Jane
Dobbs shares the setting up of this memorable display at Kingston LINC and some
of the personal stories it is generating. Worth a visit, especially on the 18th
August to listen to Nan's daughter, Heather Chauncy.
As
soon as it was confirmed that Kingston LINC would be a stopping point for the
Nan Chauncy Travelling Suitcase exhibition, all the staff were thrown into a
frenzy of activity in preparation.
Glass
display cabinets were firstly allocated, then buffed and polished in
anticipation.
Books were quickly ordered in
– both from our lending collection and our very cherished and precious Children’s
Literature Collection.
Preparations were made to
ensure the collection was situated in a suitable and prominent location within
the LINC
It was decided that the
display be situated in the entrance of the LINC, so that, when our customers
came into the LINC, they were enveloped into a world of Nan Chauncy.
The area includes a large
internal window which I usually try to decorate to complement the display or
theme that surrounds it. To celebrate the work of Nan Chauncy I researched her
work through both the Children’s Book Council of Australia site and, of course,
through the powers of Google!!! Finding the facsimile of the original of the
movie poster for ‘They found a Cave’, I decided that I could utilise the
graphic image of the silhouette of the children at the entrance to the cave.
Thinking I may have bitten off more than I could chew, I got one of the
printing companies to blow up the image, used that as a template and headed off
to the local newsagent to buy up their supply of black card, traced around the
photocopy…and after a frenzy of scalpel and scissor work (think Edward
Scissorhands crossed with a bit of twister thrown in for good measure!) the
piece was completed.
Sadly it was on the floor in
my spare room at home…a friend and I somehow managed, with the help of a large bedsheet
and an even larger four wheel drive boot, to get the work into the LINC unscathed
and then there was another frenzy this time involving vast amounts of blutack
before the work was positioned centrally and straight on the window.
Phew!!! Mission accomplished!
High fives all round!!!
Patsy Jones from the CBCA
(Tas) then arrived to set up the display ….luckily we were able to hang the
amazing and colourful banner produced by Jill McElwee to complement the book
display. The banner, showing through the glass of one of the cabinets, is a
lovely backdrop and so perfectly suits the mood and feel of the items in the
cabinet.
The
Nan Chauncy Travelling Suitcase display has reached out to the community in a
unique and inclusive way.
One of our customers who is
also a member of the Friends of the Library Kingston (FOLK) allowed us to
display an ‘uncorrected’ version of ‘The Roaring 40’ with a lovely story behind
the book:
“This came from my parent’s books when their house
was sold. We used to sell chickens to Nan Chauncy and bought a milking goat
from her. We would visit Chauncy Vale for deliveries – late 50s or early 60s.”
A few days after installing
the exhibition, a gentleman was looking at the display and asked a question
about one of the pieces. Whilst chatting to him, I discovered he was an avid
collector of Nan Chauncy’s first editions and that he was willing to add his
collection of 15 books to our display!!
Asking him how he came to
start collecting Nan Chauncy novels prompted this anecdote which was told to me
with great warmth and fondness:
“A home-sick mother and her six year old son sat in
a Brisbane movie theatre in early 1963 and enjoyed what was probably this young
boy’s first movie experience. As the years passed by, about the only things
that the boy remembered was that the children, “the goodies” won the day and
the absolutely amazing colour of the cave. Little did that boy know that many
years later he would return to Tasmania (via six primary schools, two high
schools and three tertiary institutions in three different states) and train to
become a primary school teacher. During the next nearly forty years he married
a gorgeous lady, raised two beautiful sons, taught a thousand students and
never forgot the colourful cave which was home to the children who triumphed
over adversity. He even shared a few of Nan’s stories along the way, showed her
two films, visited Chauncy Vale and met one of the cameramen from ‘They Found a
Cave.’”
Another customer came in with
the story that he was interested in the display as he had worked side by side
with Heather Chauncy, Nan’s daughter a few days prior, volunteering at the
Maritime Museum.
Finding Heather Chauncy’s
phone number on white pages, I promptly made a call to see if she would agree
to come to Kingston LINC to talk for an hour about her memories of her mother
and the books. She agreed and will be talking at Kingston LINC on Tuesday 18th
August at 2pm-3pm. It is such an amazing opportunity and we are so very
grateful for her involvement…but it seems that this is exactly what this
exhibition has done – generated community interest, involvement, generosity and
togetherness and isn’t that just what libraries do best…
Jane Dobbs
Customer Service Officer
at Kingston LINC involved in organising Display and Events at the LINC
Rosalie Martin, the chair of the Tasmanian Branch of Speech Pathology Australia and Simon Burnett, Risdon Prison’s literacy co-ordinator, came up with the idea. They were looking for a way to connect prisoners to their families whilst behind bars.
But it isn’t just the children who are benefiting from this program. Another program at the prison, Just Sentences, is helping to raise the level of literacy in our prison population. By helping inmates to process sounds and crack the code of language on a page, Rosalie says inmates' reading is improving in just three to four months.
