100 Year Anniversary of the Titanic Sinking



100 years ago tomorrow, April 14th, the luxury passenger liner Titanic sank on her maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg. So in honor of man's fallibility, the window display at my second middle school library is about the Titanic.

I covered the back and far end of the loft bed frame with blue bulletin board paper to give it an undersea look, and cut a smaller wave border for the top. I wrinkled strips of orange paper to create a seaweed effect as a background. I had sewed all the stuffed fish about 4 or 5 years ago when I created an aquarium, and I've used them just about every year for something. From the angle in the photo below, you can see the fan that makes the fish move like they're swimming around.

We laid brown packing paper on the floor to give it an impression of sand, and added items representing things that were on the Titanic-- luggage, glassware, jewelry, a ladder etc. along with sea shells and books on the Titanic or shipwrecks.



Crumpled yellow paper around the life saver ring creates the effect of coral. The ring is authentic-- the name of the boat it came off of is on the other side.  I found it at the same house that was throwing away the disassembled loft bed, which has made the best frame for the library displays. We added our own lettering for the RMS Titanic, which stands for Royal Mail Steamer. I first had HMS on it, which stands for Her/His Majesty's Ship, until a student corrected me.

 

On the side and back of the loft, I added photos of the Titanic, the first telegrams, and some of the survivors along with some interesting questions and answers about the ship and the people aboard.

It makes my day when someone tells me they learned something new or were encouraged to learn more about a topic by looking at the library display.







April is showers, poetry & spring flowers!

After two months of brown tones, it was time to add some color to the display. We're having a Poetry Contest this month, so along with April showers and spring flowers, this was a fun idea to quickly throw together. I used MS Word's wonderful letter panels to create the POETRY part of the sign. To make the umbrella-looking shapes, I grabbed some bulletin board paper and made big squares first-- no measuring-- just fold over to make a triangle, cut the leftover off, and keep folding like you would a fan. Cut the corners off, scallop or leave them smooth to make it look like an umbrella. I open them up and draped some of them over the bars, and others I tape opened up. The next part was where I literally threw the display together.

I raided the recycle bin in the paper room and pulled out all of the discarded bulletin board paper, tore them into pieces, wadded them up, and threw them on the floor. When one of my fellow teachers came through and asked me what I was doing with all that paper, I told him I was getting out my frustrations. He believed me, so then I told him they're supposed to look like wildflowers. I'm afraid some folks will only see wadded up paper.

I had fun with it, though. I scattered some baskets around filled with colored grass and added poetry books to the display, and it was done. So wadded up paper or wildflowers, it's April's display.





Remember the Alamo!



March always seems to slip in and slip out before I realize it, and especially Texas' Independence Day on March 2nd. This time I used the backdrop for February's display and hung a quickly drawn and cut-out cardboard Alamo from under the loftbed. I used the "stagecoach" font for the sign and tore the edges. To give it a burned look, run a black marker aroun the edge, and then a layer of brown color pencil. Pull books on the Alamo or Texas history and you're done! Sorry I didn't get this out before March was over.



Black History is American History is Our History



Several book boxes came with a ton of brown packing paper, which I used to weave in and out of the loft bed as a background for this month's display. I wasn't sure what I was going for, other than a consistent look, but after I finished wrapping the frame, it reminded me of tobacco leaves hanging to dry. Tobacco was a labor-intensive crop prevalent on many of the east and southeastern plantations during the slave years, so the look fits Black History month in that way. I haven't said that aloud, preferring to leave the interpretation to the viewer's imagination. I used pictures from the Library of Congress and hung them directly on the brown paper. I displayed books dealing with the time around Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as well as key people in the early struggle for freedom and subsequent civil rights. It's sad to look back and see those parts of history where people erred in their treatment of human beings-- slavery, the holocaust, apartheid. We tell ourselves we wouldn't be a part of that, but seeing injustice and choosing to ignore it is no different than condoning it. I believe too many of us are asleep in the midst of a present day holocaust when it comes to the deaths of innocent unborn children, but that's not what this display is about so I'll share my thoughts in another post. It's encouraging, though, to see those individuals throughout history that recognized injustice and were courageous enough to do something about it. We especially celebrate them this month.



As I worked on the display, I realized I never thought about what I display each year as being a part of my history since it's Black History month. The title itself seems segregative, like it's set apart from the rest of American history. But I realized that black history is a part of our American history, so it's my history, too, and that's how I'm going to think about it from now on.

I assumed it began years ago because many of the history books failed to record events and contributions  involving blacks throughout our country's history, but I thought I'd better do some research on the origins of Black History month to confirm that. I learned about Carter G. Woodson, who is considered the Father of Negro History and in 1926 organized the first Negro History Week, which evolved into Black History month, although the Web site I retrieved the following photo calls it African American History month.

Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950)

Courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences Online, African American History Program

I found a quote of Woodson's that really resonated with my epiphany that Black History is a part of my history, too. On the founding of Negro History Week he said, "We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history. What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice." YES, Dr. Woodson!! Otherwise, we're continuing to set ourselves apart, even with good intentions.

Oh, for the day when Americans are categorized by citizenship, character, & contributions to mankind;

when colors refer to our flag instead of a label to brandish as a crutch or bully stick;

when our history is one history, undivided , & with liberty & justice for all. --Donna Van Cleve



A Good Book Brings Great Joy

It's December already! How did that happen? I recycled snowflakes made by the art classes three years ago and created a winter wonderland display for this month. I wrapped the loft bed with blue bulletin board paper. The snowman was made from styrofoam equipment packing-- this is his second year to be used.

The snowman is leaning up against an easel, and the knit cap covers the top part of the easel and keeps him upright. I cut out some black tree trunks and used shredded paper from our office to make the icy-looking leaves for the trees. 

I even piled some on the mattress grid above the trees as well as hung a few snowflakes from the grid to make it look like it was snowing.

I pulled Christmas books and scattered more snowflakes on the ground, and sat the snowman on top of a star-shaped crocheted tablecloth I found in someone's trash. I have used it in so many displays.

At the end of the loft bed I put the theme "A Good Book Brings Great Joy," and also added a table with a red Christmas tree skirt and more Christmas books after I took the picture. I also outlined the big picture windows with snowflakes in the front of the library. On the snowman, I used things I found in the office drawers: binder clips for the mouth, Percy Jackson pins for the eyes and buttons, and half of a plastic fork for the nose.

Here are some more quick displays:

Cost for these displays? Only a little time,
and with helpers, it didn't take long at all.
Have a wonderful holiday!



Be Thankful!

November was such a busy month with Book Fair and the Thanksgiving holiday, so I just modified the previous month's display by adding red, yellow, and orange leaves on the twisted vine-looking brown paper and strung "Be Thankful" across the front. This is the third year I've used the same leaves in a number of different ways. We cut the looped tape on the back and flattened it, so the tape doesn't tear the leaves. From then on we put the piece of looped tape on top of the tape from the first year so it's easy to remove. Sure saves time not to have to cut out leaves every year.

A colorful fall banner was hung from the end to create a different look.

Throw in a turkey and scatter a few fall leaves on the floor, and the new display is done.



Fall into Books

        I bought a beautiful throw a while back that had a wonderful saying, One hundred years from now... it won't matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove, but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child. -Forest E. Witcraft.
        And the woman and child are curled up in a big chair reading a book. Be still my heart. 

        The picture and colors look muted and old fashioned, so I went with that look, pulling in a quilted bear in wicker chair, a star-shaped crocheted table cover (both the bear and the crocheted piece were acquired from someone's trash down the road from my house), a decorative wrought iron mirror and candle holder, and baskets. I took apart a former tree made of twisted brown paper and wove the strands in and out of the loft bed top for no particular reason other than to soften the metal look. I used some leftover scavenged hardwood flooring planks and stood them up along the back like a wooden fence and held them in place with a folded cardboard packing strip. Hope I can find more of those planks-- I love that effect. 



       I pulled books that looked historical or old fashioned. If you look closely at the mirror, I faced two books backwards so you could see the faces on the covers in the reflection. Also caught a student's leg as they passed by outside.

My goal is to not repeat any displays for three years so students will see a different display every month. But I definitely hang onto everything and recycle and re-use them in different ways.

Happy Fall Reading!





Lights, Camera, Action!

Our principal came up with a wonderful theme for our campus inservice week before school, and I like to create the first display to coordinate with that, so my daughter helped me make a movie marquee:

Ninety-nine per cent of the time when someone has read a book and then watched the movie made from it, they tell me, "The book was better," so that's where the movie title came from. The grid and white background was very easy to make-- the original one is simply a white sheet of copy paper with two horizontal lines on it that I printed off 18 sheets to go all the way around three sides of the loft bed. I just mounted them side-by-side with about a quarter inch space between them, which creates the vertical line in the grid. The marquee grid is 11 inches-- the height of copy paper. I used the alphabet die cutters for the letters, so it was easy and quick to do.

I lined the loft bed frame with black posterboard paper; my daughter helped me cut out lots of circles for the  lights surrounding actual movie posters and marquee. The yellow ones were glued together in groups of threes and spaces between to give the appearance of blinking lights. I hung an actual projector screen inside the loft bed, and I wanted to show silhouettes of students reading books, but I ran out of time. The back of the loft bed has two other movie posters with the white lights surrounding them like the Twilight poster.

I pulled books that had been made into movies and encouraged the students to read them and see which they liked better: the movie or the book. The second shelf was also full, but a lot of them had been checked out by the time I took the picture. I'm sure there are more books in the shelves I can add to the cart. They definitely grabbed students' attention.