*AHEM* Come Appreciate My Wrinkle In Time Party Pictures!
Series Intro: to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my FAVORITE BOOK EVER, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, I am filling 2012 with BLOG POSTS EXPLORING EVERY POSSIBLE ASPECT OF THIS BOOK IN GREAT DEPTH. I call it the Year of the Tesseract, and you can see what I've written already by clicking the year of the tesseract tag. There WILL be spoilers for Wrinkle and possibly other books throughout. So just go read it, already. Moving on:
IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT:
Maybe that's why only one person showed up specifically FOR my long-planned Wrinkle In Time 50th Birthday Party. BUT THAT'S OKAY, because I BROUGHT MY CAMERA, to record for posterity all the Awesome and SHARE IT HERE with YOU! Because you will appreciate it!
Not that my one official guest, Natalie, isn't Awesome. She IS Awesome. She's Awesome because she's pretty much the only teen who ever shows up for any literary program I run for teens. Here's Natalie Awesomely completing the official Wrinkle in Time crossword puzzle, which I found here:
But eventually we lassoed other people hanging around the library with the promise of food, and ended up with a few other kids who actually got the book references, a couple who didn't, and a few adults who had no idea what was going on but like free food, because who doesn't. I'd like to say they all now have a broader appreciation for the kinds of programs the library offers, and perhaps an interest in Madeleine L'Engle they didn't have before, but it's also possible they just enjoyed the food.
Here's the sign over the food:
And a close-up of one of the labels:
Note: if you have the ability to synthesize molecules in your home, I do not recommend attempting to recreate any of the molecules I have modeled for this display. They are haphazardly stuck together and are probably highly unstable.
We also of course had cocoa:
And then there were these cookies, which you could even peer at through my mother-in-law's stereo-microscope:
They're called Wrinkle In Time Cookies. I got the recipe here. I have no idea whether they're actually named after the book, but that's okay, because everyone raved about them, and a rather boisterous teenage boy felt the need to hug me for making them. I personally find them a bit too rich and gooey, but apparently I'm in the minority here.
Of course the main food attraction was this:
Obviously it is Too Small, but you should be happy people MAKE brain-shaped Jello molds AT ALL, never mind GIANT brain-shaped Jello molds. And yes, people did eat it:
Yum:
I of course was dressed as Mrs Whatsit:
I know I haven't got quite the proper twinkle in my eye, here, but that's because I'm a crappy photo subject. I tried again:
, and this one might actually be a fairly accurate representation of character, seeing as it brings to mind the line, from page 22, "The age or sex was impossible to tell..." But on the plus side, here are my feet!
On the negative side, it was sweltering in the storytime room, so I got rid of most of the scarves fairly early on.
We had many fun things to do. Here, for example, is
,
which is a sheet over a cubby thing. And speaking of "cubby," here's the Happy Medium herself:
What, you didn't know the Happy Medium was a bear? Shows what you know. "Good grief, the Medium's a Be--" sorry, lapsed off into obscure Muppet jokes for a moment there.
And just for the heck of it, here's the Happy Medium riding in my car:
We also had SYNCHRONIZED JUMP-ROPE/BALL-BOUNCING!
Marvel as the ever-dexterous Natalie MAKES A BALL JUMP ROPE!
And String Games. So you can pretend you're Mrs Who. Or maybe it has to do with String Theory. I don't know:
Notice there are more kids here at this point. Because they figured out we were Cool.
I set up the storytime risers as the Star-watching Rock, with actual constellations representing a small bit of the summer sky stuck on the wall:
Then I pulled lots of books on astronomy, quantum physics, time, and everything else we owned written by Madeleine L'Engle. As usual, nobody looked at the books, though Natalie did use a copy of Wrinkle to complete the crossword puzzle. But I tried.
So, in summary, I had a whole lot of fun PLANNING this party, and maybe now it will live forever on the Internet, giving ideas to people who throw the kinds of parties people actually go to. Thank you for coming virtually, and there's still a bunch of tuna sandwiches down in the fridge if you want some.
I APOLOGIZE THAT I CAN'T GET THE PICTURES TO DISPLAY CORRECTLY. Turn your monitor sideways when necessary.
IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT:
Maybe that's why only one person showed up specifically FOR my long-planned Wrinkle In Time 50th Birthday Party. BUT THAT'S OKAY, because I BROUGHT MY CAMERA, to record for posterity all the Awesome and SHARE IT HERE with YOU! Because you will appreciate it!
Not that my one official guest, Natalie, isn't Awesome. She IS Awesome. She's Awesome because she's pretty much the only teen who ever shows up for any literary program I run for teens. Here's Natalie Awesomely completing the official Wrinkle in Time crossword puzzle, which I found here:
But eventually we lassoed other people hanging around the library with the promise of food, and ended up with a few other kids who actually got the book references, a couple who didn't, and a few adults who had no idea what was going on but like free food, because who doesn't. I'd like to say they all now have a broader appreciation for the kinds of programs the library offers, and perhaps an interest in Madeleine L'Engle they didn't have before, but it's also possible they just enjoyed the food.
Here's the sign over the food:
And a close-up of one of the labels:
Note: if you have the ability to synthesize molecules in your home, I do not recommend attempting to recreate any of the molecules I have modeled for this display. They are haphazardly stuck together and are probably highly unstable.
We also of course had cocoa:
And then there were these cookies, which you could even peer at through my mother-in-law's stereo-microscope:
They're called Wrinkle In Time Cookies. I got the recipe here. I have no idea whether they're actually named after the book, but that's okay, because everyone raved about them, and a rather boisterous teenage boy felt the need to hug me for making them. I personally find them a bit too rich and gooey, but apparently I'm in the minority here.
Of course the main food attraction was this:
Obviously it is Too Small, but you should be happy people MAKE brain-shaped Jello molds AT ALL, never mind GIANT brain-shaped Jello molds. And yes, people did eat it:
Yum:
I of course was dressed as Mrs Whatsit:
I know I haven't got quite the proper twinkle in my eye, here, but that's because I'm a crappy photo subject. I tried again:
, and this one might actually be a fairly accurate representation of character, seeing as it brings to mind the line, from page 22, "The age or sex was impossible to tell..." But on the plus side, here are my feet!
On the negative side, it was sweltering in the storytime room, so I got rid of most of the scarves fairly early on.
We had many fun things to do. Here, for example, is
,
which is a sheet over a cubby thing. And speaking of "cubby," here's the Happy Medium herself:
What, you didn't know the Happy Medium was a bear? Shows what you know. "Good grief, the Medium's a Be--" sorry, lapsed off into obscure Muppet jokes for a moment there.
And just for the heck of it, here's the Happy Medium riding in my car:
We also had SYNCHRONIZED JUMP-ROPE/BALL-BOUNCING!
Marvel as the ever-dexterous Natalie MAKES A BALL JUMP ROPE!
And String Games. So you can pretend you're Mrs Who. Or maybe it has to do with String Theory. I don't know:
Notice there are more kids here at this point. Because they figured out we were Cool.
I set up the storytime risers as the Star-watching Rock, with actual constellations representing a small bit of the summer sky stuck on the wall:
Then I pulled lots of books on astronomy, quantum physics, time, and everything else we owned written by Madeleine L'Engle. As usual, nobody looked at the books, though Natalie did use a copy of Wrinkle to complete the crossword puzzle. But I tried.
So, in summary, I had a whole lot of fun PLANNING this party, and maybe now it will live forever on the Internet, giving ideas to people who throw the kinds of parties people actually go to. Thank you for coming virtually, and there's still a bunch of tuna sandwiches down in the fridge if you want some.
I APOLOGIZE THAT I CAN'T GET THE PICTURES TO DISPLAY CORRECTLY. Turn your monitor sideways when necessary.