Most kids dream of their favorite storybook characters coming to life. Now, perhaps they will, in the new exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Atlanta, “Storyland: A Trip Through Childhood Favorites.” The immersive experience highlights seven beloved children’s books in an interactive journey for kids and their grownup companions, on view through May 30. Karen Kelly, director of exhibits and education at the Children’s Museum, joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to share some of the features of the new experience.
“It is such an exciting journey through these children’s book favorites. It’s immersive, it’s fun, and even more importantly, the underlying learning and messages under it are terrific,” said Kelly. “It’s all about kids learning about reading and language and building those skills.”
Primarily focused on promoting kids’ literacy and language growth, the experience encourages interaction, exploration, and conversation with unique environments for younger and older kids and their grownups. “You can sit and listen to mom read a board book,” said Kelly. “There is a toddler space, always, for kids, smaller children to engage in when you’re little. For older children, there’s lots of fun and engaging role play in the exhibit where you can actually crawl into Peter Rabbit’s tree and be in his house with his bed and read a story to your sister, brother, and sister rabbits.”
She continued, “For the book of ‘Snowy Day,’ you can walk in the snow – not real snow, obviously – and feel your feet crunch.”
Another featured kids’ favorite, the alphabet-learning board book “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,” comes to life in the “Storyland” exhibit. “There’s this wonderful tree where you match a capital letter to a lowercase letter, and then the letters go up the tree, and at the top, they come tumbling down just like in the book,” said Kelly.
