Story Planet

Check out some of the fun we had on the weekend at Bloorsdale’s Festival!  With thanks to Jon Sturge, excellent alien picture capturer!
Our alien shelter

Creative hands

Alien Art Factory

Rain Repellant Device!

It’s all in the detail

Come and design your own alien, the sky (or should I say universe?)  is the limit!

Story Planet will be there joining in the fun.  Bloor between Dufferin and Landsdowne

http://www.newbloorfestival.com/index.html

We’ve had some fabulous t-shirts designed by two of our incredible illustrators,  Phillip Street and Dave Thomas.  Help support us by heading down and buying one!

Make plans to join the fun!

You will find us in front of Ping Pong,  just west of Brock St.

Saturday July 24th 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm

See ya there!

Check out the video from the Story Planet workshop at Neptune Boys and Girls Club:

Neptune Skateboarding Contest from Story Planet on Vimeo.

Its been a busy month so its time to reveal the fruits of our labour and celebrate the incredible talents of our young people as well as the artists who support them!

At Neptune Boys and Girls club we had a hilarious time creating crazy cartoon characters and telling stories with the incredibly talented, Dave Thomas – check him out at www.seizethedave.ca

Dave has the unique ability to have talent and teach it!

At Essex PS we had an absolute blast creating sculptural self portraits (well the kids did!)

under the amazing mentorship of artist, Shawna Reiter…

The students then wrote a letter to themselves in the future – we took advantage of the great weather…

and we turned all their art and letters into a Story Planet out-of-this-world book!

Spent the afternoon with Ninive, the co-founder of 826 and her lovely family.  Great discussion about what we’re up to in TO. Lots of exciting ideas and fantastic support…more to come!

From Amber, age 9

Today Sharpy, the most serious pencil, was at the flower shop buying scribble flowers. “That’s $5.00” said the marker at the desk. “Will this cover it?” asked Sharpy holding up a $1.00. “No.” said the marker because the flowers cost $5.00 not $1.00. Sharpy bounced his way out. Sir Marks was waiting outside but now he was talking to Sharpy. “Pencil guy, are we going to save our planet, Planet Imagination from bad guys or not?” “It’s Sharpy you permanent marker!!!” said Sharpy. They went to the imagination base, the place that tells them if bad guys are attacking the city. It was filled with tools. “Trouble with your girlfriend again?” asked Sir Marks. Sharpy just sighed. Just then the alarm sounded. Beep, Beep, Beep!

A crayon officer said “Mad Eraser has escaped again” “To the scribble mobile” said Sir Marks. “Um, we have no scribble mobile” said Sharpy. “Ok then let’s fly” said Sharpy. “Up, up and away!” they said. Sir Marks landed at the police station. Sharpy landed head first at the police station. “Ouch, I better work on my flying” said Sharpy. “He went that way, no that way, no that way, um, that way” said the officer pointing west. Just then they saw Mad Eraser north of them. “Bwa, ha, ha!!” laughed Mad Eraser.

Mad Eraser had once tried to erase the whole city because it was drawn with a pencil. Now he had escaped from jail again.

They caught up with him knocked him out and managed to cover his head with a cap. They decided to leave him that way for a while. One hour later. “Who turned off the lights!!” screamed Mad Eraser. “It’s off to jail for you Mad Eraser!!” said Sir Marks. “Have fun” added Sharpy. “I still can’t see!!” screamed Mad Eraser as he bumped into a wall. Then he got sent to jail. Everyone had a party and Ms. Purple liked Sharpy. (Ms. Purple is a purple crayon and is Sharpy’s girlfriend by the way.)

I had the great pleasure of meeting Roddy Doyle and Tom Best for lunch to chat about Roddy’s centre, Fighting Words, in Dublin, and what we’re up to here in Toronto with Story Planet.  Roddy and Dave Eggers (826) are friends and Roddy was inspired by 826Valencia to open his own writing space for kids in Ireland.

It was great to talk about the cultural differences between the countries and how that’s influenced the kinds of workshops they run and the space itself – take a look here

Here’s what I learnt and am thinking about c/o Mr Doyle:
The most important thing of all – Clarity
Treat your volunteers really well and give them their own workshops
Keep the office space small – that’s not where you want people congregating
Use ‘story’ instead of ‘writing’ or ‘literacy’ so the emphasis is for the kids not on the educational

And a small anecdote, Roddy liked the name Story Planet largely because of the word, ‘story’.  In Ireland, when you greeted someone the phrase (rather than ‘how’s it going’) was ‘what’s your story’, recently this has been abbreviated to simply, ‘story?’ – which roughly means, ‘tell me what’s going on in your world?”  At Fighting Words they’ve even honoured the word by creating a big cutout set against neon pink!  Check out the link above to the pics!

Story Rules!

We’re just editing the great alien stories from Wilmington and will be posting them in a day or so but we wanted to say thanks to Frontier College for their donation of books which the students were thrilled with!

Congratulations to Shane Peacock and Jane Barclay, winners of this year’s Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards for their books; Vanishing Girl: The Boy Sherlock Holmes, His Third Case and  Proud as a Peacock, Brave as a Lion

I recently met Shane when he was doing a mystery workshop for kids at Wychwood Barns with Small Print (http://www.smallprinttoronto.org/).  I have to say, he was just wonderful with the kids.  His generosity of spirit, good humour and clear passion for his writing, created an atmosphere of collegial fun and creativity that warmly inspired the kids.  We’re looking forward to the next instalment of the Young Sherlock Holmes and, even though Shane shared the potential title of his next book, I’ve decided to keep it a mystery!  Check out Shane at http://www.shanepeacock.ca/

For more info on the award, check out: http://www.arts.on.ca/Page3790.aspx

We’re enjoying a fab workshop at Wilmington School.  The students got creative with artist Gwen McGregor and here’s the evidence to prove it!

We’re creating stories about aliens and we’re going to illustrate our books using collage – here’s a taste of some of the practice exercises; making flowers and houses using magazines, hands (no scissors allowed!) and imagination!

Day 2 – The Aliens have landed…stay tuned!