SLPL and Magic House partner on interactive exhibit
By Meliqueica Meadows
Of the St. Louis American
Hearing the words “Once upon a time …” sends most youngsters straight to the land of make believe, where fairies sprinkle pixie dust and true love is enough to break an evil spell. It’s exactly that spirit of play and exploration that the St. Louis Public Library and the Magic House Children’s Museum hope to inspire in the area’s youngest residents.
Both organizations collaborated on ‘Once Upon a time’…Exploring the World of Fairy Tales, which opened Monday at the Central Branch of SLPL. The whimsical 2,000-square-foot exhibit features large, interactive play-scapes of seven fairytales from around the world, including Anansi and the Talking Melon (Africa) and Lon Po Po (China).
“There’s such a richness in this culturally,” Patty Carlton, director of youth services at the SLPL main branch, said. “It was a truly a collaboration between us and the Magic House.”
Carlton said there were several goals that SLPL and the Magic House wanted to achieve with the traveling exhibit, which will be on display until December 30 and is free to visit.
“We wanted to make sure that it was diverse and that it represented not only the cultures of the world but the cultures that we have present here in St. Louis,” Carlton said.
The exhibit is filled with everything necessary to ignite the senses and imagination of a child – life-sized animals, colorful story boards with captivating tales, and dozens of books lining the walls. It comes alive with the sights and sounds of forests and monsters and distant cultures. No detail was spared, from the plush carriage at the Cinderella exhibit to pint-sized kimonos and ball gowns.
Once all that energy has been stirred, there’s plenty of room to play for the more rambunctious tykes. More introspective little ones can sit at one of the two computer terminals and compose a fairy tale of their own.
“We all know that kids learn experientially,” Carlton said. “We can talk and talk to them, but they really learn by touching and doing.”
She added that the impressive exhibit, “is the result of federal tax dollars,” calling the funding a “very generous grant to the Magic House.”
“The Magic House is really good at bringing (large concepts) to childrens’ scale but keeping it a very real world,” Carlton added.
Each child who visits the exhibit is given a free copy of Classic Fairy Tales, from the historic collection of the SLPL. The United Way gave the institution a $30,000 grant to print the books through its Community Investment Committee. This grant came from the United Way’s Success By 6 initiative which, in part, aims to ensure every child is ready to succeed in school by the age of six.
Tamika and Benny Hellems brought their three-year-old daughter, Briona, to the exhibit. The couple traveled from their home in North County because they thought the experience would be important for their daughter.
“She loves to read,” Tamika said.
While Briona ran exitedly from one play-scape to another, her mother said the exhibit was important because, “It teaches them about fairy tales and its something educational. It’s important for her to know.”
“I really want them to get the stories and to start to say ‘I want these stories in my life,’” Carlton said of the many children she hopes visits the exhibit.
“It’s going to be a challenge for us to keep that level of excitement, because we have so much competition with video games and television,” she said. “But once we hook them, we’ve got them forever.”
For more information, visit www.slpl.org.
