Beyond Books: Stepping into the story, children's books as muse, part 1

In this session, several children's museum employees explained how they integrated children's books into their museum's programs.  

Rachel Mastromarino of the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh described her museum's creation of a 2500 square foot exhibit based on Eric Carle's books, which was designed in collaboration with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  A few key points:

1) The identified a key theme in each of the books they used (the "Very Quintet" as she called them--all of Carle's books starting with the word "very") and tried to integrate those themes into the exhibit.  It's important to not just use the art in book-base exhibits, but to convey some of the content of the book as well.

2) Respect the author.  Her example: On the final page of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," the butterfly's wings are upside down.  Her exhibit designers wanted to change them to make them more anatomically accurate, but she insisted on sticking with the author's aesthetic choice.

3) Authors like to work with children's museums.

The museum is now working on The Pigeon Comes to Pittsburgh, a Mo Willems-themed exhibit (so I may have to take a trip to Pittsburgh soon).  They also brought French picture book artist Herve Tullet (sorry, don't know how to add the accents to his name) to do a series of workshops called Herve Tullet's Art Explosion, and created a small exhibit based on the artworks he and the children created.