Monica Edinger's Blog, page 94

The Story Museum

I was a collecting child which no doubt partially explains my interest in museums.  At one point during my many years trying to figure out how to tell Sarah Margru Kinson's story, I seriously contemplated doing it as an exhibition complete with a curator and rooms for each part of her life.  I especially like the cabinet-of-curiosities-sorts-of-museums, those with cases and rooms filled to the brink with things,  say London's John Soane's Museum and Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum.  I also adore the idea of museums that are sly and totally unlike anything else, say  The Museum of Jurassic Technology  or  Dennis Severs' House (both of which I've yet to see).  And when it comes to children and museums, the more experiential and hands-on, the better.

Which is why I'm excited about Oxford's Story Museum.  It is truly an original idea — blending art, performance, telling, viewing, and pretty much everything else story-related in imaginative ways.  While the physical museum will not be open for a while yet, they've been working in schools and doing all sorts of programs featuring their ideas about stories.  Some of these include:

Schools programme  "Since 2005 the Story Museum has been working with teachers to harness the power of stories to inspire and support children's learning. An important strand of this work is oral storytelling: learning to tell stories from memory."  Some of the schools they work with center their whole curricula around storytelling, Storytelling Schools.
Alice's Day .  As you might guess given the name of this blog, I wish I could have been at this year's event, just a few weeks back and am thinking I've got to get there next year as it is a very important anniversary for Alice.
1001 stories   That's right. "Inspired by this ancient Arabic tale we have set ourselves the challenge of gathering and sharing 1001 stories for everyone to enjoy."  They've got a bunch there already.

Yesterday, Philip Pullman who is, unsurprisingly, one of their patrons took me to the museum where we got a fascinating tour with co-director Kim Pickin.  The physical space is a remarkable warren of rooms of all sizes with a fascinating history and, if they do even a smidgen of what they dream to do, it will be extraordinary. They've got some massive Alice cut-outs peering out of the windows, a dinosaur, some scary vaults (part of the space used to be the post office and there are rumors that gold bullion was stored there at one point), some very old printing presses, and lots of energy .  Outside they've a few sly touches to intrigue passersby.

The sign says "Rochester's Story Supplies" and the objects are witty and clever story references.  I wasn't able to get a very good shot of the window so you must just go yourself to see it! Below is another small and even more subversive window with three bowls— for what story, do you think?  They've got a third in the works being created by Mini Grey that is going to be equally clever.

And then there is this phone booth that I noticed as we drove in, wondering about the chain. To give you a feel of their sensibility, they've toyed with it being a museum entrance. (Be sure to check out the close-up of the sign below.)

A Few New Reviews

I do occasional reviews over at James Patterson's readkiddoread.  Here are the most recent:

Atinuke's Anna Hibiscus

Uma Krishnaswami's The Grand Plan to Fix Everything

Sue Macy's Wheels of Change: How Women Road the Bike to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way)

Gary Schmidt's Okay for Now

Remembering the First Harry Potter Movie

I'm off to Africa today so will probably have to wait till I come back to see the last Harry Potter movie, but all the reminiscing has me recalling my experience with the first movie.  It came out ten years ago this coming November and, for me, will be forever linked with something that happened two months earlier downtown from my school. Here's my letter to the New York Times about it:

Harry Potter's Triumph
Published: November 24, 2001
To the Editor:

Re "Harry's Big Weekend" (editorial, Nov. 20):

No doubt the Harry Potter movie would have broken box office records even before the World Trade Center tragedy. J. K. Rowling's books were already very special to children, which made the movie's release an additional form of healing for our city's children, who are still coping with the events of Sept. 11.

My fourth-grade students had a first day of school they will never forget; they have had field trips canceled and more than the usual evacuation drills; and they have had to contend with the same grief and fears that adults are coping with.

For these children, the Harry Potter movie is better than anything a trauma specialist could provide — not escapist entertainment, but the satisfaction of knowing that good can trump evil.

MONICA EDINGER

New York, Nov. 20, 2001

The writer is a teacher at the Dalton School.

Harry Settling In

For whatever reason this week's final Harry Potter movie doesn't feel as major an ending of anything for me as the publication of the seventh book did.  That was exciting because I was eager to see how Rowling wrapped up her story. And it did feel like an exciting end of something remarkable — a global obsession with a series of books.  The movies feel different to me  — something more tied to a broader societal aspect of the Harry Potter phenomena.  Don't get me wrong — I think it is great — I had a blast last November at Wizarding World and enjoyed my butterbeer very much.

But what pleases me most of all is something most people don't see — the way the books are steadily read, quietly read, by kids who weren't alive when the first one was published, who have none of the nostalgia so many have right now.  I'd always thought the books would have legs, that they weren't a flash in the pan, that kids would continue to enjoy them as they do the Oz books and so far that has indeed been the case among my fourth grade students.  The media mix now is interesting — with many books they have often seen movie versions before reading the books, but that is just fine. They are savvy viewers and know the books will be different.

That said, I just looked back at all my excited posts when the final book was published.  I'd been playing with Comic Life at the time and did the following comic about my own history with the series.

Lush Animation of Salman Rushdie's Luka and the Fire of Life

In my youth I fell for Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and sometime later Haroun and the Sea of Stories.  Having followed the furor and then read The Satanic Verses I was very moved by Haroun knowing some of the history that caused Rushdie to write it.  I also was enchanted by the lush language, the folkloric play, and the homage to The Wizard of Oz (which Rushdie first wrote about as an article for  The New Yorker and then expanded as a monograph for the British Film Institute).  And while last year's Luka and the Sea of Fire did not feel as strong as those earlier works I still enjoyed Rushdie's unique and wild imaginative style.

For me Rushdie's writing is so much about language and imagery expressed in words so I was fascinated to come across this article in the Guardian about a competition among animation students at London's Kingston University to come up with a concept for a film from the book.

Students from the University's faculty of art, design and architecture visited the book's publisher Random House to meet the author and present their ideas for visual concepts. Four of these concepts were selected to be made into four animations, which then went to a panel of judges including Rushdie and Milan, to whom the book is dedicated, to select an overall winner.

The results are fabulous and may make you want to check out the book if you haven't already.

The winning video is by Han Byul Lee, Sam Falconer, Irsiz Heathershaw, So Hewi Lee and Dawn Smit

The first runner-up is by Zach Ellams, Moira Lam, Tim O'Leary, Sophie Powell

The second runner-up is by Frank Burgess, Angus Dick, James Lancett, Ben Tobitt, Sean Weston

The third runner-up is by John Balallo, Jun Hyoung Chun, Katie Robson, Yao Xiang

A Couple of Good Books Conjoined

I'm pretty Africa-focused these days so not good for posting anything else of substance. So here is something that combines two other favorites of mine (and is bound to go viral if it hasn't already).

Learning About Africa: Peace Corps in Sierra Leone

The first Peace Corps Volunteers in Sierra Leone arrived in 1962, just a year after the organization was founded.  There was a consistent presence until 1994 when the conflict in the country became too dangerous and the program suspended.  Happily, partially due to intense lobbying by the Friends of Sierra Leone the organization decided to resume the program and the first cohort has just completed their first year with a second starting training now.   I can't wait to meet some of them and their families next week at our meeting.

One thing that amazes me is that several of the current volunteers are blogging.  Certainly communications are very different than they were in my time what with cell phones. That said, from reading the blogs and speaking with other recent volunteers who served in other nearby countries, much is still the same.

If you are interested in knowing more about what life is like today for a Sierra Leonean Peace Corps Volunteer there are a bunch of blogs to explore here.  Two I've especially from the first cohort are:

{dispatch} Sierra Leone

bryan meeker in sierra leone

Learning About Africa: Going Back to Sierra Leone

Next Friday I'm heading back in time, so to speak.  That is, I'm going back to Freetown, Sierra Leone, for the first time since I left in 1976 after two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  My emotions are very complicated as I went to Freetown straight out of college, age twenty-one.  I was part of a large group of Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Sierra Leone at the time along with a number of British (VSOs) and Canadian (CUSO) volunteers.  I can't speak for all of them, but for me it was a seminal experience in my life.  So going back after so long and after a horrendous conflict is scary.  Will it seem familiar?  (I know the Cotton Tree will be even if the City Hotel is gone.) Will Krio come back to me?  (Kushe-o… How de body?…) My way around town?  Bargaining for a taxi? (Remembering that instead of it being two leones to the dollar it is now 4, 357.05 to the dollar.  Talk about inflation!)

Here's my twenty-one year-old self upcountry circa 1976

I'm going for a meeting of the Friends of Sierra Leone, a group that came together when things were first falling apart in Sierra Leone and no one in the world media seemed to be paying any attention.  I remember several meetings at the Sierra Leone Consulate here in NYC with Sierra Leoneans who later turned out to be members of the groups that did some of the worst atrocities during the war.  It took an invasion of Freetown for the world media to take notice and then it was all about child soldiers, blood diamonds, and amputating limbs.  Around that time I did a project with my fourth grade to raise money for Sierra Leone and draw attention to it as well.

In 2000 the Friends of Sierra Leone held its yearly meeting at Mystic Seaport to celebrate the Amistad. The replica of the ship was just completed and the museum had several exhibits about the captives and their stories.  While preoccupied with events in Sierra Leone I noticed that there had been children on the Amistad (something Spielberg left out of his movie) and later became obsessed with learning all about them. That turned into my story about Sarah Margru Kinson which is to be published by Candlewick Press in a couple of years (as it is an interactive book with envelopes and such it is complicated to create so while the writing is long done the designing and illustration is just getting underway).

The reason for this meeting is to celebrate Peace Corps return to Sierra Leone.  They had been there since the 60s, but were pulled when things go too dangerous in the mid-90s.  The Friends of Sierra Leone lobbied tirelessly to get Peace Corps to bring them back and finally last summer the first cohort returned and a second group is starting their training now.  And so we will be in Freetown shortly meeting with the current volunteers, returned volunteers (what Peace Corps calls those of us who served), family members of current volunteers, Sierra Leoneans who are also members of the organization, and many others.  If the weather prevails (it is the rainy season so who knows) we will visit Bunce Island, a notable slave fort that has great meaning and significance.  (I've always rued that I missed my chance to go during my own Peace Corps training because I was sick reacting to a shot of some sort —we got many.)  We will visit a school we've supported as an organization and help at another one.  Hopefully I will also visit the school I taught at, still there after all these years.

I will take photos and hope to blog as well — this grand adventure of mine.

In the Classroom: Family Tree Assignments

Genealogists have long defined familial relations along bloodlines or marriage. But as the composition of families changes, so too has the notion of who gets a branch on the family tree.

Some families now organize their family tree into two separate histories: genetic and emotional. Some schools, where charting family history has traditionally been a classroom project, are now skipping the exercise altogether.

Yes!  The above is from "Who's on the Family Tree?  Now It's Complicated" in today's New York Times.  And may I say that the ditching of family history assignments in schools is long overdue.  I've always railed against them because they assume an awful lot and marginalize students who may not have traditional family backgrounds, may not know their family history, etc etc etc.  I believe that the family tree assignment came about for a good reason — to bring personal history into the classroom rather than it always being about great men and such. However, it also came about with assumptions about the children in the classroom.  I remember arguing with colleagues who would tell me how children and families were so honored and happy after such an assignment.  All very well, I'd reply, but what about those children who were unable to do it for one reason or another?  They'd be given something else, I was told.  Making them, I'd say, all the more marginalized.

I've long been wondering if the changing notions of family are also causing more care with this assignment and was gratified to get the sense from this article that it is being reconsidered.  Good, good, good.

Bottom line: we teachers need to always be very, very, very sensitive to how we invite our students to bring their personal lives into the classroom.  Our reality may be very far from theirs.

Happy NOLA and ALA

Yesterday I came back to NYC from New Orleans in the early hours of the morning pleased to see my dog and a slightly cooler and less humid town. I had been incredibly disturbed at what I experienced and saw in 2006 so it was fantastic seeing tons of tourists, streetcars (weren't there six years ago), and a city more like the one I remember from visits before Katrina.

I spent my first day with friends brunching at Dooky Chase, a fantastic place I'd been to many years ago and was so heartened to see revived after the storm; taking the St. Charles Street streetcar through the Garden District to the end and back; having drinks at Napoleon House; and visiting the Voodoo Museum, a place I first went to years back because of the connection to African spiritual beliefs and practices I knew of from my time in Sierra Leone.

The following day Sarah Ketchersid, the editor for Africa is my Home,  and I went to the Amistad Research Center to look at the original Amistad materials. Since the book is going to be interactive — Ology-like with flaps and envelopes and such — we wanted to see if we might use some of the materials in the book.  The staff was incredibly helpful — thank you so much, Chris and Andrew — and seeing and handling the materials again (as I'd first done in 2006), this time with Sarah who has been equally immersed in the story for a couple of years now, was moving beyond belief. We read Sarah Margru's letters as well as those from other Amistad captives, their supporters, and even John Quincy Adams.  One side note — editors read differently than you and I.  That is, I read fast and scan and so I would take a look at a letter with its faded-difficult-to-make-out copperplate-script and figure there was nothing for us in it. But then Sarah would keep looking and suddenly point out a reference to the "children" or "the girls."  Editors know how to hone in and read in a way we don't!

The convention itself was grand — seeing friends and their books, learning about forthcoming ones, connecting with new folks, eating (and eating and eating and eating…) terrific meals, and enjoying the touristy parts of NOLA.  I don't wish to make anyone reading this too terribly jealous, but some especially memorable experiences were:

Dinner with mentor Katherine Paterson and extraordinary paper cutting artist Pamela Dalton in honor of their new book, Brother Sun, Sister Moon.  (Check out this video to see Pamela's process.)
Dinner with my SLJ's Battle of the Books peeps, Hyperion's Stephanie Lurie and Joann Hill, and Bartimaeus  — I mean —  this year's winner's creator, the one and only, Jonathan Stroud! (The dancing flames on the tablecloth was a particularly, er, apt touch.)
Celebrating with Rita Williams-Garcia and her editor Rosemary Brosman — holding Rita's purse as she danced up to the dais to receive her Newbery Honor, pigging out together at an amazing restaurant, and wiping away tears as Rita honored so many in her Coretta Scott King medal speech.

Thanks to all for making my NOLA and ALA time so delightful!