Image © Claire A. Nivola from THE SECRET KINGDOM
Award-winning author Barb Rosenstock brought Curious City a pre-release copy of her picture book The Secret Kingdom: Nek Chand, a Changing India, and a Hidden World of Art illustrated by Claire A. Nivola (Candlewick Press).
Rosenstock profiles Nek Chand, a refugee from the partition of India, who recreated the village he left behind in a massive outdoor art installation known today as the Rock Garden of Chandigarh.
MAT Teacher Candidates at MECA
Publishers Weekly said, “Rosenstock’s gratifying story conveys how art has the capacity to revitalize and restore.” We could not agree more.
Curious City reached out to the tremendous School and Library Marketing team at Candlewick Press and asked for advanced copies of the picture book. With a collection of books, we could find a way to explore the revitalizing and restoring power of art in the classroom. Candlewick came through gloriously with a case of staple-bound F&G’s for our pre-pub work with teachers and students.
We then partnered with a group of MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching) Teacher Candidates at Maine College of Art (MECA) and our long-term collaborator, Professor Kelly McConnell to explore ways to engage with The Secret Kingdom. The Teacher Candidates brought the books to a Maine elementary school where many of the students, like Nek Chand, had been forced to say goodbye to their homes as immigrants.
The Teacher Candidates used the book and Nek Chand’s artwork to reflect with students on the complex feelings of home and community. From their collective work, Curious City was able to launch The Secret Kingdom with four innovative art lesson plans created by MECA’s MAT’s. Explore the lessons at CuriousCityDPW.com.
The lesson plans were also featured on The Nerdy Book Club.
In her The Nerdy Book Club post, author Barb Rosenstock talks about marketing in a way that sends Curious City over the moon. This is what we strive for. This is what is what we believe. This is marketing that matters and marketing that lasts.
Barb Rosenstock
“Your job is a teacher, mine is a writer. Or you’re a librarian and someone else is an illustrator. But what is a book’s job?
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When you’ve been working with children’s books for a while you can lose track. You start to believe that a book’s job is to sell a lot of copies or get made into a movie or always be missing from the shelves or have its title tweeted every ten minutes.
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After more than ten years of writing for kids, I’ve just learned a lesson about a book’s job that I’ll never forget…
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While watching videos of these young students analyzing Claire’s illustrations, and working with Nek’s true story, I experienced their surprise, delight, and sometimes, their frustration. I noticed the patterns on their t-shirts and the embroidery on their headscarves, the shades of their skin and the colors of their artwork. I watched kids in one suburban school, from all over the world, engage with my words in a deep way. Most importantly, I watched them relate to a boy from India born over 100 years ago—a boy who was forced to go, but who found home again through his art.
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My job is to write children’s books. As part of that, I think about sales figures, social media mentions, book lists and upcoming reviews for The Secret Kingdom. But those factors will never matter in quite the same way again. Because a bunch of kids from around this planet taught me that a book’s job is to connect. And if it does, that’s enough. That’s what I’m working for. That’s home.”
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—Barb Rosenstock for The Nerdy Book Club
