A mother-daughter book club from Shaker Heights visited the Museum today and had the opportunity to get up close and personal with a volume of the
Audubon. These 8th- and 9th-grade girls and their mothers recently read
Okay for Now, by Gary D. Schmidt. This engaging book features a lonely teenager who moves to a small town with his family. He finds solace and company in the town library, where he first encounters a volume of
Birds of America, by John James Audubon. The book club members started their visit in the Harold T. Clark Library, where Volume One is currently on display. The remaining volumes of the double-elephant folio are currently off exhibit undergoing some light restoration in one of the Museum labs by a conservator from the Kelvin Smith Library at Case Western Reserve University. Fortunately for the book club members, they were able to get a close-up view of some of the plates in Volume Two, which features prominently in
Okay for Now. Emily Rintoul, a student intern from the Cleveland Institute of Art, ably assisted in the page-turning, while sharing her knowledge of paper-making and book repair. I really enjoyed meeting these fellow book-lovers and giving them the opportunity to experience first-hand the beauty of Audubon's art. Thank you so much for visiting the Museum and the Library today!
