’s and serves as the space we use to collaborate. At the center of the space is a giant, sturdy workbench. It’s perfect for all the printmaking activities we get up to. We’re right in the middle of making a bunch of prints for preorders of our new book THE OLD BOAT.

Photo 2: We keep our flat file storage under the bench. We use some of the drawers for storing supplies, but mainly, they store all the stamps and prints we make for every project we do.

Photo 3: This is Whiskey. She’s our studio assistant. Her primary duty is to lie down right in the way so we’re constantly almost tripping as we move around the space. She keeps us on our toes.

Photo 4: We like to be surrounded by the work of creators we admire, so on one wall Jarrett has a collection of original art from illustrator friends and favorites.

Photo 5: And then on the opposing wall, he has a library of books.


Images courtesy of Jarrett & Jerome Pumphrey

Coloring Feathers

This week libraries, archives, and cultural institutions around the world are sharing free coloring sheets and books based on their amazing collections. Hosted by The New York Academy of Medicine, the #ColorOurCollections archives is up year round, and the 2021 edition features 95 institutions from around the world, including the Princeton University Library!

The library’s “Coloring Feathers” pages were selected by Jennifer Cabral-Pierce, and are part of “Capturing Feathers,” her fantastic digital exhibit. It celebrates a collaboration between Princeton University Library and the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. Together, they worked to digitize and study the personal journals of ornithologist Charles H. Rogers (1888-1977).

In honor of the “Coloring Feathers” theme, Katie and I also selected some blog bird posts we love, utilizing materials you can find at home. Note: If you don’t have feathers handy, just fringe some paper!

An easy-to-assemble bird puppet with fantastic flapping wings:

spring chicken

Our ever popular wrist parakeet (and an owl version for all you wizarding fans):

perfect parakeets

A hilarious hide-and-seek duck game in your own home:

fridge duck_4

A reading birdy on a perch (birdcage optional if you have pipe cleaners around!):

tweet-reading-is-sweet

Or, how about a snack worthy of a swan?

the snack of the swan 3


Coloring page is from Physica Sacra, (ca. 1731-1735), vol. 1, page 642, Princeton University Library Collection Treasures of Rare Book Division, EX Oversize 5366.816q, Rare Book Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library.