Viit to Hippocampus Libraray on 28th July 2009

• Books for children aged 4 to 14.
• Weekend activities like arts and crafts, photography, reading competitions and talent competitions. Mostly children until the age of 9 participate in these. Older come there mostly to borrow books, they don’t spend time there or participate in activities.
• They do not judge the work done by children nor do they teach them. They basically let them be free and do their own thing. The activities are seen as a fun event for children where there is no pressure of performance or being right or wrong.
• They have a large collection of book including story books for very little children, counting book and alphabet books, fiction for young readers, encyclopedias, educational books like The Knowledge Series (which has titles like Murderous Math and Horrible Histories which aims to educate children in a fun way), arts and crafts books, hobby books which teach children skills like writing, drama, needlecraft, photography, drawing, painting, etc.
• One book that caught my eye was ‘Games and Giggles’ which is an activity book for young girls that has many ideas for games that children can play together, and also variations of popular games like hopscotch. Other activities included finding a way to convert one’s initials into a picture and making up a song where each letter of the alphabet is the beginning to a paragraph. This book is interesting because it involves activities that require the child to use her imagination rather than just using logic to deduct something.
• Another activity book that caught my eye was ‘Play in Art’ which is a compilation of famous paintings. The paintings have been used as a trigger for some activity. One such activity is called ‘Make up a story’ where the child looks at the subject of a painting and uses that as a trigger to create his own story. Another spread is titled ‘Animal noises’ where the child is challenged to make the noise of the animal that is depicted in the painting. I find this book interesting because it serves a dual purpose, that of being educational and also being a starting point for creative activities.
• Hippocampus has organized an activity for children from the age of 7 onwards on Saturday, 1st August that may be worth checking out.