Thalia Book Club Camp 2011: Last day!

By Camp Staff
Published on August 12, 2011

We began our last day of camp on the Symphony Space stage, picking up where we left off with our dramatic reading of a scene from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. We then moved downstairs for our visit with Henry Neff, author and illustrator of today’s book, The Tapestry: The Hound of Rowan.

During his presentation, Henry told us the story of how he left the business world to work as a teacher and pursue his dream of writing and illustrating books for young readers. Inspired by some of his favorite books from childhood — the Lord of the Rings trilogy; Dune; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; and Where The Wild Things Are; among others — Henry set out to write a book that mixed fantasy, science fiction, history, and mythology.

In addition to being a very talented writer, Henry is also an illustrator and told us that when developing hischaracters, he often makes sketches of them. This technique, he said, allows him to picture his characters more clearly and gives him a better idea of how he wants to portray them in his writing.

We got the chance to look over a few of Henry’s sketches and talk about what emotions they evoked. As Henry explained, when illustrating, it’s not what you show, but how you show it that matters most.

Before we moved on to a drawing exercise, Henry gave us some advice about how to write a good book: be confident, be receptive to criticism, and, of course, keep reading!

Back in the studio, Henry gave us a quick lesson in drawing characters that express different feelings. We had a lot of fun making up our own characters and experimenting with their emotions.

After saying goodbye to Henry, we took an extra-long lunch break in the park to make the most of the beautiful weather and play a few rounds of capture the flag and Apples to Apples.

We wrapped up the day back at Symphony Space with more games on the stage, one of which included making up Shakespearean style insults, such as: “Fie on thee, thou foul Welsh cheese!” and “Thou art nothing but a reeky, brazen-faced ratsbane!”

Though this was lots of fun, it was soon time to pack up our things and meet our friends and family in the theater for our end-of-the-week performance.

For those of you who made it to the reading of the campers’ writing this afternoon, we hope you enjoyed it! Our performers, Dave Furr and Jen Regan, did a great job reading and we were so impressed by everyone’s work.

It’s been a great three weeks of camp and we can’t believe it’s already over! We hope you all had as much fun as we did.

See you next year!!

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Tags: Henry Neff, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 3, Day 4

By Camp Staff
Published on August 11, 2011

This morning we were very excited to be invited to the Park Avenue Armory for a behind-the-scenes tour of The Royal Shakespeare Company’s spectacular specially constructed theater and sprawling, very cool backstage area. The RSC is in residence at the Armory this summer as a part of the Lincoln Center Festival, performing its repertory of five Shakespeare plays for New York audiences over a period of six weeks.

At the Armory we were joined by Elise Broach, author of today’s book Shakespeare’s Secret, as well as Jeremy Adams, a producer with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Mr. Adams explained that over the course of about nineteen days, an exact replica of the RSC’s theater in Stratford-upon-Avon was unpacked and reconstructed in the Armory’s vast drill hall. In addition to transporting an entire theater overseas, the Royal Shakespeare Company brought around 140 people with them to New York, including actors, producers, stage managers, directors, designers, and musicians.

We learned that the RSC’s theater isn’t exactly like the theaters of Shakespeare’s day – modern additions include electric lights, upholstered seats, and a roof — but that the configuration of the seats is meant to recreate the feeling of an Elizabethan theater and increase the audience’s engagement with what’s happening on stage. As Elise pointed out, audience participation (in the form of shouting and throwing rotten vegetables) was an important feature of theater-going in Shakespeare’s time.

We had a lot of questions about the RSC’s theater and, when our conversation inevitably turned to stage blood, we were very interested to hear Mr. Adams describe it as a sweet, sticky syrup which actually tastes “quite nice.”

We were then taken by Pat Kirby, assistant production coordinator for the Lincoln Center Festival, on a backstage tour of the theater. She told us the RSC’s visit to New York took around four years to plan and execute. Walking through the dressing rooms and seeing the actors’ props and costumes, we began to get a sense of what life is like for members of the RSC in New York.

We even got to see the “wet room,” where actors covered in stage blood can clean themselves off.

After our great visit to the Armory, we all headed to Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park to do a writing exercise with Elise. Our task was to describe a character’s bedroom in a way that would give clues about their personality. Elise discussed with us the importance of setting in fiction and how it can affect the plot.

Today’s weather was truly wonderful and we were looking forward to enjoying our lunches when we witnessed a somewhat gruesome act of nature — very near where we were sitting, a hawk made a meal of a Central Park pigeon, causing some of us to loose our appetites.

Others, however, considered the event “awesome” and were inspired to make a few works of art.

Putting the hawk incident behind us, we made our way back to Symphony Space to hear more from Elise about how her first novel, Shakespeare’s Secret, came to be. We discussed what makes a good mystery, where authors get their inspiration, and why some scholars suspect that the plays we attribute to William Shakespeare may have in fact been written by a man named Edward de Vere. Finally, Elise reminded us not to get discouraged when writing and to always be open to criticism. While trying to get Shakespeare’s Secret published, Elise said that she often kept these words in mind: “If everything you try works, you’re not trying hard enough.”

For our last hour, we couldn’t resist heading back outside to enjoy the weather and play a few games in Riverside Park.

We wrapped up the day with a dramatic reading onstage of a scene from Much Ado About Nothing which we’re looking forward to continuing tomorrow.

See you then!

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Tags: Elise Broach, Lincoln Center Festival, Royal Shakespeare Company, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 3, Day 3

By Camp Staff
Published on August 10, 2011

Day 3 began on the Symphony Space stage with a game of pass-along storytelling. Sitting in circles, we each started a story and passed it to the person next to us, using our collective writing abilities to tell exciting stories of capture, rescue, and escape.

We were then joined by Lauren Oliver, author of today’s book, Liesl and Po. Lauren told us that she grew up in a house full of books where the line between “real life” and the imaginary was always blurred. An avid reader, Lauren would often write “sequels” to her favorite books so that the stories wouldn’t have to end.

As an adult, Lauren continued writing and has so far published two novels, Before I Fall and Delirium, in addition to Liesl and Po. She told us that her fiction is almost always in some way a reflection of her own personal experience, calling her writing an “alchemical blend” of real life and imagination.

Liesl and Po is Lauren’s first book to include illustrations, something which she said made her very nervous at first. She showed us the drawings of the book’s key scenes that she made herself in order to give the illustrator an idea of what she envisioned. Lauren also brought with her the final versions of the book’s illustrations, which arrived at her house only yesterday and which weren’t included in our advanced reader’s copies. We were very excited to see them — they turned out beautifully!

Keeping in mind the mission of Liesl and Po‘s protagonist, Lauren asked us to write short stories in which our characters embarked on a quest. We talked about how to set high stakes, create obstacles, and give our protagonists allies. Our action-packed stories included all kinds of quests, from conquering fears to reclaiming stolen treasure and uncovering our parents’ true identities.

After a great morning with Lauren, we all headed to the park to eat lunch and enjoy today’s beautiful weather.

This afternoon, we started thinking about tomorrow’s book, Shakespeare’s Secret, and discussed why, after four hundred years, Shakespeare’s work could still be important to us today. We broke into groups and were given different Shakespeare quotes with the task deciphering their meaning and writing a short skit to convey their message. As we learned, the essence of lines such as “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” can still be understood in the present day.

Finally, before we left, a few of us had the opportunity to share some of our favorite books with the group. The Book Thief, The Lightning Thief, and Dragon Rider were all presented during our end of the day “Book Talk” activity.

We had a busy day today and are looking forward to tomorrow — we have a great opportunity to visit the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Globe Theatre at the Park Avenue Armory in the morning. See you then!

Tags: Lauren Oliver, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 3, Day 2

By Camp Staff
Published on August 9, 2011

Today began with a visit from Dave Roman, author and illustrator of the graphic novel
Astronaut Academy, which tells the story of kids who go to school in space. A fan of comic books from a young age, Dave told us that he still draws inspiration from the comic books he read as a kid: Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot, Batman, and Ninja Turtles, among others. In high school, Dave started a comic book club and even wrote a comic book version of Beowulf for his English class.

As a student at the School of Visual Arts, Dave continued making comics and learned that sometimes simple drawings can tell a story even better than ones that are very detailed. Dave published Astronaut Academy this year and is currently working on book two!

We were really interested in learning more about how comics and graphic novels are made, and were excited when Dave gave us the chance to make some comics of our own. Taking Astronaut Academy as an example, we each made up a special school and thought about what classes it would have and what teachers would work there. We then invented two students, a protagonist and an antagonist, and began outlining a story — with illustrations, of course! A school in the clouds, a school for mice, and an underwater school for scuba divers were a few of the ideas we thought up.

After getting our books signed, we all headed to The New York Hall of Science in Queens to learn more about outer space and see some real-life rocket ships.

Dave had another writing activity for us, asking where we would go if we had a rocket ship. Sitting with our notebooks beneath some enormous rocket engines, we had plenty of inspiration.

Though our visit to the Hall of Science was cut slightly short by the rain, we had a great time exploring the museum with Dave and can’t wait to read his next book.

Back at Symphony Space, we wrapped up the day with some quiet reading, a game of “let the great wind blow” on the stage, and some surprise popsicles.

See you all tomorrow!

Tags: Dave Roman, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 3, Day 1!

By Camp Staff
Published on August 8, 2011

We began the week by playing a few games to get to know everyone. We talked about our favorite books and then interacted with one another to fill in a fun fact sheet about all the books on tap for this week.

At 10 AM our guest author of the day, Ben Winters, arrived and we launched into a discussion of mystery and surprises in everyday life, and about unintended consequences. Ben gave an example of one simple thing that could lead to unexpected consequences. His “what if” scenario was “a camper has forgotten his lunch and so I give him half of my lunch. Turns out the camper is allergic to hazelnuts, which were in my lunch, and so the camper throws up and ends up in the hospital, where he’s taken care of by a doctor, who turns out to be his long-lost brother. They go on a trip and their suitcases get switched with the suitcases of a diamond thief…” And on it goes from there.. Quite a wild story all resulting from a simple act.

Ben asked us to tell about mysteries we’ve had in our own lives and we heard tales of a toothbrush that landed in the cat litter, and lost cellphones found in the toilet and next to the lettuce in the refrigerator! All mysteries. Life is full of small, medium, and large questions, that are raised in your mind, which are later answered or unanswered. That is true of us and should be true of the characters in the stories we write. We are always trying to figure things out. All books are really mysteries.

Ben then asked the campers to talk about any challenges they’ve had with their writing. One challenge that came up was writers’ block. Ben suggested that one way to tackle that is to always begin your writing project writing the part you’re most excited about and when you’re done, put that aside and take that energy and move on to the most challenging part of your story.

How do you come up with ideas? Ideas are everywhere! Ben buys the newspaper every day and finds that the stories there spark his imagination. One of the campers mentioned that she was pictured on the front page of the paper the other day on a foraging trip in the park. Ben started to riff off of that story — a girl goes to the park to forage and … a million different things might happen, if you just ask “what if…”

He said he always likes to make an outline when he begins writing, but then often changes his story along the way.

Then we talked about Ben’s book, The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, and Ben explained that he was inspired by his time teaching creative writing in schools and observing kids’ interactions with their teachers, who may be mysterious to them; he imagined, what if?? Ben said that there are classic mystery stories — whodunits — and then there are the mysteries of trying to figure people out.

He then played us two pieces of music — one sweeping classical piece (Brahms’ violin concerto in D, third movement) and one weird and wild song by Tom Waits from his rock opera of Alice in Wonderland — and we free-wrote reactions to the music or stories inspired by it. Ben told us that the musician Elvis Costello said that ”writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” It is sometimes impossible to write about how music makes us feel. Each of us seemed to hear something different in the music — from a great, tragic love story to a tale of a singalong in a bar to a schoolgirl’s conflict on the street to a wacky tale of a Danish man in Iceland doing a hip hop dance!

Finally Ben invited us to write scenes between two people, where one knows something that the other doesn’t know. The results were very intriguing and entertaining.

After we got our books signed and took a group picture, we were off to lunch in the park, followed by enthusiastic games of Capture the Flag and Set and relaxing reading.

Our afternoon was spent talking about the books of the week in mini book groups on the Symphony Space stage.

In pairs we interviewed one another, helping us to get to know each other better.

Then we headed downstairs again for a final writing activity based on Ben Winter’s idea of “unexpected consequences.” Even thought the group started with three basic premises: a girl leaving for camp, a boy boarding a plane, and someone observing others in a playground, the results were so imaginative and varied.

The day really flew by and we’re all looking forward to our visit from Dave Roman, author and illustrator of Astronaut Academy, and our trip with him to the New York Hall of Science.

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Tags: Ben Winters, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 2, Day 5

By Camp Staff
Published on August 5, 2011

The final day of week two began with a round of Readers’ Theater on the Symphony Space stage in which we dramatized one of our favorite chapters from today’s book, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood.

Little did we know that Maryrose, who in addition to being an author is also an actress, had some more theater exercises in store for us. Our meeting with her started off with a vocal warm-up — howling — that reminded us very much of the feral children of Ashton Place.

Maryrose told us that her experiences in the theater helped teach her how to be a writer. When she eventually realized that she wanted to invent her own stories and characters rather than just portray them on stage, one of the cardinal rules of improv comedy, “always say yes,” helped her be unafraid to chase her ideas and tell stories.

To show us how improv storytelling works, we gathered onstage for a game of “yes, and…” Each person makes up a small part of a story, which the person after them then continues, beginning with the phrase, “yes, and.” By the end of our first round, we had a story of a clumsy thief with telekinetic powers who is exiled in Mexico after marrying the daughter of a mad scientist.

Though stories spontaneously produced by improv aren’t always perfect, Maryrose said, they can sometimes create a great first draft.

Back in the studio, Maryrose told us that one of the challenges she faced when starting to write The Incorrigible Children was deciding from which point of view to tell the story. With that in mind, she asked us to write a scene that showed an interaction between a pet and its owner, told once from each perspective.

After sharing our writing, we headed to our usual spot in Riverside Park for lunch with Maryrose and a few games.

We spent the rest of the afternoon back at Symphony Space playing theater games, board games, card games and, of course, reflecting on all of the week’s reading and writing.

Our day ended in the Thalia Theatre with a reading of the campers’ writing by two great performers, Betsy Lippitt of the Bat Company of actors at the Flea Theater in Tribeca and Matthew Cody, actor and author of Powerless and the forthcoming The Dead Gentleman. We were really impressed by the campers’ writing this week and it was great hearing it read aloud!

To everyone who’s coming back on Monday, see you then! And to everyone else, we hope to see you next year. Have a great summer!

Tags: Mary Rose Wood, Matthew Cody, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 2, Day 4

By Camp Staff
Published on August 4, 2011

Camp began this morning with a visit from the author and artist Brian Floca, illustrator of today’s graphic novel City of Light, City of Dark and of Lightship. Brian started off by showing us some of his earliest drawings; weasels, dinosaurs, Spiderman, and the Sesame Street duo Bert and Ernie were some of his favorite subjects as a child.

While studying art in college, Brian was drawn to images that told stories. In addition to painting, he wrote and illustrated his own cartoon strip and began to take an interest in children’s books after taking classes with renowned author and illustrator David Macaulay.

After graduating, Brian began work on the illustrations for his first major book, City of Light, City of Dark, written by Newbery Medal-winning author Avi. Brian told us that since then he’s worked on a wide variety of projects and that he is constantly searching for inspiration.

The Ambrose lightship, currently docked at the South Street Seaport Museum, ended up sparking Brian’s imagination and leading him to write and illustrate the book Lightship. To learn more about what inspired him, we took a trip downtown to see the ship for ourselves.

At the seaport, Brian explained that lightships were used in places where the water was too deep to build a lighthouse, and that their task of remaining anchored in the same spot wasn’t as easy (or as safe) as it sounds. On board the Ambrose, we explored the various below-deck compartments to get an idea of what life was like for sailors living on a lightship.

Brian was full of information about the Ambrose and pointed out to us the different parts of the ship he chose to illustrate, including the tiny galley kitchen and the engine room.

Back on the pier, we sat down in the shade to eat lunch and write stories set at sea.

In a Thalia Book Club Camp first, our writing activity was interrupted by a schooner which docked right in front of where we were working.

After changing locations and finishing up our stories, we read aloud our stories of encounters with whales, stormy seas, and crews who resort to cannibalism.

After parting ways with Brian, we headed back uptown to Symphony Space to play a game on the stage. With the modern-day myth of City of Light, City of Dark in mind, we acted out scenes showing how we thought the Greek gods would react to blackouts, traffic jams, stalled subway cars, and other challenges faced in present day New York.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Tags: Brian Floca, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 2, Day 3

By Camp Staff
Published on August 3, 2011

We started off day three thinking about poetry and discussing the way today’s author, Jacqueline Woodson, uses poems to tell a story in her book Locomotion. After looking at some of the poetic forms she used — haikus, sonnets, and free verse — we experimented with a few other poetry formats. We wrote poems about our names, poems that asked the question “what if…”, and poems that paired emotions with the animals we thought embodied them best.

After reading these aloud, we gathered in the Thalia Theatre for our visit with Jacqueline Woodson, author of Locomotion as well as twenty-nine other books for children and young adults.

Jacqueline told us that she has always loved to tell stories and that she decided she wanted to be a writer very early on — at age seven. Her love of storytelling first lead her to tell lies, she said, until she realized that she could write them down instead — and be a fiction writer. Because she had never met an author, she explained that she had to imagine for herself what the life of a writer was like, and told us that she learned to write by reading and re-reading her favorite books. It was difficult for her to find stories that reflected her own experience as a young African-American girl growing up in South Carolina and Brooklyn. She explained that this was one of the reasons she gravitated towards writing realistic fiction, something which allowed her to tell stories about a world like her own.

Writing also allowed Jacqueline to write about worlds unlike her own and explore characters with many different points of view. She challenged us to do the same in our writing activity, asking us to write from the perspective of the opposite gender.

One of the biggest questions we had for Jacqueline was how she decided to write Locomotion using poetry instead of prose. She told us that she was once very intimidated by poetry but eventually realized that poems can be used to tell stories. Writing Locomotion in verse, she said, was a way of challenging herself to understand poetry better and do something she’d never done before.

Jacqueline told us she began to understand the meanings of poems through listening to songs, one of which she brought with her to share with us. We listened to Bruce Springsteen’s Used Car, then tried as a group to describe the story it tells.

After saying goodbye to our guest, we headed to the park for lunch before returning to Symphony Space to do our last activity of the day: bookmaking with Jennifer from The Center for Book Arts.

Sitting onstage in the Sharp Theatre, we listened carefully to her instructions on how to fold and sew our paper which came in a wide variety of colors and patterns.

By the end of the afternoon we each had two books, one big and one small, to take home with us.

We’re looking forward to another day of camp tomorrow!

Tags: Jacqueline Woodson, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 2, Day 2

By Camp Staff
Published on August 2, 2011

Today was a particularly exciting day here at the Thalia Book Club Camp: With a visit from Gordon Korman, author of 39 Clues: The Medusa Plot, and a trip to Random House on our schedule, we still managed to fit in a morning of writing exercises in the theater. Each of us was assigned the name of a superhero and asked to think up their mission and the name of their nemesis. Then our task was to write an enticing “blurb” for the back cover of our hypothetical books, introducing the reader to our hero’s story. Taking the challenge in stride, we wrote teasers for tales of an ice princess and her arch-rival the Jalapeño, the Multiplier and his nemesis the Divider, and a man who turns into a tiny bulldozer to fight the dust under his bed.

We then met with today’s author, Gordon Korman, to talk with him about his exciting new installment to the 39 Clues adventure series. We learned that Gordon has been writing books since he was twelve, publishing his first novel, This Can’t Be Happening at Marshall Hall!, when he was only a freshman in high school! Since then, he’s written a wide range of books for young readers. Most recently, he has published a series about the Titanic and another series about a group of kids trying to be the youngest people to climb Mount Everest. Gordon told us that all of these books, The Medusa Plot included, required a lot of research, something he enjoys and that helps fuel his creative process. When we asked what it was like joining the team of authors behind the 39 Clues series, Gordon said it was really fun having coworkers for the first time.

Since The Medusa Plot was such an action-packed book, the writing activity we did with Gordon dealt with creating scenes of suspense where “something goes wrong.” We produced some exciting (and grisly) stories based on this prompt, some of which will surely be read at our final performance on Friday!

After saying goodbye to Gordon and having a quick lunch in the park,

we all headed down to Random House for a visit with our friends in the children’s publishing division. We got to watch and compare book trailers, share our thoughts about cover design and how it affects which books we buy.

We then went on a behind-the-scenes tour of the children’s division’s offices which included a peek into the room filled with books that won’t be in stores until next year. We got to meet all sorts of copy editors and editors, as well as Chip Gibson, the publisher and president of Random House Children’s Books!

We were already having a great time on our field trip when we learned that Random House had a special visitor waiting for us in the conference room where we’d started our visit. We were surprised and very excited to have the opportunity to sit down with Christopher Paolini, author of the Eragon series.

Though he lives in Montana, Christopher is in New York this summer finishing the final book in his series (which he began at age 14). He was happy to meet with us and had some great advice for young writers. Above all, he encouraged us to keep reading anything and everything we can get our hands on, and to learn as much as possible about the English language, our primary tool as writers. Finally, he told us to write , revise — and to not get discouraged.

Random House gave each of a gift bag of books for the road, which some of us began reading on the subway ride back to Symphony Space.

We made it back just in time for pick-up and are looking forward to another day of camp tomorrow.

Tags: Gordon Korman, Random House, Thalia Book Club Camp

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Thalia Book Club Camp, Week 2 Begins!

By Camp Staff
Published on August 1, 2011

Week two of the Thalia Book Club Camp began with a few get-to-know-you games on the Symphony Space stage. With Maile Meloy’s The Apothecary in mind, we shared not only our names but our ideal super powers which ranged from flying and invisibility to mind control and the power to talk to cats. Next, we broke into mini book groups to ask questions and share our thoughts about each of this week’s books.

Once we finished our discussions, we tried our first writing exercise: creating a list of words and phrases that we associate with summer and using them to write haikus. Scorched grass, melting ice cream, and the smell of sunscreen were a few of the images we used in our poetry.

For lunch we headed to our usual spot in Riverside Park where we ate in the shade and played a few of our favorite games: Set, Apples to Apples, and capture the flag.

Back at Symphony Space we were very excited to meet Maile Meloy, author of today’s book, The Apothecary. This was the first time Maile presented her new book to a group of readers, and we were thrilled to have the chance to talk to her! Maile is a very successful writer of fiction for adults and The Apothecary is her first book for children. She told us that the experience of writing for a new audience gave her a greater sense of freedom — “the magical elixir of un-selfconsciousness” — and allowed her to explore new sources of inspiration. The Apothecary is set during the Cold War and takes place in Los Angeles, London, and Russia, so we spent the first part of her visit learning about the book’s historical setting. We also spent a considerable amount of time talking about magic, another one of The Apothecary‘s most important elements. Our favorite spells, time travel, and the power to turn into animals were just a few of the topics we addressed.

Finally, Maile asked us to think about our most precious possessions and prompted us to write about what it would feel like to have to give them up. We shared some of our stories aloud and can’t wait to keep working on them!

At the end of the day we all got our copies of The Apothecary signed by Maile. We were very excited to learn that she’s currently working on a sequel and hope to see her again at camp in the future!

Week two of camp got off to a great start and we’re looking forward to tomorrow. See you then!

Tags: Maile Meloy, Thalia Book Club Camp

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