Totally Texas -- A library designed for kids

Bookmarks

Dallas NorthPark Center

8687 North Central Expressway (Central at Northwest Highway)

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As I write this, the rain stopped, the sun came out, and temperatures hover near 60 degrees F. It won’t last long. And the boys must get at least an hour daily of serious rowdy time or they’re not fit to live with. What’s our choice when winter weather turns playgrounds into mud pits? You guessed it -- we head for a shopping mall.

Our mall of choice is NorthPark. It has not only stuff kids were never intended to play on, but do, but also Bookmarks, the only library branch in Dallas designed just for kids. Because when the boys work off their extra energy, there’s nothing they like better than curling up with a good book. Or a computer. Maybe even a craft project. All of which are on tap at Bookmarks.

Designed for children up to age 12, the storefront library offers internet computers, story telling, puzzles, crafts and other activities for youngsters and their caretakers. Oh, and it has books you can check out with your Dallas library card.

The boys love the story book murals like the one illustrating this post. And they love the computers, loaded with games accessible even to nonreaders. They needed only a little adult help on our most recent visit to master Bookmarks’ new touch screens.

The computers are only for kids. And Bookmarks is not daycare -- you must stay to supervise your children. But with comfortable chairs, magazines and Wi-Fi, library visitors of all ages can coexist happily.

Bookmarks is one of only three Dallas library branches open on Monday, which makes it a go-to for Monday school holidays. It’s closed Tuesdays but otherwise open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Sundays (noon to 5 p.m.).

It’s located on NorthPark’s first level, between Nordstrom and Macy’s. Restrooms and a drinking fountain are across the hall. Only a few steps away is the mall’s outdoor sculpture garden, with grassy lawns to run and tumble on whenever the sun does decide to come out.

For a complete schedule of Bookmarks’ activities for children, see www.dallaslibrary2.org/brach/bookmarks/php/.

(Next Friday -- if it’s midwinter, it must be time for the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Hope the weather cooperates. If not, that’s what covered arenas are for.)

Totally Texas -- Art and walking on grass

Nasher Sculpture Center

2001 Flora St., Dallas

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My daughter practically grew up at NorthPark Center, as enthralled by its museum-worthy modern art collection as by the shopping. So I didn’t have to apply much persuasion to get her to visit a whole garden’s worth of outdoor sculpture from the collection of the family that developed NorthPark.

Her twin sons were out of their kindergarten classes for winter holidays, so any outing had to be friendly to exuberant little boys. The Nasher is. There’s an indoor portion of the museum, where the boys appreciated the sculptural quality of even the drinking fountains. But the high point was the outdoor display -- approximately thirty pieces in a garden setting of nearly two and a half acres where walking on the grass is positively required.

The art, drawn from the collection of the late Raymond and Patsy Nasher, changes periodically. On this visit, the boys’ favorite was Richard Serra’s curving double wall of Cor-ten steel entitled, “My Curves are not Mad.”

Walking between the forty-four foot long weathered walls of Serra’s work is like traveling through a cave with a view of the sky. The boys didn’t have to touch the walls to appreciate the experience of enclosure and discovery.

Although admission is always free for children age twelve and younger, the Nasher offers free admission to all January 7, as on the first Saturday of each month. The “Target First Saturdays” programs include children’s art activities, family tours, story time with the Dallas Public Library, and more. See http://www.nashersculpturecenter.org/Events-Calendar/ for details.

The Nasher opens at 10 a.m. for First Saturdays. Otherwise, its hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. Its site near Woodall Rogers Freeway and North Pearl Street in downtown Dallas is adjacent to both the Dallas Museum of Art and the Crow Collection of Asian Art.

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Can’t wait until Saturday for your art fix? The Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 North Harwood, offers free admission tomorrow, January 3, and the first Tuesday of every month. See
www.dallasmuseumofart.org/ for regular admission and hours, as well as discounts on combined tickets for the DMA and the Nasher.

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Thanks to readers from nearly two dozen countries who viewed my blog 2,230 times in 2011!

Here’s a guide to what you’ll see in the coming year: Mondays are about family-friendly places and events, concentrating on my area of North Central Texas. My lively grandsons are my guide to what kids like, and their tastes run to the outdoors and out-sized (as in this post about the Nasher Center). Wednesdays are about the art and craft of writing, with plenty of practical advice, such as this week’s post about writing conferences. Fridays are a tour through classic adventure literature of all genres. January’s selections focus on nonfiction adventures, and themes vary each month.

Each post is small enough to read on a coffee break but large enough to challenge your
imagination. Have a great year!

Totally Texas -- Can you hear the train coming?

Joel’s Christmas Train

156 Hidden Circle

Richardson

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Plenty of yards in Richardson’s Duck Creek neighborhood boast eye-popping displays of holiday lights. But I don’t think anybody’s feelings will be hurt if I say none of them come close to the show in Joel Occhiuzzo’s back yard. Because no one else has his very own train!

When I visited Mr. Occhiuzzo’s holiday train recently I remarked that the show seemed even more impressive than last year’s.

“Ten thousand more lights,” he said, as thrilled as a kid. “And the train is new!”

The electric train that circles his yard from 6 to 10 p.m. nightly (weather permitting) from Thanksgiving through the evening of New Year’s Day is a grownup little boy’s dream. Small enough to fit in a suburban back yard but big enough to ride in, Joel’s Christmas Train is now in its eleventh year of delighting neighborhood children.

Mr. Occhiuzzo himself is the engineer, circling a miniature theme park of cartoon character figures and lights. Lots and lots of lights. The show faces the creek and the glow of lights across the water is charming enough to set Ebenezer Scrooge’s heart beating faster.

Train rides are free, but with an anticipated 600-800 passengers a night this year, Mr. Occhiuzzo welcomes (nondeductible) donations. And he depends on the help of a crew of dedicated volunteers who start setting up the train and its tracks soon after Labor Day for the annual Thanksgiving night opening run.

As the retired Mr. Occhiuzzo explains on his blog, http://holidayexpressridingtrain.wordpress.com/, “The idea of having a train came in a dream. I thought I could build one easily, I soon found out it wasn’t going to be easy!. . .
(Eventually) I rented a 16-foot truck and loaded 130 feet of tracks, 44 foot of train batteries and drove 1,250 miles to get my current system.”

My daughter in Richardson first alerted me to the train. With two little boys who were crazy about trains, she was eager to locate Mr. Occhiuzzo’s. This year, her husband scheduled his vacation for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. And I won’t say it was just to take advantage of the holiday train, but that’s definitely on their to-do list.

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Also for kids, or kids at heart -- Trains at NorthPark, the entrancing toy-sized trains crossing a diorama of the United States, continue their run through January 1. They are located this year near Barney’s New York on the second level of NorthPark Center, Northwest Highway and Central Expressway in Dallas. Tickets are $3 for children and seniors, $6 for adults, with discount tickets available at Tom Thumb stores. See
http://www.northparkcenter.com for times, including special hours for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

Totally Texas -- Santa says: Listen to your heart

My daughter confided recently that children in her five-year-old sons’ kindergarten classes are already attempting to undermine other kids’ beliefs in Santa Claus. An attempt that seems, somehow, childish.

The boys know there’s more than one kind of reality. They more or less politely derided my pretense that a small plush moose toy named Miles was “real” in the sense of belonging to a species of gigantic quadrupeds whose antlers would get stuck trying to fit through the door of their suburban home. But the boys assured me that Miles, when tucked into a child’s bed, really does keep dreams from turning into nightmares.

That’s the kind of reality Santa Claus has. Just ask his alter ego, psychology professor Carl Anderson, who’s been the face and voice of Santa for more than twenty years at Dallas’s NorthPark Center.

Beginning the day after Thanksgiving, Santa, aka Dr. Anderson, entertains crowds of children and parents daily from his small house on Level One near Macy’s.

When I heard him last week, the crowd of children began chanting “Santa, Santa,” even before he entered the house, and some adults joined the refrain as well during Anderson’s signature story about Trouble the Christmas elf. The storytelling continues at 10:30 a.m. daily (Sundays at noon) through December 23.

Pictures with Santa are free if taken by family members, but there’s such a line, you have to assure your place with a numbered ticket. Ticketing starts at 9 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday. (Children may also have their pictures taken by a professional photographer.) See www.northparkcenter.com/holiday/ for complete listings of picture times and other events.

Santa also invites listeners to read his family-friendly blog, http://santasays.org/ In answer to the often-asked question “Are you the real Santa?” he writes, “I let them know that whether I am or not I represent their being cared about and a wish that they be happy.   A young boy asked (recently) ‘How do I know if you are the real Santa?’ I tapped his chest and said, ‘Listen to your heart’. That’s where our ‘truths’ lie.”

Paging Dr. Seuss

Joe from the Writers Garret asked for readers, as in people willing to read their own writing OUT LOUD in front of the crowd of Saturday window shoppers at a local upscale mall.  No, don't let me go all weaselly about this -- it wasn't any old shopping mall.  It was NorthPark Center in Dallas, Texas.  True confession:  I love NorthPark.  It may be the only shopping mall that houses a collection of stupendous art, right there by the food court, the escalators, everywhere.  It has an indoor duck pond and a children's library.  My family hangs out there when the weather won't let the kids play outside.  It's way, way cooler than your usual shopping venue.  So of course I told Joe I'd read.  I begged him to let me read.  He said yes.  Then I remembered that reading my own words in public makes me want to throw up.

The Garret, a gathering place in East Dallas that offers writing classes and workshops, was one of dozens of  organizations invited to an arts fair at NorthPark that day.  Our booth was next to those for book reviewers and oral storytellers.  Costumed actors from the local Shakespearean theater strolled the halls, with more actors dressed as characters from the books of beloved children's author Dr. Seuss.  You know him, the cat  from Whoville who stole Christmas.  The stage area where those of us who accepted the challenge of Garret writer in residence Joe Milazzo would read was between a Starbucks and the restrooms at that end of the mall.  It was busy with a capital biz.

Fellow writer Gigi asked me to videotape her reading.  Maybe she just took pity on me looking greenish, hoping to distract me from the awful moment when I would look at the paper in my trembling hand and realize the words printed on it made no sense whatsoever.  I concentrated on keeping her in the viewfinder, forgetting that photography rule about keeping track of the background so your subject doesn't end up with telephone poles appearing to sprout from her head or any such nonsense.  She read, I read, others read.  At least our lips moved.  The noise of the crowd overwhelmed the PA system, the shoppers not even slowing to gawk.  Joe said it was good experience, we'd be better for it the next time.

I asked Gigi later whether the video helped her critique her performance.  She said yes.  Except that when she viewed it she couldn't take her eyes off the guy with the Cat in the Hat costume posing behind her.  Dr. Seuss would have had a moral for that.