Every year on June 16th, people all over the world gather to read aloud Irish author James Joyce’s Ulysses, his 1922 magnum opus detailing that single day of the fictional Leopold Bloom’s life in 1904 Dublin. Although inspired by Homer’s Odyssey and now considered one of the classics of literature, Joyce’s epic was too modern and controversial for its time and was banned for years.
In our June homage to Joyce’s Ulysses, we will read The Cats Of Copenhagen, his only work for children. It was beautifully illustrated by Casey Sorrow for Simon and Schuster’s 2012 publication of Joyce’s unusual story, written for and mailed to his grandson from Copenhagen in 1936.
We will follow up with Miroslav Sasek’s vintage This Is Ireland (1964) from his beloved and recently re-editioned This Is… series and Tomi Ungerer’s hauntingly lovely Fog Island (2013), inspired by his second home in Ireland. Ungerer is a winner of the Hans Christian Anderson lifetime achievement award, and his work was recently honored with a retrospective at The Drawing Center in New York. We will finish with the simple joys of a child’s day-in-the-life story from the Japanese children’s author/illustrator Taro Gomi: The Great Day, translated into English in 2014 from the 1984 original.
Lanie DeLay has worked at Dallas Contemporary, the Dallas Public Library, Hamon Arts Library at SMU, at area preschools and the School For The Blind in Austin. She has written for Glasstire and Art&Seek, and she tutors children in early reading skills at Dealey Montessori. When she isn’t looking at art or reading with kids, she’s reading about art or looking for a new read.
It’ll be about a 45 minute read with a short discussion/activity with the kids–that’s going to be interesting, we can’t wait to see what they come up with.
All ages are welcome.
On Sunday mornings, bring your kids and infuse them with a love for reading.
Price
- FREE!
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