Week 1 of the Thalia Book Club  Camp 2011 started off  with a fun morning on the Symphony Space stage, with some games to help us get to know everyone’s names.  We talked about our favorite books — which include Harry Potter, the Pendragon series, Matilda, Kiki Strike, The Hunger Games , the Alchemist series, Breadwinner, the Maximum Ride series, the Box Car Children series, Eragon, The Penderwicks, The Golden Compass, A Mango Shaped Space, The Phantom Tollbooth, and The Giver.  We gathered in mini book groups to discuss our thoughts about the books of the week.

When we got back to the camp studio, we talked a little about the week’s activiites, then we headed out to Riverside Park for lunch and a good, if brief,  game of Capture the Flag.  We also learned how to play the detective game, Mafia. 

After lunch, the highlight of the day was our visit from Adam Gidwitz, author of  A Tale Dark and Grimm.  Adam talked about the roots of fairy tales, about the Grimm Brothers who wrote in Germany 200 years ago.  Adam brought a collection containing hundreds of Grimm’s tales, which he told us are very dark and scary and bloody.  We weren’t surprised to learn that  the word for ‘grim” in German is the same as the English word  — so the Grimm Brothers seemed to have found their true calling!  Adam told us that the original of the Cinderella story is much darker than the one most of us know.  He told us that some of his Grimm tale adaptations are very faithful to the originals and some are very different.  He looked for the strangest and bloodiest Grimm tales he could find to adapt.   One of the stories in his book is based on a tale he just heard a tiny but vivid and wonderful description of — “the hero drinks in a stream and turns into a wild beast.”  He loved that snippet and wanted to imagine an entire story with that scene.  He also explained that his style of writing is to give just enough detail but not too much — so that the reader can flesh out and imagine the characters and scenes him or herself.

Adam told us that as a boy growing up in Baltimore,  he loved to tell himself stories and was constantly inventing them to entertain himself — these were the beginning of his becoming a writer.  He told us about his next book, also a fairy tale book, based on Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen tales.    It took him a year and a half to write A Tale Dark and Grimm and then another year for the publishing process and it will take as long for the new one, which will be called In a Glass Grimly. 

Adam described for us his writing day:  He makes toast and tea, puts on his slippers, does one hour of writing and then lies down on the couch and stares at the ceiling.  When his wife gets home from work, there he is on the couch, staring — and creating his stories in his head!

Next we learned from Adam his secrets for plotting out a story:   He explained how he structures his stories.  He begins by coming up with the characters — he emphasized that having just one or two heroes of your story is best.  Every story must have the following:  A set-up, a Catalyst, the New World, New Challenges, The Biggest Problem, All is Lost, Big Idea, The Climax and finally, the Aftermath.  We all talked through these parts of a story, using Harry Potter and other books we all knew as examples.  We agreed that most books have these elements/develop in this way.  Adam gave us a worksheet to work up examples of our own for stories we might write later in the week.  We shared some of our story ideas with the group.

Finally, Adam held us rapt, as he read us the beginning of the gruesome Grimm tale, The Juniper Tree, and then Adam, a mesmerizing storyteller, told us the rest of the story in his own words.

Before heading out into the rain, Adam signed our books, we took a group photo and we got our camp t-shirts.

See you tomorrow!

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2011 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Book Club Camp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Another amazing week at the Thalia Book Club Camp came to it’s inevitable close today.

Sad as this is for campers, counselors, and administrators alike, we were sure to go out with quite the literary bang. We started off the day with games and drama activities to prepare for a visit from Dan Poblocki, author of The Stone Child. We wrote some whacky pass-along scary stories influenced by the book before heading down to meet the author.

Mr. Poblocki talked to us all about some paranormal activities he witnessed as a young child growing up in New Jersey. These experiences clearly influenced his current writing, and the kids loved hearing about his encounters with beings from…the beyond! The room was eerily quiet as Dan spoke about The Stone Child and his other work. Despite the decidedly creepy tone of his book, Dan himself was bubbly, warm, and energetic. He asked us about any scary or paranormal experiences we have experienced, and then we wrote about them briefly and bid Mr. Poblocki farewell.

Next we had our final lunch in the park and our final (epic) game of Capture the Flag– counselors vs. campers. Even though vastly outnumbered and severely battered from a week of rough play, the counselors emerged triumphant, winning in a landslide victory against all 23 Thalia Book Club campers…kidding. The campers whooped the counselors, as per usual.

We returned anxious for the afternoon’s activities. We began our final afternoon with games on the stage– improv games, “subtext” theater games, The Big Wind Blows, and Spit, a card game absolutely dominated by our very own ninja card-handler Olivia A.

After that it was time for a well-deserved PARTAY. We ate cupcakes, fruit, and bubbly juice spritzer drinks while talking about the week and reflecting on what was truly an amazing experience. Speaking from a counselor’s point of view I can truly say with confidence that this week’s kids were an outstanding, creative, lively, wonderful bunch, and I feel lucky to have met every one of them. We proceeded to the theater for our final reading with this sentiment in our hearts, and we watched with pride as two amazing TV and movie actors, Michael Cerveris and Rita Wolf,  read the absolutely amazing writing the kids put out this week. I won’t go into too much detail, as most readers of this blog saw the reading for themselves and experienced firsthand how amazing it was. Many kids mentioned afterwards how exhilarating it is to hear their work interpreted and performed by a professional in the spirit of Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts, and we are so lucky to have had this opportunity.

Finally, the farewells had to be said. There were hugs, high fives (which quickly degenerated into a series of high-jellyfishes and octopi– if you have ever picked up your child at camp you know what this means), and email exchanges, as well as pledges to return to camp next summer. We were sad to see everyone go, but also ultimately thrilled with what an amazing week it has been. We could not have had a better bunch of kids, and we are so happy to have experienced the presence of each and every one.

Look out for our posts next week on the TEEN Book Club Camp!! It should be a really exciting week.

SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER!!

-Sarah, Gwen, Sam, Madeline, Jenny, and Kathy

Note:  Check back here on Monday to see some great photos from today.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Book Club Camp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Book Club Camp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.