Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

The Library Link of the Day features this article about the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

The facility is garnering a lot of attention over its interactive exhibits, which use a new technology called "Holavision" to display ghostly images that interact with live actors.

A library representative said Holavision is a patented, secret process that allows for the formation of images in the air where there is no image-forming screen or surface.

The Holavision exhibit "Ghosts of the Library" puts Lincoln right in the room.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum website

Theater: His Dark Materials

I wish I could travel to London to see the second production of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. This site has wonderful behind-the-scenes information about the play. If you are a fan of the books The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, you will want to go through this site about the production.

Author: Charlie Higson

There is a lot of publicity about Silverfin by Charlie Higson. The book has already been published in the UK and Canada, it will published in June here in the USA. Higson has written about the dearth of action thrillers for boys and "...he partly blamed "the fact that children's publishing is run almost exclusively by women..."

Children's book publishers are understandably wary about violence in books, even books that will likely be read by parents as well, and Higson says he tried to find the balance between "Tom and Jerry and Sam Peckinpah." In the next novel, due to be published early in 2006, he made a decision to back away from the cartoonish mayhem of the movies. "In the Bond films you had those scenes where hundreds of guys in colour-matching bodysuits get blown up, and it's a bit of fun. But I thought I'd like the kids to think about this a bit more."

The Power of Puppetry

This is Dragon. He never fights and he never bites and he would NEVER blow fire, right?

I was just been discussing the magic of puppets with my daughter when I came across this nifty article. Puppets have a power all their own to pull children (and grown up children) into a story.

"You tell a story with a puppet, it holds the audience's attention. It is an extraordinary teaching tool and endless entertainment for children's fertile minds,"...

Author: Chris Van Allsburg

If you are a fan of Chris Van Allsburg's books you will not want to miss this article by Hilary Waldman. The piece describes his studio, home and inspiration for his unique storytelling.

Scattered on the drafting table these days are the typed, pencil-scratched pages of a new screenplay. Van Allsburg is adapting his 1995 story “The Widow’s Broom” as a movie scheduled for release by Paramount next year (a movie based on another of his books, “Zathura,” is due out late this year).

He works when his children, Sophia, 13, and Anna, 9, are in school. The studio is quiet. Music would interrupt his creative juices. Inspiration for Van Allsburg comes from the vacuum of a clear mind.

Movie: Hoot

While I was at the TLA conference I stopped at the Walden Media booth to thank them for their movies Because of Winn Dixie and Holes. Walden Media is a very interesting company. The fact that they are the company behind the movie of The Lion, the Witch and and the Wardrobe gives me hope for that project.

One of their new ventures is the movie version of the Newbery honor book, Hoot. Jimmy Buffet is one of the producers and he will doing the music for the film.

The Boca Beacon reports that filming will begin this summer in Boca Grande.

The Art of Maurice Sendak

Thanks to Achockablog for the tip about the exhibition "Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak," at the Jewish Museum of New York, April 15, 2005 - August 14, 2005.

Julie Salamon of the New York Times writes:

Exuberance and angst, whimsicality and grace reverberate in the original drawings on display, along with preliminary sketches, artwork for posters, and theatrical sets and costumes created from Sendak designs. It can be exhausting just to consider the range of influences: Blake and Mozart, Laurel and Hardy, Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Art Spiegelman's "Maus."

Leonardo da Vinci

Google is celebrating the birthday of Leonardo. He was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy, near Florence.



Diane Stanley's book Leonardo is a well researched and elegantly illustrated work.




My favorite "Leonardo" book is Leonardo's Horse by Jean Fritz and illustrated by the incomparable Hudson Talbott. From the moment you see that curved top you know you are in for a treat. Fritz and Talbott weave the story of the magnificent horse sculpture Leonardo designed for the Duke of Milan. Sadly, the giant bronze horse was never completed during his lifetime. The centuries zoom forward to 1977 when Charles Dent decided he would make Leonardo's horse a reality. This moving story is enjoyed by folks of all ages.

I love Hudson Talbott's work.

Picture books about the Holocaust

Writing for children about the Holocaust takes a special gift. It can be difficult to communicate the horror of those years to young readers without graphic descriptions of atrocities and concentration camps.

There are many amazing and touching novels for young people that deal with this time period but when you do not have the time to teach a multiweek novel unit, picture books can say it all.

These are four picture books I share with elementary students.



Forging Freedom: A True Story of Heroism During the Holocaust by Hudson Talbott
The true account of Jaap Penraat's efforts to help Dutch Jews escape persecution by forging papers and documents for them.
Talbott's wonderful illustratons include a map of Europe with Hitler's head, like an octopus with barbed wire tentacles, reaching into every corner of the continent. This picture is truly worth a thousand words.



The Cats in Krasinski Square by Karen Hesse
The opening lines of the story set the scene, “The cats come from the cracks in the Wall, the dark corners, the openings in the rubble." The abandoned cats of the city help the Resistance smuggle food to the starving people trapped behind the wall around the Warsaw Ghetto.



The Butterfly by Patricia Pollaco
Monique is a young French girl who discovers her mother is hiding a Jewish family in the basement. Kids listen thoughtfully to the story but they REALLY get mad when the German soldier cruelly crushes a butterfly in his gloved fist.



Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story by Ken Mochizuki
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania in 1940. As the Germans invaded Poland, thousands of refugees flooded into Lithuania begging for visas that would allow them to travel to safety. Despite orders from his government, Sugihara signed travel visas around the clock and saved thousands of lives. The drama of the events and the courage of Sugihara and his family make this true story unforgettable.

The Flopsy Bunnies' Garden

From BBC News:

The garden at Gwaenynog Hall in Denbigh (Wales) served as the setting for The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and those other "rabbit" books Beatrix Potter wrote. The current owners of the hall are restoring the garden to how it appeared when the author visited.

"Beatrix Potter's mother and my great-grandmother were sisters and she came here to stay with her Uncle Fred. This is going back to the 1890s and she came some 13 times," said the mother-of-three.

Owner Janie Smith describes the garden:

"It's full of herbaceous plants, we have apple trees, pear trees, we have apricots, peaches and damsons and lovely green gardens to walk on.

"In June it is in tremendous flower," she added.

The potting shed is still there.