I'm hoping to take my students on a field trip to Washington, DC to see the
Building Stories exhibit at the National Builders Museum; but I hadn't been to DC since my early 20s and I hadn't taken Amtrak to DC yet, even though it's a fairly common thing for folks to do from Roanoke. So, I wanted to do a dry run of the trip to learn the route before I have students in my care.
Happily, my friend Julie was not only up for the adventure, she also has a close friend who lives in DC and was happy to host us. So we packed up our weekend bags and arrived at the train platform much earlier than we needed to (lesson #1). It was SO GOOD to be on a train again!
It reminded me of being on the train between Edinburgh and Glasgow and just made me silly happy. I had heard that whereas UK trains run along coastlines and through beautiful scenery, US trains tend to run through ugly industrial areas. Well, that turned out to be a myth. Most of the ride was absolutely gorgeous. The seats were comfortable, the bathrooms were clean, the food in the cafe car was decent. Trains are such a civilized way to travel!
We arrived at Union Station in the rain where Julie's friend France picked us up. We headed to her place and fell over. The forecast was rain for the whole weekend, but we lucked out and it was mostly only overcast. Turned out France lives on the sweetest street in Captial Hill where townhouses line up like the most charming doll houses.
And joyful things pop up around every corner.
We were staying not far from Eastern Market, I was told it would transform on Saturday, but on Friday, it was still rather quiet. Here's Julie in front.
Meanwhile, the point of our visit was to head to the National Builders Museum. This required taking the Metro (lesson #2!)
and seeing some very cool things.
What a building!
The inside was equally as stunning.
After getting our tickets, I noticed these tiny chairs on display - all mid-century modern - so cute!
Then we made our way to the exhibit.
The show was curated by the esteemed academic and children's book expert, Leonard Marcus, in conjunction with award-winning author/illustrator
David Macaulay.
The first exhibit you see when inside is a wall of books representing the alphabet.
That was nice enough, but following that was examples of some of the finest works-of picture book art ever created. Among them, Margaret Wise Brown,
; The Slant Book by Peter Newell,
a book dummy by Sophie Blackall of her book
Lighthouse.
. And a book called
Migrant that I'd never seen before but will be purchasing for our Margaret Wise Brown Reading Room!
Seeing these books will help students understand that picture books aren't just about getting published, they can be about creating masterpieces.
But the main part of the exhibit I really want students to see is the work by David Macaulay. Not only did he cover the walls of the exhibit with custom drawings...
there is an entire room dedicated to the work he did for just
one of his books,
Rome Antics.
The book took him
years to complete, and the walls are covered with his sketches. So many creators believe that one, two, or three drafts is enough to reach a finished result. But David created hundreds of sketches during his process.
Hundreds. It was humbling, overwhelming, and inspiring. Yeah, I definitely want my students to see THAT!
That evening we had dinner at a lovely restaurant near France's place called
Pacci's. We started with a beet salad to share.
Being so close to the Chesapeake, I had to get the softshell crab pasta special. OMG, it was so good, and it came with
three softshell crabs -
three!!! One of these days I'll tell you about my history with crabbing on the Chesapeake and in the bay at Destin. They're fun stories. At any rate, it was a
good day and there was more to come!
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