Tag Archives: Slade Morrison

Colors & Words

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Our exhibit “They’ve Got Game: The Children’s Books of Toni & Slade Morrison,” wrapped this spring, and we’ve had such an amazing time making connections to these extraordinary books. We’ve chatted with the exhibit’s featured illustrator, Pascal Lemaître, made an unusual reunion with retired teacher June Volk, and hosted a Zoom panel with the five outstanding illustrators who brought Toni & Slade’s words to life: Joe Cepeda, Pascal Lemaître, Giselle Potter, Sean Qualls, and Shadra Strickland.

In May, we made one last exhibit connection, which also had the special distinction of being our first in-person community event since the pandemic! Titled Colors & Words, the program was based on Toni & Slade’s final book, Please, Louise, which is illustrated by Shadra Strickland.

book cover 3

Please, Louise written by Toni & Slade Morrison, illustrated by Shadra Strickland. Simon & Schuster, 2016.

In the story, Louise discovers solace, freedom, imagination, and joy inside her local library, and it just seemed the perfect fit. The book is filled with images of storms, clouds, sky, and rainbows, so we went all out!

Perhaps one of the most touching thing about the Morrison’s children’s books is that they are a collaboration between mother and son. So we also brought that element to the event with Farmside Crafts, an artistic duo of stepmother and stepdaughter. There’s an interview with them at the end of this post!

As visitors entered our gallery, they were greeted by “Build A Story,” which is the same concept as magnetic fridge poetry, re-imagined as building blocks. Our blocks were 7″ x 5″ x 2″ white cardboard shipping boxes ($15 for a pack of 25 boxes on Amazon). Katie put together this fabulous list of words, keeping Toni & Slade’s stories in mind.

Guests could also register to win one of five giveaway baskets, each matched to a Morrison children’s book. We had SO much fun putting these together at JaZams, our local independently-owned toy store!

A little further back in the gallery was the science area, which had three way cool experiments: microwave clouds, grow a rainbow, and a rainbow optical illusion from our special collections (seen on this post and you can print it here!) The table was staffed by one of our super star volunteers, grad student Shruti Sharma!

The science was a little messy, but oh so fabulous! Just look at the results of the grow a rainbow! All you need are paper towels, cups of water, and washable markers…

Perhaps one of our favorite part of the program was the quietest. Inside our library’s famous tree, Katie rigged up a tiny blue tooth speaker ($20 on Amazon) and streamed Toni Morrison’s Grammy-nominated reading of her Who’s Got Game series. Throughout the day, you could peek in and see kids & caregivers relaxing on pillows, listening to Toni and paging through their books.

Displayed throughout the library were bios of the five illustrators who created children’s books for Toni & Slade. Each had a QR code linked to our Zoom panel.  Fun fact: Sean’s book Little Cloud and Lady Wind has a surprise appearance in Please, Louise (you’ll have to listen to the panel to find out where!):

The event two hands-on craft projects. The first was a simple bookmark making station (basic foam shape stickers – very popular with the younger set).

The second was a custom umbrella decorating area. The umbrellas were a direct nod to Please, Louise, who carries an umbrella throughout the entire story. We purchased the plain white child-sized umbrellas from Oriental Trading Company. A pack of 24 costs $75 (basically $3 an umbrella), so this project IS a splurge, but the great thing is you can return anything you don’t use to the company for a refund. We used Crayola fabric markers, which are 100% waterproof (we tested!) and very vibrant.

Some kids worked 10 minutes on the project, some took longer. The record was a whopping 2 hours of concentrated artistry resulting in the most fabulous umbrella I have ever seen.

Finally, we had the honor of hosting Farmside Crafts at the event! They brought a plethora of macramé rainbows, did live craft demos, offered sweet coloring sheets, and donated five custom pieces to our giveaway baskets!

Farmside Crafts began as a rainbow project between stepmom Amber and stepdaughter Lucy. It quickly grew into a business, with the entire family contributing their efforts and skills. Later, I caught up with Farmside Crafts for an interview:

Tell us a little about yourself!

We are a stepmom/stepdaughter team creating macrame rainbows together. It started when we made one for Lucy’s room and thought it would be fun to create custom rainbows for family and friends. It’s become a family affair with everyone helping and supporting. It’s been a wonderful bonding experience within the blended family struggle.

What has it been like to turn your passion into a business venture?

Lucy: I love that my art can make people smile. So I get to make people happy while also making money to be able to fund my other passions like theater, college savings, and having my own money to buy fun things.

Amber: We’re just getting started, but so far we’ve made over 22 custom rainbows and more than 200 rainbows for artisan markets, including other shapes like hearts, stars, and candy canes. We participated in Bryon Barn’s Christmas & Spring artisan market as a Junior Artisan. We’ve enjoyed meeting other young artisans, connecting with people in the community we wouldn’t otherwise meet, and the opportunities that have come out of it such as connecting with Cotsen Library. It always feels good to see that the hard work is recognized and appreciated by others.

What’s your favorite thing about your art?

It’s really fun to create beautiful & unique rainbows. It’s fun to get pictures from customers of our rainbows in their homes and to go shopping and find cute extra details to make one-of-a kind rainbow creations (i.e. adding bunny ears to a rainbow that we repurposed from some clearance bunny glasses).

Amber: One of my favorite things has been creating the branding with Lucy. She choose the name, came up with the logo concept, and found a quote from Maya Angelo that we use as our tagline, “be a rainbow in someone’s clouds.” She takes pride in packing up the orders to ship, and is thrilled when someone buys our rainbows. Watching her get excited about all the little details along the entrepreneurial path is such a joy and has brought me back to that same excitement I felt when I launched my marketing business 10 yrs ago. How cool that she is learning this at such a young age – its our modern day lemonade stand.

What has been the most surprising thing about your journey?

Lucy: The most surprising thing about doing my rainbows was how many people in my life were ready to jump in and help me. My dad made displays, my sister helped man my booth and some of my youth church leaders helped make rainbows. It’s a community effort.

Lucy, what advice do you have for any other young artists or business persons?

My advice to young artists and business people would be to make sure you are having fun. If you are being too hard of yourself, you will not stick with it long enough to improve. If you hate doing it, you won’t last long.

Family, Art & Words: The Legacy of Toni and Slade Morrison’s Children’s Books

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Just posted! A special edition BiblioFiles with Dr. Dana and co-host Dr. Jennifer Garcon, Librarian for Modern & Contemporary Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Over the course of a decade, Toni & Slade Morrison wrote nine children’s books together. Today, we are honored to present a Zoom panel discussion with the five artists who brought the Morrisons’ words to life with their beautiful, intriguing, and heartfelt illustrations. We welcome Joe Cepeda, Pascal Lemaître, Giselle Potter, Sean Qualls, and Shadra Strickland. Enjoy!

Follow this link to the BiblioFiles interview

Images courtesy of the artists

Dear Mr. Morrison…

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Letter from June Volk to Slade Morrison; Toni Morrison Papers, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

This is the story of how one teacher’s letter of thanks made its way from a New Jersey classroom to the landmark archives of the Toni Morrison Papers at Princeton University Library. It was discovered during our research for our current exhibit titled “They’ve Got Game: The Children’s Books of Toni & Slade Morrison.”

The author of the letter is June Volk, who at that time was student teaching at Upper Bradford School in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. She reached out to Slade Morrison after her students connected with the books in the Who’s Got Game? book series he co-wrote with his mother. She enclosed letters and drawings from the students, including these hilarious ones from David, both of which are proudly featured in the exhibit:

Letter from David to Slade Morrison; Toni Morrison Papers, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Original illustration of Poppy and Snake by David; Toni Morrison Papers, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Slade sent the letters to Toni, who was delighted. She in turn shared them with her editor, along with this lovely little note:

Note from Toni Morrison to Nan Graham; Toni Morrison Papers, Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

As Katie and I finished the exhibit, we were struck with a thought…was June Volk still in New Jersey? Was she still teaching? Would she be interested to know that her letter from decades ago was in a special place in the Morrison archive?

It took a little searching, but we finally found her! Today, we are delighted to share an interview with this award-winning educator.

Image courtesy of June Volk

Please take us back to 2004, and tell us a little about yourself as a student teacher!

After a career in retailing as a department manager for a major retailer and then as a buyer, I took time off to raise my two children. In the 1980s and 1990s, childcare options were difficult to secure and extremely unreliable for a working mother. To make matters worse, my position required many work hours plus a lot of travel time. I was fortunate to be able to make the choice to stay at home until my children were in middle school, substitute teach, and I decided to pursue a Master of Arts in Teaching at Montclair State University. During the last year of a teaching program, student teachers are placed in classrooms to practice teaching and I was lucky enough to be placed in a Montclair elementary school.

I was assigned to a third-grade classroom as a newly minted student teacher and the memory of that group of students brings a broad smile to my face. Maybe because it was my first real classroom experience or more likely because they were a very bright and engaged group of students, I believe I gained more from these children than they did from me. Teaching mathematics was an easy task for me at the time and perhaps that is why I eventually became a teacher of mathematics. On the other hand, Language Arts lessons were more of a challenge. The children were not engaged or excited with the available and assigned reading materials. I believe it was because the students came from diverse backgrounds, but the stories did not.

After searching booklists and reviews, I discovered the relatively new versions (this was 2004) of Aesop’s Fables by Toni and Slade Morrison. The students were hooked! They begged for read-aloud time and some of them memorized Kid A’s and Foxy G’s lines. The children loved the lyrical rhythm and rhyme of the stories that Toni and Slade created. When I asked them to respond to questions about the theme or the characters, everyone had an opinion, and no one objected to a writing prompt. As their teacher, I learned an important lesson that I retained for my teaching career: well-written, authentic, and relatable reading material was the key to engaging students in reading and writing.

Who’s Got Game? Poppy or the Snake? by Toni & Slade Morrison, illustrations by Pascal Lemaître. Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Can you tell us about your educational journey since then?

I landed my first teaching position in the Livingston Public Schools as a fifth-grade teacher. All teachers taught language arts in their ‘homeroom’ class and then specialized in either mathematics, science, or social studies. Being the new teacher, I was assigned to teach mathematics which I tackled head-on. I eventually earned a degree and certification in mathematics for middle school students. Although I still love teaching language arts, mathematics became my specialty.

I left Livingston after ten magnificent years and moved to Utah where I continued to teach middle school math for several years until my retirement. I now tutor students privately, which became very popular during the pandemic.

The letter you wrote to Slade Morrison was so wonderful. What prompted you to write it?

The students were so attached to the stories and when they saw Slade’s photo on the back jacket of the book, the students thought he looked really ‘cool’ and wanted to contact him.

Were you surprised to hear back from him?

We were very surprised to hear back from him! I never thought he would have the time to respond to our little classroom. Yet he did and the children were thrilled. They loved his signature and tried to copy his cursive!

Letter from Slade Morrison to June Volk. Courtesy of June Volk.

Toni Morrison kept your letter, your students’ artwork, and she even shared everything with her editor at Simon & Schuster. You definitely made an impact are officially immortalized in the Toni Morrison Papers at Princeton University Library. Do you mind sharing how that feels?

I am deeply overwhelmed. As a retired teacher this news brings me full circle. From the moment I decided to become a teacher (I was an older student and in my second career) I really wanted to make a difference for my students. I wanted to connect them to the subject matter in any way possible and get them excited about learning. Those connections are difficult to find now, especially when teachers are competing with mobile phones, online gaming, and lightning-speed technology. The Morrisons’ books were a hook for my students, and I am forever indebted to them for their creation.

Do you have any advice for all the student teachers out there, just starting on their paths?

Get to know your students really well! What excites them? What interests them? How can you as their teacher create lessons from the required curriculum that will fully engage your students? I know it’s not always possible to do this, but if you can create a lesson or two in a unit of study that really gets your students excited about learning it will become contagious in your classroom and they will trust you and follow you in their learning journey.