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Archive for the ‘Just for Fun’ Category
Friday, May 3rd, 2013
 Esau Andrade Valencia
He Dreamed of Pigs From Iowa, 2007
A Perfect Season for Dreaming – Un tiempo Perfecto Para Sonar by Benjamin Allire Saenz After a long and snowy New England Winter, the bright colors of spring are a welcome change! Nothing suits the vibrancy and brightness of springbetter than our newest exhibition,Latino Folk Tales: Cuentos Populares-Art by Latino Artists, curated by Sylvia Nissley. If you haven’t seen it yet, the exhibition will be up until June 9th, and it is a wonderful and colorful celebration of Latino folklore and fairy tales as retold and illustrated by many celebrated Latino picture book artists, such as Raul Colón and Lulu Delacre. Click here to preview more images from this exhibition.
We’d had a lot of fun in The Carle Bookshop showcasing not only the books featured in this exhibition, but also a wide selection of other picture books celebrating Latino culture and history. We’re taken this opportunity to boost our bilingual and Spanish language books even more so that we carry not only all available Eric Carle books in Spanish, but a good deal of other classics, such as Abran paso a los patitos (Make Way for Ducklings), La Senorita Runfio (Miss Rumphius) and Harold y el Lapiz Color Morado (Harold and the Purple Crayon).
Here’s a peek at our current front window display.
In addition to the books in our display, we added some beautiful tissue paper flowers. You can easily make these at home, either from colored tissue you may have left over from gift wrapping or with these easy flower-making kits that we sell in the Shop. We have a whole variety of kits in different color combinations and to make our flowers, we mixed and matched different kits to make even more varieties of flowers. They’re so cheery and make not only a great activity with kids, but wonderful decorations for any kind of party this summer!
I also made a papel picado-inspired banner for the top of the front window as well.
You can easily make one at home by using tissue paper and scissors. I wanted mine to be a bit more durable since it was going to hang for the duration of the Latino Folk Tales exhibition, so I made this one out of a colorful assortment of cardstock. Instead of sitting for hours with an x-acto knife, I used decorative paper punches in repeated patterns to quickly and easily make the designs. Then I strung it on some bright ribbon like a banner and hung it up.
This Sunday, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, our Art Studio will be hosting a special and colorful art activity from 1 pm-4 pm. If you can’t make it to The Carle this weekend, why not try making your own festive banner or paper flowers? Here’s a link with other easy papel picado banners for inspiration. Happy Cinco de Mayo!
Tags: bilingual picture books, Cinco de Mayo, Latino Folktales, Lulu Delacre, Papel Picado tutorial, Raul Colon, Spanish picture books, Tissue paper flowers
Posted in Art Supplies, Carle Museum Events, Just for Fun | No Comments »
Monday, January 7th, 2013
Wanna win this cool poster, personalized to you by Mo Willems? Well, read on!
Back in 2009, as a great treat to The Carle, Mo Willems created this wonderful poster to commemorate our annual gala in New York. (You can read more about The Carle Honors here.) We sell the posters in the shop and people are always asking, “Which artists inspired Elephant Gerard’s portraits?” Well, we know the answer. Do you?
In his poster Mo Willems pays homage to twentieth-century artists who have influenced his work, or whose work speaks to him, or are simply easy to spoof. Rather than just rattle off the names of these artists for you, Mo and I thought it would be fun to to test our art-savvy blog readers instead: Can you identify all the artists correctly? We think you can!
One lucky reader who identifies the greatest number of artists correctly will win a Carle Honors 2009 poster autographed and personalized by Mo Willems!
Here’s how to enter:
- Look closely at all 16 pieces of art in the image below (click to enlarge) and use the numbered guide to tell us the name of the artist who inspired each numbered piece. (See hints below!)
- Identify all 16 portraits in a comment below before 12 pm EST Friday, January 11th. We will be keeping comments hidden until a winner is announced to keep guesses confidential.
If more than one entrant gets all sixteen answers correct, one winner will be selected at random from among the correct answers.
Need a hint?
Hint 1: One of the artists is featured more than once.
Hint 2: One of the pieces represents a genre, rather than a specific artist. (Okay, we’re feeling nice. We’ll just give it to you: #12 is “African Mask.”)
Hint 3. All art is from the 20th century.
Good luck!
Tags: 20th century art, art inspiration, Elephant and Piggie, Mo Willems, The Carle Honors
Posted in Giveaways, Just for Fun, Picture Book Puzzlers | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 25th, 2012
Stay warm, be merry and read books.
Happy Holidays
from your friends at The Carle.
Photo by Kristin Angel, 2012.
Posted in Just for Fun | No Comments »
Saturday, May 26th, 2012
We had a visit from our favorite mouse, Maisy, today! She stopped by to help celebrate our newest exhibition, Our British Cousins: The Magical Art of Maisy and Friends. A young guest even got her to autograph some of the picture books he just bought in our store. It made his day. You can meet Maisy too, tomorrow, Sunday May 27 at 2:30 and again the weekend of June 2nd & 3rd.
In the meantime, you can browse our Maisy section of our online store. We have books, prints, toys and even fabric! Check back soon for even more as it arrives. Have a great weekend!
Tags: Lucy Cousins, Maisy
Posted in Just for Fun | No Comments »
Monday, March 12th, 2012
In March we start looking for early signs of spring. The first flowers in the garden, green buds on trees, the return of songbirds and, of course, rainy days. Grey, rainy days can still bring the chance for bursts of bright color — seen in children’s raincoats and galoshes, cheerful umbrellas, and if you’re lucky, a rainbow in the sky. This week’s puzzler is filled with images from picture books of rainbows. Can you name each book? Put your guesses in the comments below and I’ll be back at the end of the week with the answers.
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Tags: children's books, children's literature, picture books, quiz, rainbows, Trivia
Posted in Just for Fun, Picture Book Puzzlers | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 5th, 2012
Happy March! After a pretty mild winter here in New England, March came in with a delightful snowstorm. Mother Nature’s way of reminding us that winter isn’t over until she says it’s over! There’s a common saying that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, so for this week’s puzzler, we have images of lions and lambs. Can you name each picture book correctly? Put your guesses in the comments below and I’ll be back at the end of the week with the answers.
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Tags: children's books, children's literature, just for fun, lambs, lions, March, picture books, quiz, Trivia
Posted in Just for Fun, Picture Book Puzzlers | 5 Comments »
Thursday, February 9th, 2012
I just had to share with you this wonderful matching game made by one of our customers. Marabeth Nally, a teacher at the RMSC Preschool in Rochester, New York purchased some of the Very Hungry Caterpillar Color Dot fabric and Very Hungry Caterpillar Sticker Set. I was so delighted when she recently stopped by to show what her classroom had made with these and a few other easy, recycled materials.
This adorable pouch is filled with an assortment of multicolor lids. The children and their families collected them from milk and juice and other beverage bottles and then recycled them into a fun game. The children then stuck matching sets of stickers onto the bottle lids to create a memory game.
To play the game, place all the lips face down and turn over two at a time. Try to remember where each image was to create matching pairs. Marabeth even made an adorable tag for the game that says “Reduce, Reuse, Rejoice!” Isn’t that a wonderful idea? Thanks for sharing, Marabeth!
Have you brought Eric Carle’s books into your classroom in a creative way? Tell us about it!
Tags: DIY, Eric Carle, fabric, games, memory, recycling, Very Hungry Caterpillar
Posted in Just for Fun | No Comments »
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
I received something in the mail the other day. Flat Stanley!
Do you know about Flat Stanley? Flat Stanley first appeared in a book by Jeff Brown, called Flat Stanley, illustrated by Tomi Ungerer (we had an exhibition of his artwork here at The Carle this past summer) in 1964.
Flat Stanley has since been re-illustrated by other authors and a book series of early readers track his worldwide adventures. The books have inspired the Flat Stanley project. Kids can create their own Flat Stanley out of paper send it through the mail to other children and adults who document Flat Stanley’s travels. Kids can track their characters as he has adventures around the country and even the world!
This Flat Stanley was sent to me by my nephew whose 2nd grade class is doing a unit of geography and are using Flat Stanley’s travels to help their lessons. I decided to take Flat Stanley to work with me and send back pictures of what a great time Flat Stanley had at The Carle. I thought you might be interested to see them as well. I’ll let Flat Stanley take it from here:
I can’t believe I met the Caterpillar!
Here I am in front of a giant mural painted by Eric Carle. Blue is my favorite color.
I made some new friends. Here I am with Knuffle Bunny, the Caterpillar, and a Wild Thing.
What? Is there something behind me?
I browsed the amazing bookstore.
I read a lot of great books.
I made some art in the Art Studio. Being made of paper, I was very careful with the scissors.
I even helped out at the cash register. “That will be one million dollars, please.”
I also visited the gallery, but sorry, no photos allowed in there! I had such a great time at The Eric Carle Museum! Thanks for inviting me!
Have your children or students ever made a Flat Stanley? Where would you take your Flat Stanley visitor? And if you ever want to send your Flat Stanley to visit the Eric Carle Museum just let me know. We always have a great time here!
Tags: Carle Museum, Flat Stanley, Jeff Brown, Knuffle Bunny, Tomi Ungerer, Very Hungry Caterpillar, Wild Thing
Posted in Carle Museum Events, Just for Fun | 1 Comment »
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