Big Blue Marble Bookstore's Bunch of Events for Kids!

Big Blue Marble Bookstore, Northwest Philadelphia's premiere spot for free, community events for children and adults, has a packed schedule this fall with events ranging from puppets plays to pirate parties, from excellent young adult readings to seminars teaching parents how they can pay for their child's education. Come check us out!

-Maleka Fruean, events coordinator at Big Blue Marble Bookstore


FOR KIDS:

Sunday, November 15, 11:00am and 11:45am. Waldorf Puppet Play! Join our special guest puppeteers from the Waldorf School of Philadelphia for a wonderful puppet show. One show at 11am and again at 11:45am. "The Little Boy Who Wanted To Be Carried Along All The Time" is a poem written by F.Ruckert and adapted for use as a puppet play by Suse Konig. It's a sweet tale of a boy and the adventures he encounters and how nothing is quite right until he safe in his Mother's arms. For ages 12 months to 5 years old.

Saturday, November 21, 3:00pm. Robox Reading and Robot Party! with Mark Rogalski. Join Mark Rogalski and Big Blue Marble Bookstore for a robot party and book reading celebrating the new book Robox, a robot story and build-your-own-robot kit!

Sunday, November 22, 1:00pm. Archie and the Pirates Reading and Pirate Party! with Marc Rosenthal. Join us for a pirate party and reading from Marc Rosenthal's newest picture book.

Sunday, December 6, 2:00pm. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus Reading/Kids' Event with Charles Santore. Join Big Blue Marble Bookstore in our cafe for milk and cookies and a reading by Charles Santore from his new book about all the adventures of Santa Claus. We'll have some art to color too!

FOR YOUNG ADULTS (AND ADULTS!):

Thursday, October 29, 7:00pm. Liar Conversation with Justine Larbalestier. Liar is a psychological thriller set in New York City told from the point of a compulsive liar who promises that this time there will be no more lies. Justine Larbalestier is the author of the Magic or Madness trilogy and How to Ditch Your Fairy. She is married to author Scott Westerfeld and divides her time between Sydney, Australia, and New York City. Justine blogs daily at www.justinelarbalestier.com/blog.

Friday, November 6, 7:00pm. Sugarless Reading with James Magruder. “Magruder is a writer of immense gifts, with a voice —smart, playful, lyrical, subtle, unsparing —utterly unlike anyone else’s.”—Tony Kushner, playwright of Angels in America. Things look bad for Rick Lahrem, a high school sophomore in a cookie-cutter Chicago suburb in 1976. His mother’s second husband is a licensed psychologist who eats like an ape, his stepsister is a stoner slut, and his father is engaged to a Southern belle. Rick’s only solace is his growing collection of original Broadway-cast LPs, bought on the sly at Wax Trax. After he brings two girls in speech class to tears by reading a story aloud, Rick is coaxed onto the interscholastic forensics team to perform an eight-minute dramatic interpretation of The Boys in the Band, the controversial sixties play about homosexuality. Unexpectedly successful at this oddball event, Rick begins winning tournaments and making friends with his teammates.

Thursday, November 19, 7:00pm. Big Blue Young Adult Readings and Discussion with Catherine Gilbert Murdock and Delia Sherman. Catherine Gilbert Murdock is the author of the Dairy Queen trilogy, featuring the determined D.J. Schwenk, which comes to its conclusion in the brand new Front and Center. Catherine is local to the Philly area and is also the author of the fantasy Princess Ben. Delia Sherman is the author of Changeling, the story of Neef, the official mortal changeling of Central Park, and its recently released sequel The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. She is also co-editor of the "interstitial fiction" collections Interfictions and Interfictions 2 (due out November 3).

FOR PARENTS:

Wednesday, October 28, 10:30am. Paying For Your Child's Education Financial Seminar with Edward Jones Financial Group. Parents, stop by for this free seminar from the folks at Edward Jones Financial Group that details how you can create a financial plan to pay for your children's education through the years.

Thursday, November 5, 7:00pm. Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World Reading with Dr. Katharine Beals. Bright, eccentric, and often socially awkward, so-called left-brain children often have talents and inclinations that lean heavily toward the logical, linear, analytical, and introverted side of the human psyche--what is commonly referred to as the "left brain"--as opposed to the "right brain" which is our emotional, holistic, intuitive, and extroverted side. Left-brain kids are often found on the margins of the classroom and the playground, the ones who tend not to fit in with their peers but have rich interior and intellectual lives. Join us for an evening with Dr. Katharine Beals whose research and interviews with parents and children, has led to a new understanding of left-brain kids and practical strategies for nurturing and supporting them, both at school and at home.

All events take place at Big Blue Marble Bookstore in our cafe, 551 Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19119 (right near the Weavers Way Co-op). All events are free and open to everyone.

Time to sign up for your CSA!

If you’ve ever wanted to join a CSA (community supported agriculture), now is the time to get your applications in. The movement to get your food locally, to know the farmers who produced it and that no pesticides were used, and to be involved with a like-minded community is growing in popularity every year since Michael Pollan’s book,The Omnivore’s Dilemma came out in 2006 .
Local Harvest provides a service where you can type in a zip code and find out all the local farmers’ markets, food coops, CSAs, restaurants that serve seasonal cuisine and even farms you never knew were just around the corner where you can buy backyard-raised duck eggs. Farm to City is another website that provides links to the Philadelphia area CSAs and buying clubs.
In a CSA, a farmer offers shares to the public, paid for in advance, in return for a weekly selection of vegetables or fruits (northstarorchard.com is one) for the growing season, 20-25 weeks from May through November. There are also some CSAs that offer winter memberships.
A member of a buying club has the opportunity to place orders online and pays for that portion without purchasing a season’s worth of food. In either case, the food is picked up at designated drop-off locations throughout the city. You can split a share with another family depending on the size of the share and how many vegetables you think you can eat in a week.
We belong to Pennypack Farm’s CSA. It was the closest one we found where we could go to the farm itself to see the food being grown. We split the large share of 10 generous bunches of vegetables with another family and go to the farm the same day every week within a 5-hour time frame to pick it up. The large share costs $675 total and the small share of 6 units costs $450, with prices to be determined for next year.
They also grow their own broiler chickens, turkeys for Thanksgiving, and have laying hens whose eggs, along with other local products from buffalo burgers (yes local!) to hummus, are sold at their store. With every kind of vegetable imaginable and an A to Z farm stand cookbook for sale, we’ve tried kohlrabi and okra, tomatillos and garlic scapes. Pennypack also has weekly children’s programs and adult environmental education, including a meet-the-farmer series.
A newsletter is sent out weekly and there are invitations to potlucks, campfires, sleepovers and an annual harvest festival. One requirement is that each family contribute 4 hours of “share duty” per season, which can be anything from watering the herbs to weeding or planting seedlings. Present members are given first choice to sign on for next season and then it is opened to a waiting list. Just like with preschools, apply early!


--written by Marie