And I also saved the world from aliens, by the way. You’re welcome.

According to our Puritan forefathers, children’s souls were inherently sinful (because the Puritans thought everything was sinful). As soon as they could read they were taught right from wrong, and the earliest children’s books were dreadfully serious diatribes on human morality – until John Locke came along. He thought learning should be made “a Play and Recreation,” and, thankfully, the rest of human history agreed with him.

Locke is the reason children’s books are engaging, encouraging readers young and old to imagine themselves in the stories. Interact with the world around them from the perspectives of their favorite characters. Have fun. That theme – that we all make sense of the world around us by interacting with stories – is the core of the NYPL’s latest exhibit “The ABC of it:  Why Children’s Books Matter.”

And it was gobs of fun.

CMA visited the exhibit on Tuesday, July 16. Here are few pictures and key points because I can’t spoil it for you. Or I don’t want to. Go see it yourself, is what I’m saying.

See? There we are!

Here are the highlights:

• The design of the exhibit was all about play. There were lots of nooks and crannies to wander in and explore – making everyone feel like a kid.

How do you NOT lead a wild rumpus through here?

Don’t you want to crawl through that window into the other room?

• That sense of exploration, and the hands-on details for each section of the exhibit, encouraged a sense of wonder. Every twist and turn took people back to their childhood memories.

Beautiful words, Mr. Sagan. And his weren’t the only ones gracing this wall.

Do you know how many people yelled “Follow the white rabbit!” when they saw this? EVERYONE.

• You haven’t experienced Charlotte’s Web until you hear E.B. White read it. Fun fact: he sounds like a plummy, placid Michael Caine!

• Did you know people were writing teen adventure fiction in 19^th Century Germany? About American cowboys and Indians? I sure didn’t.

The CMA folks gathered afterwards to chat, and while we realized that lots of our favorite children’s books weren’t represented (No Little Prince! No Little Women! No Howl’s Moving Castle!) we unanimously agreed that we’d learned quite a bit. None the least of which was that children’s media people can’t pick a single favorite book.

My favorite part of the exhibit – and CMA Director of Events Corey Nascenzi’s favorite part – was the Banned Books section.

Little House on the Prairie?!

… but standing in front of those titles, smitten by the sheer volume of stories, was awe-inspiring. It reminded me that stories are powerful – not just because they can teach, but because they can teach things that some people want to restrict. Ideas are powerful…and completely in the eye of the beholder.

There was so much more to see, and we all agreed we needed to come back and spend more time at the exhibit. Wander. Explore.

Thank you, Edward Stratemayer, for legitimizing my dream job. For those of you who saw the exhibit, you know why. For those who didn’t, the exhibit runs until March 23, 2014.

Go! Go now!

Catwoman says so. And she’s part of the exhibit, so she’s waiting…

Caption: “Catwoman says so. And she’s part of the exhibit, so she’s waiting...”