The Contemporary Jewish Museum Celebrates Authors Big and Small on April 9 with Free Admission For SF Public Library Card Holders and Lots of Family Friendly Activities
(San Francisco, CA, February 23, 2017) The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM) celebrates bookmakers big and small this April with a special Family Day presented in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), San Francisco SPCA’s Puppy Dog Tales, and the San Francisco Center for the Book. SFPL cardholders receive free admission for themselves and one guest.
The event on April 9, 2017 from 11am–3pm features a whole host of family friendly activities that encourage a love of books and reading. The Green Bookmobile will be parked in front of The Museum throughout the event so families can sign up for new library cards, check out books, and more. Also available throughout is a special Book Arts activity with the San Francisco Center for the Book in the Art Studio. Families can work together to design and make their very own book art.
At 11am, enjoy a free performance of Kate and the Beanstalk by Acrolele—part acrobatics, part storytelling, part ukulele, and all fun. Then at 12:30pm and again at 1:30pm, settle in for storytimes with Puppy Dog Tales. Listen to a variety of children’s books and meet the lovable canines from the SPCA’s Puppy Dog Tales program.
From 11am–1pm, The Museum encourages all young stand up comedians ages 5–18 to come with their best joke for a chance to be included in the first ever Museum Kid Comics video, which will be screened in the Zim Zoom Family Room through the run of the upcoming exhibition Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs. Register at families@thecjm.org.
From 11am–2pm, view the enchanting collection of books created by San Francisco public school students as part of the Ezra Jack Keats Bookmaking Competition. For the fifth year in a row, The Museum has teamed up with the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, SFPL, and the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to promote the art and craft of original bookmaking in the classroom through the Bookmaking Competition.
The CJM began working with the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation and local partners to offer an annual west coast version of the Bookmaking Competition, named after beloved children’s book author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats, in 2012, after presenting an exhibition of Keats’ work entitled The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats. The Foundation has been offering a similar competition in New York City for over 25 years. In 2015, The CJM’s program was recognized for Excellence in Museum Education by the California Association of Museums. Last year, over ninety entries from twenty-two K–12 SFUSD schools were received. This year, The Museum was able to offer free bookmaking kits to 15 underserved SFUSD schools thanks to a generous in kind donation from Blick Art Materials.
“The Ezra Jack Keats Bookmaking Competition is a fruitful and enduring collaboration with our local public schools,” says Janine Okmin, Associate Director of Education, The CJM. “The project touches hundreds of teachers in the SFUSD through professional development workshops, and gives budding authors and illustrators a sense of pride and accomplishment. We are grateful to the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation for the ongoing support of this project and for inspiring us to begin a west coast bookmaking initiative.”
