Tag Archives: books

Children’s Book Festival

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princeton children's book festival 2018 poster by angela dominguez

Presented by the Princeton Public Library with sponsorship by jaZams. Poster art by Angela Dominguez

Friends! Romans! Tri-State Countrymen! Travel henceforth to Princeton this weekend for the Princeton Public Library‘s legendary Children’s Book Festival! Every year, scores of talented authors and illustrators gather under the library’s big white tents in Hinds Plaza, meeting fans and signing books.

My personal highlights over the past 12 years of the book festival…receiving writing advice from Rebecca Stead, seeing my buddy Galen Longstreth sharing her adorable book, Yes, Let’s, and having a breakfast chat with Pseudonymous Bosch before the event. My library was there in 2010 as well, doing a “Books Done Wrong” activity!

The public library always invites terrific authors and illustrators. Here’s the 2018 line-up if you’d like to see it. But if we may be so bold as to make a few blog connections to this year’s festival attendees?

Tracey Baptiste: The author of The Jumbies now has a sequel out called, Rise of the Jumbies. I interviewed Tracey in 2016. Her books are suspenseful, spooky, and straight up awesome.

Margery Cuyler: Margery’s Skeleton for Dinner is totally hilarious, and we hope we did her book justice with our dancing, glowing skeleton marionette project.

them bones

Ame Dyckman: Ame has had three featured projects on our blog! A robot marionette for Boy + Bot, a bouncing baby wolf for Wolfie the Bunny, and a raucous tea party game for Tea Party Rules. She’s inspired so many projects…probably because her books are so fun and amazing.

Steve Light: Master wielder of all things fountain pen, Steve caught our eye with Zephyr Takes Flight, and we just HAD to do a steampunk airship project. We had to!

one amazing airship

Zachariah OHora: Zachariah’s distinctive illustrative style has graced blog twice in books, once for Wolfie the Bunny and again for The Teacher’s Pet. We’re dying to do a project for The NOT So Quiet Library.

Lauren Magaziner: Lauren’s book, Pilfer Academy, was a featured book at To Be Continued in 2016. Our book-related activities involved lots of sneaking around, stealing things, and a green crepe paper streamer laser maze. Oh yeah.

navigating-the-lasers

Wendy Mass: I interviewed Wendy in 2009 and WOW has she been busy, including being on the New York Times Bestseller list for The Candymakers! She recently released Bob, a book she co-wrote with Newbery Medal winner Rebecca Stead.

Christopher Silas Neal: Christopher’s gorgeous, minimalistic, vibrant illustrations in Over and Under the Snow inspired a winter hibernation snow-scape project that was a huge hit at story time.

winter is coming

Anica Mrose Rissi: I just posted a hamster-rific blog project for her book, The Teacher’s Pet, along with an author interview. So now you have to go to the festival meet Nica and see all her other fantastic books!

Sean Rubin: I did a blog feature on Sean’s debut graphic novel Bolivar in 2017. Bolivar is an astounding work of art and really must been seen in person. Now’s your chance!

bolivar 6_artwork by sean rubin

Daniel Salmieri: Daniel has written and illustrated many books, but we loved his work on Meet The Dullards, and fashioned our boring-not-boring blog project on his playful artistry.

Liz Garton Scanlon: Liz’s book In the Canyon is full of playful, vivid rhymes. We tried to capture some of the wonder she evokes with our own enormous cardboard canyon.

hiking the canyon

Rebecca Stead: How often do you get to meet a Newbery winner? I interviewed Rebecca about When You Reach Me in 2011 and she has continued to write amazing, thoughtful, and deeply meaningful books.

David Ezra Stein: ‘Ol Mama Squirrel? Best. Book. Ever. I couldn’t stop laughing when I read it aloud during story time! And weirdly, the squirrel tree puppet project went viral in China. Wow.

puppet in action

Audrey Vernick: Buffaloes and drum sets. Need I say more? OK, how about winning a giant pet whale? Audrey’s hilarious books such as Teach Your Buffalo to Play Drums and I Won a What? inspire us.

Rowboat Watkins: We made cake hats with attitudes for Rowboat’s fantastic Rude Cakes. But much to our delight, he popped up unexpectedly in this post about Books of Wonder in NYC.

headgear with attitude problems

The Children’s Book Festival is Saturday, September 22m from 11am to 4pm in Hinds Plaza of the Princeton Public Library, rain or shine. Books are available for purchase at the event through jaZams, our incredible, local, independent, family-owed toy store. We hope to see you there!

Give My Regards to Broadway

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intro 2A few weeks ago, Katie, Marissa, and I saw Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway. Just…soak up the epic-ness of that last sentence. I’d love to share our theater-going experience, but first, I do solemnly swear there will be NO SPOILERS about the content of the play itself.

keep the secrets 3

Katie was the one who started the Broadway ball rolling. In the fall of 2017, she entered and won the ticket purchase lottery. And that is how, eight months later, Marissa, Katie, and I journeyed to Manhattan to witness wizarding wonders. We were really excited.

dana with sign 3Like, really, really, really, REALLY excited.

very excited 3

The performance is split into two parts. Part I runs for 2 hours and 40 minutes, which includes a 20 minute intermission. Part II is 2 hours and 35 minutes with another 20 minute intermission. The way Katie purchased the tickets, we saw both parts on the same day, with a dinner break.

Cursed Child is playing at the Lyric Theater, which underwent a massive, multimillion dollar renovation in order to host the play. The co-designers (Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis) must be huge Harry Potter fans because you can absolutely feel the love, care, and creativity that went into creating a totally immersive experience.

For example, there’s a circular room that’s filled with a huge mural of patronus. Their bodies incorporate BOOK quotes! They are the masterful work of UK artist Peter Strain.

eagle patronus 2

doe patronus 4cat patronus 2otter patronus 2

A little further in the theater is a multi-story staircase. Very elegant.

dress circle 2

But the best part is the ceiling. Look at this…!

ceiling 2

The lowest level was decorated to resemble the Forbidden Forest. The pillars are natural wood that has painted over. So they resemble highly stylized tree trunks.

forbidden forest 2

Take a closer look at the carpet, too. A delicate little custom H emblem for Hogwarts.

carpet 3 Custom gilded wall paper too. I fell in love with the the balcony-level wallpaper…

Even the merchandise areas were stylish. The Lyric has a couple shops, concession stands, even bars for the grown-ups! This is a shelf in one of the candy areas. I love the branch, glass goblet, and books. There were cool old books on display everywhere.

candy 2

Finally, it was time for the show to begin. Here’s the interior of the theater. If you look closely at the stage, you’ll see stacks of old-fashioned suitcases. The first scene takes place on the platform in King’s Cross Station.

full theater 2

I promised no play spoilers, but what I can say is…wow. Wow wow wow wowie-WOW. It was a masterpiece of acting, music, choreography, lighting and stage illusion. Some of the illusions were BIG. And some of the illusions were such simple, beautiful little touches, it brought tears to my eyes. There were inside jokes for book fans, and the return of much-loved characters (even if it was ever-so-briefly). Without giving anything away, I will say that the production crews used every single bit of that theater to tremendous effect.

The end of Part I will simply take your breathe away. Seriously. I didn’t exhale for 3 minutes while things played out. Here’s Katie’s son and niece giving their reactions to the conclusion of Part I.

part 1 reaction 4

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child kept us utterly enthralled for 5 hours and 15 minutes. There were 3 curtains calls to a massive standing ovation. The cast and crew deserve every single bit of that applause and more. They put their whole hearts into what will forever be one of the highlights of my literary life. Bravo.

Big Tree Library, Little Tree Library

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big tree library, little tree library

Bookscape, our library’s gallery, has a giant tree kids can walk into and read (or take the secret stairs to the second floor and curl up with some pillows). The tree is so iconic, we are often referred to as the “tree library.” So when we were presented with an adorable picture book that featured a library in a tree, well, we just had to send a little of the magic home!

We read Red Knit Cap and the Reading Tree by Naoko Stoop (Little, Brown, 2014).
Red Knit Cap Girl and White Bunny are happily reading when Squirrel drops by to show them something interesting – a big, hollow oak tree. They have a brilliant idea. Why not turn the tree into a library? Soon all the animals are dropping things off (except Sly Fox – she keeps sneaking off with stuff). Beaver makes some shelves, Sheep brings snugly blankets, and Owl and Moon make a sign for the new Library. Now everyone can share a love of reading, even Sly Fox!

You’ll need:

  • 1 large box (ours was 4.5” X 4.5” x 9” – a large tissue box works too)
  • 1 corrugated cardboard base (we used a 10″ diameter cake circle)
  • Brown wrapping or packing paper
  • A selection of construction paper
  • A selection of poster board
  • White paper
  • 6 mini craft sticks (ours were 2.5″ long)
  • 2 toilet paper tubes
  • Markers for decorating
  • Scissors and tape for construction
  • Hot glue

finished tree library

First, cut the lid or bottom off your box, and hot glue it to a corrugated cardboard base.

tree library step 1Next, crumble up a swath of brown packing paper (ours was 25″ x 36″). The more wrinkly it is, the more it will look like bark! Wrap the paper around the sides of the box, anchoring it tape or hot glue. Hot glue the paper to the base as well. One thing to note – you want the brown paper to extend about 14″ – 16″ above the top of the box. This will give you nice, fat branches on your tree.

tree library step 2Cut sections into the paper, then twist the sections tightly to create branches. Notice in the photo below that the branch sections end 4-5″ above the top of the box. If you cut them too close to the top of the box, your branches will droop.

tree library step 3Add some green construction paper leaves, and your tree is done! We used the box lid to create shelves for the library, tucked a couple felt blankets in place, added a patterned paper rug, and made a library sign. Here’s a shot of our library’s interior.

interior of tree libraryWe wanted the library books to sit solidly on the shelves, so we hot glued mini craft stick spines to 2.75″ x 4″ pieces of poster board, then hot glued a couple 2.25″ x 3.25″ pages on top. It worked great!

tree library booksIt takes a little time to make the books, and we really wanted to fill the shelves, so we prepped 6 books per kid in advance (132 books total!). Behold the fruits of our labors…

buckets o books Finally, your library readers! We fashioned ours after the characters in the book, using 2 toilet paper tubes and construction paper. We couldn’t help making a red knit felt cap for the girl, too.

red knit cap girl and bunnyOur library tree has red lanterns so those were the final touch to our project. We recycled them from this Creepy Underwear project and hung them on the branches with ornament hooks.

finished tree libraryThis project is adorable, but it has special significance too. Like this robot project, Red Knit Cap and the Reading Tree was selected by a little girl who was a die-hard story time regular and was moving out of New Jersey. So we asked her to share a very, very special book with us, and this was what she selected. This project’s for you Vivian!

Want to see a real-life library tree? You’ll find it here!