It's the last week of October,so I suppose we should end the summer reading program at the end of this week. Even though I still haven't met all my goals! Between comfort reading during deadline season, then snatches of reading during travels (I've been in lots of states and NYC twice in the last month) I feel very priviledged to have read as much as I have.
And here's a fitting way to wind it up. While at a conference in NYC (at Times Square, which was punishment from the heavens for not wanting to take my cousins to touristy places), I escaped for a bit and headed over to the Fifth Avenue library.The current exhibit is titled "The ABC of it: Why Children's Books Matter." I KNOW.
The exhibit designers had a great time with this one: an ivy-covered nook with a reading copy of "The Secret Garden;" a Wild Thing door...
and an Alice whose neck of books expands and contracts
A tablet that asks you for adjectives, nouns, etc., then creates a Hans Christian Anderson tale from your words, with wonderfully absurdist results. Note that spunky heroines were on my mind at the time. And baking. I think that I would like to be referred to as "the most Tough of all Pies."
For my doll-loving friends, it's the original doll that inspired Mary Poppins! The real, somewhat scary, Mary Poppins of the books:
All of this was lovely, of course. But then I turned the corner. And then I started to cry.
If you look carefully, you'll see that the large map on the wall has places called "Dictionopolis" and "The Doldrums" and the island of "Conclusions" (you can only get there by jumping, of course). Children can sit in that car and pretend to be Milo and Tock. Honestly, I haven't many (any?) other people who read The Phantom Tollbooth. Suddenly, in this exhibit, I was among unknown friends. Friends who've read what I read, and loved the books that I loved.
And isn't that what our blogs, groups, and other media do? Allow us to make those connections? Thank you, all of you, for your companionship!