Truly Vintage Alphabet Books

Over the weekend we went to the New-York Historical Society Museum & Library (yes, they put a hyphen in New-York).  Our first stop was not the DiMenna Children's History Museum but a small exhibit on the fourth floor of a collection of not just model trains but all their accoutrements - train stations, miniature figurines, merry-go-rounds, and more.  There was a pamphlet available for a self-guided scavenger hunt and it was a blast.  Then we headed downstairs for the Children's Museum.  My older daughter loved it (her class has been having regular visits from an educator from the Society) but I was unimpressed, except by these vintage alphabet books and games.

There's a reason the Historical Society has been given the nickname "New York City's attic!"

Find Your Inner Artist (or Stop-Motion Animator)

On Thursday, I took my girls to our local library branch for this program on the works of Ezra Jack Keats.  We all (including me!) had a chance to make Keats-inspired collages, ostensibly of our neighborhood.  Can you guess which one of us did which collage?  Here they are:

The workshop was run by an educator from the Jewish Museum in connection with its exhibit, The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats. The woman who led our program, who is an artist herself, did a fantastic job.   It looks like the museum is doing the workshop at one more branch, so go check it out!

Then today we went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, to see the exhibit Jim Henson's Fantastic World.  It was absolutely fascinating and the fact that there were plenty of TV clips allowed me and my husband to take turns viewing the exhibit while the other of us would watch the TV clips with the kids (on comfy beanbags!).  Not to mention that we got to make our own stop-motion animations!  I know this doesn't involve books but since Henson is known, at least in part, for educational television, I figured I'd throw it in.

What book-related exhibits or activities have you been to lately?

Library vs Museum (Redux)

As promised, I went to what my children call the "wide library" and I call the "main library" at 42nd Street to see the children's book illustration exhibit (very small and not worth a separate trip, but the children's room itself is - more on that below) and the centennial exhibit.  And just outside the centennial exhibit are the Lego Lions!  It was quite a day if you like that sort of thing which, of course, I do.

The exhibit showcases the great variety of objects the library owns, which is staggering.  From a Gutenberg Bible to diaries of Malcolm X, from original scores by Beethoven to works by Matisse, from a lock of Mary Shelley's hair to a model for the set of Sunday in the Park with George, from e.e. cumming's typewriter to a Ku Klux Klan robe, from art by Kiki Smith to Charles Dickens' letter opener (incorporating, creepily enough, his cat's paw)... it was just amazing. 

The New York Times review of the exhibit criticizes its lack of focus.  But to me that was exactly the point.  To show the vastness and diversity of items the library has collect.  And it raised the question for me, again: what is the difference between a library and a museum?

As for the "wide library" itself, it manages to be both grand and peaceful.  A real oasis in the city.  More so than some of the better-known museums, which are often so busy that it is hard to get close enough to see whatever you came to see. 

The children's room, worth a trip even without the exhibit, is cheerful, with lovely murals mostly featuring New York locations, the standard cut-out cardboard book characters and bright-colored, inviting furniture.  I wanted to move in. 
Have you been to any NYPL exhibits?

Spreading the Library Love

Library.  A place in which literary, musical artistic, or reference materials (as books, manuscripts, recordings or films) are kept for use but not for sale. (Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary)

Those of us who love libraries know that they are much more than the sterile definition above.  Roxie Munro and Julie Cummins, the author and illustrator of The Inside-Outside Book of Libraries, know it too.  This marvelous book (one in a series of Inside-Outside books which focus mainly on cities) takes the reader, as the title suggests, on a tour of libraries, showing the buildings they are housed in both from inside and out.  

The libraries depicted range from a branch of the NYPL located in Chinatown, which won my heart immediately as it is one of the branches I frequented as a child, to one on an aircraft carrier, to one in a prison, to one for the blind and physically handicapped, to a bookmobile. 

This book also takes us to libraries which don't focus on books at all, such as a tool library and the library at the Explorers Club, a repository of maps and other artifacts.  That one made me wonder what the difference is between a library and a museum, anyway.  (Museum. An institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value.)   The only type of library missing which I would have liked to have seen included is a toy library, which I first learned about from a friend who lives in Asia; I think they are more common outside the United States.  (Although the Inside-Outside series ventures beyond our shores in the works on cities, this volume stays here.)

One of the many things I love about this book is that it shows how libraries are particular to the communities they serve.  The Chatham Square branch of the NYPL in Chinatown has books and all sorts of other materials in Chinese while the library for the blind has books in Braille.  Through these well-chosen examples, the reader sees that a library is much more than a collection of books or other items: it is a community center, an educational facility, a link to the outside world.  In a stroke of near-genius, the last spread shows "home libraries."  These are not fancy wood-panelled rooms but rather any place in any type of home that holds the books that are precious to its inhabitants.  What a wonderful note to end on!

This book is rather wordy so I violated my own rules and paraphrased and omitted as I read it to my girls.  They were fascinated.  My three-year-old was particularly intrigued by the prison library (go figure).  When I asked my five-year-old the admittedly inane question, "Isn't this a nice book?," she quickly corrected me.  "No, it's an interesting book."  She was right.  Go pick it up at your local library today!  (I couldn't resist.)