Family day out at Seven Stories

Bank holiday Monday, everyone off school, work etc.  we went to Newcastle to visit Seven Stories.  What an absolutely fabulous place,  a nationally accredited museum/gallery celebrating children's literature.  There are literally seven storey's to the building, it's an old mill apparently, on the banks of the river.  You enter at floor 3, which is (obviously) the gift shop, and book shop.

www.sevenstories.org.uk

Floor 1 - creation station, we made crafts which linked in with their exhibitions, Enid Blyton, and How to train your dragon so whilst Dib-dab read a book about dragons with his dad, Kipper and I made a compass for exploring with, just like the Famous Five!

Dib-dab reading about dragons

Kipper making his compass for exploring.

After the second floor was the cafe (which seemed very nice - the menu looked good, although we only had drinks)  and then the fourth floor was the Enid Blyton exhibition.   Mystery, Magic & Midnight Feasts!  I loved Enid Blyton as a child, particularly the Famous Five, and the Five Finder-outers, and The Magic Faraway Tree, so for me, this was really interesting.  The boys found the Slippery Slip slide from the Faraway tree, and stayed there whilst I wandered round reading extracts from her diary ( worked till lunch, played Bridge, pottered in Garden!)  Her typewriter was there, all carefully loaned from her collection, and lodas of original artwork and type-written pages from her original drafts.  There was a large shed with SS on the door, complete with a (felt) picnic lunch in there, and a cave for the Famous Five to discover smugglers in.

Round the corner there was a lovely Noddy room, complete with car to sit in, and little hats with bells on and yellow spotty neckerchiefs to wear.  it was lovely.

One floor up, and it was all about Cressida Cowell, the lady who wrote the Viking series How to train your dragon!  Have to say, I am not as familiar with this, although we did watch the Disney Pixar film a while back, but hadn't realised it was based on the book series.  Hiccup Haddock Horrendous the Third was a hero in training, and we were given dragon trail sheets to fill in as we went round.  We had to have viking names, so Kipper chose his as Death-or-Glory, Dib-dab was unanimously named Snotface! and Daddy Beerbelly completed the trio.  we were all too busy laughing to find one for me, and have to say, I wasn't worried based on the selections previously!

Snotface and Death-or-Glory

The sixth floor was all about the acquiring, storing & preserving of older books, and though interesting for me, it was a little too old for my two. There were a couple of computers there, but in use, so we went on up to the attic, where there was a gorgeous big wooden chair, and lots of curved benches facing it, and a lady, dressed like Noddy came and read us all two stories.  There was dressing up clothes, and dens made from what appeared to be clothes horses and sheets (like we used to make a Grandma's when I was little)  and lots of books that children could take into the dens and read.

Back into the bookshop before leaving, and the boys were allowed one book each - Mr Croc for Dib-dab, and Kipper chose the Magic Faraway collection (because that way he got 3 stories in one book!)

All in all, an absolutely fantastic day out, and I can highly recommend it to anyone.