Another fabulous day at the TBC Camp!  Marianne Malone, author of The Sixty-Eight Rooms (about the miniature Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago), spent the entire day with us. After introducing herself in the morning, she took us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the American Period Rooms, some of which reminded us of the Thorne Rooms, although these were life-sized.

We started the morning with a writing exercise to prepare for Marianne’s visit. Choosing from pictures of a few Thorne rooms that were featured in the book, we each created a character to inhabit the room.

Check out the key around her neck

When Marianne arrived, she shared her childhood and her writing process with us and we talked about where our inspirations come from.  (She also shared a picture of herself and friends at twelve with a vinyl record, but, we decided, modern-looking clothes.) She had a love for miniatures as a child, was a middle school art teacher and an art history major at the University of Illinois, and lives in Chicago – all this and more contributed to her book.  She stressed the importance of sleep to being a happy, smart person, showing us a picture of her bed (in actual size).  The Sixty-Eight Rooms is Marianne’s first book, but she said there will most likely be two sequels – the next one is scheduled to come out in 2012.  We will be waiting with baited breath!

We took the bus across town to the Met, where we walked through the Greek and Roman, Byzantine, and Medieval galleries to reach the newly-renovated American Wing.  We walked around the top floor – the earliest American rooms.  Marianne showed us the Wentworth Room, a 1700s living room from Portsmouth, NH, with green furniture.  Narcissa Thorne, creator of the Thorne rooms at the AIC, made a room based on the Wentworth Room.  After wandering around the rest of the floor, we broke into pairs and used our characters from the morning to create dialogues that take place in the museum (or at least start in one of the period rooms).

Heading out of the Met, we had lunch nearby in Central Park, where there was another intense game of capture the flag.  Marianne was still with us, and came all the way back to Symphony Space to hear some readings of the dialogues we wrote at the museum.  As in The Sixty-Eight Rooms, many of the campers’ stories started in the period rooms, but ended up someplace else entirely — such as in 1600’s America, or a long dark passageway. There was even a conversation between a samurai and a kamikaze pilot!   After reflecting on our adventures, we said goodbye to Marianne and got a few goodies from Random House before calling it a day.

Tomorrow we’re heading to the Bronx Museum to see an exhibit about the Civil Rights Movement with Rita Williams-Garcia, author of One Crazy Summer.

Can’t believe the week is going so fast!

Day 2 of the TBC Camp was, if possible, even more exciting than yesterday’s kickoff! We met the legendary Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth, and spent the day playing with all things wordy.

We started off the day as we always do, with puzzles and writing prompts related to our theme book. Today was devoted to all things Tollbooth, so we completed custom-made word searches and wrote short pieces about the classic novel. We were soon whisked to Symphony Space’s roomy stage to play some games while the camera crew from WNYC set up their cameras and sound equipment. WNYC came to film Mr. Juster’s time with the campers for a web feature on his illustrious career, but they made ample time to watch the campers perform several rounds of Word Symphony, a game which involves making verbal music out of a selection of words from– you guessed it– The Phantom Tollbooth. The WNYC crew even took the time to film the campers reading their original writing based on a hilarious prompt they were given by the author during our lunch in the park. You can look out for the video feature on WNYC’s website soon:  http:\\www.wnyc.org

Norton Juster talked to us about character development, a key skill in writing. He had campers make up conversations between any two characters (real or imagined, physical or inanimate, dead or alive, human or creature) to deepen the writer’s understanding of those two characters. He explained that he often does this exercise in his own writing process, but rarely uses those conversations in the final written product. He showed us the power of dialogue in character development, and the results were intriguing, smart, and often  hilarious. We witnessed camper-written conversations between a cabbage and a rock at the end of the world, a cell phone call between a fox and a garden gnome, and the battle strategies of a mouse and a rat before an attack on some very unfortunate hamsters. Mr. Juster, though, was not done yet. He read us a hilarious account of Cinderella told in Spoonerisms (in one instance of which the first letters of two words are switched, e.g. runny babbit) and taught us a little something about word play and its importance to his writing. Anyone who has read The Phantom Tollbooth knows that Norton Juster loves his puns (the Whether Man, for example). His lessons were hilarious, insightful, and clearly benefited the campers’ writing.

But wait! There’s more!

Norton Juster also read to us from some of his newer books, a touching picture book about his granddaughter and a hot-off-the-press story of a very ugly ogre. He showed us an animated version of his second book, The Dot and the Line, which won an Academy Award. As you can see,  we had a very jam-packed morning, which we offset with a nice, long lunch and a pretty serious game of Capture the Flag which ended in a much-disputed tie.

When we returned to Symphony Space, we relaxed by reading, writing, drawing, and making some lists of our favorite words in honor of Norton Juster’s clear love of language. Some favorites included cubicle, frizz, egg, sword, and flabbergasted. We ended the day with writing, drawing, and drama, based again on Norton Juster’s visit.

Overall, quite an amazing day. Look out for us on WNYC!

Can’t wait for our visit to the Metropolitan Museum tomorrow with Marianne Malone! Don’t forget to pack an extra snack in case we have a late lunch.