School’s out! Freedom for small Vera Lee. Her bag skids across the Formica counter as she sheds her burdens and reaches for a glass in one movement. The water sparkles in the red plastic, reflecting the deep blue autumn sky. “To the park!” cry her feet.
And so begins the summertime adventures of a young girl exploring the built environment that she inhabits … both in her imagination and in real life. When my wife decided she wanted to write this story, I was thrilled to join her as illustrator. By putting ourselves in our children’s shoes (figuratively, not literally) we envisioned a world where the scale of the small items that kids find so fascinating transformed into the cityscape itself … where plastic cups become swimming pools, sticks of gum are skyscrapers, and bubble wands can be playmates. We had no expectations when we entered our finished story into the annual Blank Space Fairy Tales contest, but their interdisciplinary jury chose “The Block Party” as an honorable mention from a pool over 1,500 entries from 67 countries. Our story appears in the third volume of Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells a Story. The book is currently available to order on the Blank Space website.
Contact us if you want help telling your tales. Even if you don’t end up swimming in a plastic cup, we can help add some fun into your next project.
Scott Lindberg