Alpha Beta Chowder II

A few weeks ago I wrote about the interactive display I made for our Creativity Center on Jeanne and William Steig's book Alpha Beta Chowder. The response throughout the month of July was truly phenomenal as we filled the board several times over with different characters for each letter of the alphabet. Here are some pictures of the display in action:







And some of my all-time favorite characters:

-Cookie the Crazy Cook who Cooks Corn on the Cob, Cookies, Cupcakes and Crabs
-Henry the Hippo who has Huge Hips
-Ian, who takes an Irate Interest in his Ipod
-Paola, the Pretty Penguin who loves to Pretend that she is Picking Peppers and Paprika in Peru. She also loves to Perform as a Pop diva (whew!)
-Wendy, the Winking Waterhorse who Wants to be Wonderful

Sadly, we had to take Alpha Beta Chowder down yesterday. Not without good reason, though--we are welcoming the Multicultural BRIDGE program to our Creativity Classroom for the month of August, which I will definitely write about here as I work with them on a daily basis. But clearing the classroom for BRIDGE meant taking a staple remover to my beloved display.

"Oh no!," I bet you're thinking, "I've been carefully planning my Norman Rockwell Museum visit based exclusively on the contents of this blog and desperately wanted to see the Alpha Beta Chowder display while it was up!" I for one wouldn't expect anything less than for visitors to make a beeline past Norman Rockwell and William Steig's art and head downstairs to see my construction paper, staple-mounted "exhibition."

BUT WAIT. You didn't miss it at all!! In fact, I spent the better part of today making the truly creative doodles that our visitors created throughout July into a book for future musuemgoers to see. I can give you a sneak preview, but I'm afraid you'll have to come to Stockbridge to see the whole thing!