Another day in NYC

Will the real Statue of Liberty please stand up?

Today we played NYC tourist for a while, taking the ferry to visit Ellis Island to visit/tour the immigration museum there (with the ferry first stopping at Liberty Island to drop off and pick up passengers). I was born in the Bronx, my parents were both New Yorkers, have been there more times than I can count, but somehow this was my first trip to Ellis Island. Here's a couple of photos from inside the museum.

And the boat ride back to Manhattan......

where we spent a couple of hours pouring through the books at The Strand Bookstore in Greenwich Village. This bookstore is absolutely HUGE. I spent like an hour on the second floor, which is totally art and art related books, and kid books. There were so many I have never seen, and the prices were low. If I wasn't retiring in a few short months I would have brought home a huge armload for the art room, beginning with Eric Carle's The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse and including a wonderful book for children about Hundertwasser.

As it is I had to restrain myself and only bought a book on Giuseppe Arcimboldo,

and a copy of The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey, the most wonderfully subversive alphabet book. If you've never seen Gorey's work, you've got to check it out. Here's A & B: "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs; B is for Boris assaulted by bears."

The book continues with the demise of a child to represent each letter of the alphabet, and ends with a little graveyard. Not PC, I know, but I love it.

And I bought an out-of-print book on making beaded amulet purses, and some cheapo MadLibs books for the fifth graders to use when I have lunch duty. They love MadLibs but what I had was all used up. If you ever get a chance to browse this bookstore, make sure you get to the 2nd floor where the art/kid books are. You may have to be dragged back down.

Goodnight from New York City.