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The Library has reached out to me to see if Steel City LUG is interested in providing a display for the Summer Reading Program. Last year was the first year in many years that we did not (since the Library was shut down).
This year’s theme is “Tails and Tales”. The program will run from Monday, June 7-July 31. So we would target Saturday, June 5 for installation and Saturday, August 7 for tear down.
Please post here if interested and let’s start brainstorming ideas! Anyone good at building animal sculptures? Or anyone have any favorite children’s books with animals as (main) characters (like The Mouse and the Motorcycle) from which we could build scenes?
One idea is doing The Hobbit with Erebor, Laketown, and Smaug.
It’s true that dragons have tails, but this theme conjures up the notion of friendlier main characters. I’m all for having castles and dragons especially since several of us can supply them, but does the library have any input what they would like to see?
Watership Down, The White Snake (Brother’s Grimm), and the Musicians of Bremen are all somewhat lesser known stories that may make interested displays or homages. Maybe we could do a partial underground like Dig Into Reading for ants/rabbits/cave for bats?
A fox that can fly by spinning his two tails like helicopter blades and whose name is a play on “mile per hour” is very appealing, yet I wonder how many kids would recognize a character from the 1990’s?
Watership Down, The White Snake (Brother’s Grimm), and the Musicians of Bremen are all somewhat lesser known stories that may make interested displays or homages.
For some reason, I had never heard of Watership Down or The White Snake, so I had to look them up. Other possibilities include the Chronicles of Narnia and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
does the library have any input what they would like to see?
No direction at all. They always leave it up to us to come up with something relevant to the overall Theme.
Maybe we could do a partial underground like Dig Into Reading for ants/rabbits/cave for bats?
I’m up for another partial underground scene.
I just MOC’d the Pigeon from Mo Willems pigeon series. (Specifically, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!). It needs a stand, maybe something else? But I think I’m going to order my parts. Maybe it could work for other library displays as well? (Plus it’s one of my daughter’s favorites.)
Also, please I’m open to suggestions or tips to improve!!
It’s true that dragons have tails, but this theme conjures up the notion of friendlier main characters.
Along the friendlier main character theme for dragons, there’s an early readers series out called Dragon Masters by Tracey West that my 5 year old grandson is really into (it’s available on Amazon). Target audience is for kids 6-8 (grades 1-3), and I think there are like 19 books out now, with each book introducing a new dragon and it’s kid master. If the library carries this series of books, then it might be good collaboration.
Another thought on this same theme would be to do something from the How to Train your Dragon movies, like the village of Berk with a bunch of dragons and Vikings, and maybe a Viking ship.
@amplef0rth The pigeon is excellent!
@amplef0rth The pigeon is awesome! We are big fans of Mo around here!
Finally. A use for those Chima figs.
Yes, a Chima diorama would work (as an alternative to doing scenes from various books, or as an addition to that). Good thought.
Love the pigeon.
Tim mentioned Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH – I’m a big fan of the book, so I’m going to give this one some thought.
Tim mentioned Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH – I’m a big fan of the book, so I’m going to give this one some thought.
It’s excellent, I really should re-read because some of the themes would probably hit way harder with adult eyes/experience (like when they have to move their entire burrow to avoid the inexorable march of industry…)
A lot of great stories listed for inspiration! The Redwall series is another to consider for vignettes here – I only ever read a few, but they’re good.
Time to start putting in some concrete ideas. It was mentioned previously that perhaps we do a partial underground display (borrowing from the original Dig Into reading display). That would certainly work for stories with burrows or other underground lairs).
I am really leaning towards creating a microscale Erebor (partial) with a microscale Dale in the valley and Laketown beyond. My biggest concern with that, however, is not taking up too much space. So perhaps I would need to do one or the other (either Erebor, with Smaug bursting from the Mountain or Laketown being attacked). The only thing I don’t have is Smaug. Does anyone have one? If not, I may need to build him. 😀
So what is everyone willing to commit to building for the Cranberry library and how will this fit together?
For myself, there is a yellow minifig scale castle with a gatehouse. It has a red and black dragon, but the dragon is not specifically Smaug from the LOTR sets.
There is a bluesky background that was built to fit the SW Randalls display case.
There are a few of the larger Legends of Chima mech creatures like
[Set 70145-1] Maula’s Ice Mammoth Stomper
[Set 70143-1] Sir Fangar’s Saber Tooth Walker
[Set 70003-1] Eris’ Eagle Interceptor
[Set 70006-1] Cragger’s Command ShipFinally there is a green conical section / mountainside which is 5 feet wide and 18 inches tall.
Question: do you have the chima sets and just need someone to put it together, or are you look for persons who already have those sets?
Question: do you have the chima sets and just need someone to put it together, or are you look for persons who already have those sets?
I was listing a few things that I can contribute to the display, the Chima sets are in storage, but assembled.
I’m planning on putting in some major time this weekend on the display. The current plan is to basically put together a cornucopia of different vignettes from various books. We do need a solid idea of who is doing what.
It would be awesome if someone could do a few larger sculptures of animals. @tfdesigns?
Also, should we consider doing something to tie everything together (like in the castle display, we did an ocean and each castle was on its own island)? Since this is animal focused, we could do a forest. That would fill in the gaps between the vignettes. I can definitely do a fair number of trees.
[Set 70003-1] Eris’ Eagle Interceptor
I built this set, and it is much more like a transformable starfighter than a ‘Mech. It is also an outstanding example of how to transition studs up to studs at an *angle* to studs up, and it all meshes perfectly. It is worth building just for the design insight, and if you want to get into Space, this set is a fantastic introduction to building bosslike starfighters, even though it’s Chima.
I have since disassembled this set, MOC’d it into other permanent things, and probably can’t rebuild it, but it’s a nice set for sure and would take up a lot of volume fully assembled and wings spread: about the same footprint as one of the smaller Star Wars X-Wings.
No pictures yet but I made good progress this weekend on a microscale Laketown (from The Hobbit). Next step will be to finish that and begin a microscale Erebor.
If anyone is decent with animal sculpture, Moby Dick would be interesting. Not really a children’s book but “the White Whale” is a fairly iconic concept in modern culture.
I am certain that the aforementioned white whale has been immortalized in LEGO before. One of those should be easy to replicate, provide one has the necessary supply of white curved bricks.
Moby Dick is loosely based on a real event in which a bull whale sunk a whaling vessel by pushing it backwards until it capsized … a story that is told in a non-fiction book called Revenge of the Whale.
In lieu of that, would you accept any LEGO whale?
Moby Dick would be good.
I’ve been thinking about what could be built to anchor the display – a “centerpiece” so to speak. Laketown is too “horizontal” and would serve better as a side-piece. I’m not certain I have enough pieces for Erebor (even at microscale), although that would be very cool and I will put some work into that. But I also was thinking about the Chronicles of Narnia and got the idea to do the Lamppost in the forest, building it to about 4 feet tall and with a snowy setting and some forest trees (or at least a few limbs).
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