camp half-blood.

The Percy Jackson books were all the Art Camp kids could talk about. That and their respective kooky Spanish teachers. Still, kids in each age level of camp were gaga for this adventure series by Rick Riordan, featuring a pack of ADHD misfit pre-teens and the greek gods that sired them with mortals...illegally.

I began reading these to know what the heck The Kids were talking about, and because one of my favorite campers lent me his copy the last week of camp. When I returned it to him after reading only the first thirty pages, he kindly informed me about these places? Libraries? You can go and borrow a book there and there are lots of books, and they have this one, probably?

I could further describe the plot and characters of the books to you here, but do yourself a favor and have a ten-year old you know do it. It will be far more entertaining, and set up the conceit of these books much better than maybe even the author does. Book One is shaky going, Book Two hits a few scenes right out of the pre-YA Fantasy/Adventure/Coming-of-Age Series park, and Book Three - well, I just started Book Three.

I mostly read them because the kids from camp worked their way into the fabric of the story. The heroes, the villains, the characters inbetween are all played by campers in my mind. It doesn't hurt that much of the action is set at a summer camp for demigods.

It doesn't hurt one bit.

the hard part

WIRE.


Kids love it, and grownups love to give it to them to make stuff.

We're making 3D sculpture/puppets in camp, and entering what I call The Hard Part: frame-making. After withstanding roughly half a million dubious stares after telling the class to simplify their puppet's skeletons, I am pleased to say things paid off big when we got to said Hard Part.

3 times today I sat amidst a sea of smaller-than-mes, warning them that wire is awesome, but fairly frustrating and sharp. Ten minutes after the warning they were banging out asymmetrical circles with the best of them, light dancing in their mad-scientist eyes. I wanted to take those moments and throw them up like a smoke signal to the world. Shit is hard, then it is a cool hand puppet version of a trash can with felt garbage popping out of it. Or a talking cupcake. Or a sock puppet that isn't made out of a sock but looks like it's made out of a sock.

Pretty amped on kids right now. And pretty amped on skeletons.