Childrens Storybook Workshop Inspired By Frog and Toad Author Arnold Lobel at Fenimore

Storytelling & Illustration: A Children's Book Workshop for Kids ages 9-14
Saturday and Sunday, November 11-12, 1-4pm
Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY
$75 Museum Members / $90 non-members
Registration required. Tickets available on Eventbrite.com

Cooperstown, New York — Children ages 9-14 are invited to participate in a storytelling and illustration workshop at Fenimore Art Museum—inspired by the artwork of Frog and Toad creator Arnold Lobel. Participants will be encouraged to let their imaginations run free as they learn how to combine illustration and writing to take one of their ideas and create their own storybook. The workshop takes place on Saturday and Sunday, November 11-12, from 1:00-4:00 p.m. each day. Registration is required: $75 Museum Members / $90 non-members. Information and registration is available at www.fenimoreart.org or www.eventbrite.com.

The workshop includes a special tour with Manager of Arts Education Kevin Gray, who will lead participants through the exhibition, Frog and Toad & Other Friends: The World of Arnold Lobel, showing how the award-winning illustrator and author assembled his stories and created early drafts. These original drawings and book layouts include notes and suggestions from Lobel’s editors, providing great insight to the book-writing process. Participants will write story drafts, pair them with drawings they have made, and will finish by learning to make a hand-bound book containing their story.

Fenimore Art Museum is located at 5798 State Route 80, less than one mile from the center of Cooperstown. For more information visit FenimoreArt.org. 

About the Exhibition

Frog and Toad & Other Friends: The World of Arnold Lobel (through December 31, 2023) celebrates the art of Arnold Lobel (1933–1987), author and illustrator of some of the most beloved children’s books produced since the late 1960s. Included among these are his Frog and Toad series (1971–79), Mouse Soup (1977), and Fables (1980), which was awarded the prestigious Caldecott Medal. Creating a magical world animated by a talking frog, a toad, an owl, mice, kangaroos, and other colorful creatures, Lobel subtly reflects upon human foibles in his charmingly rendered stories and illustrations. The exhibition features over one hundred original illustrations and works on paper highlighting Lobel’s detailed illustration technique and warm, funny tales of love and friendship, mostly among animal friends. 

About Fenimore Art Museum

Fenimore Art Museum, located on the shores of Otsego Lake—James Fenimore Cooper’s “Glimmerglass”—in historic Cooperstown, New York, features a wide-ranging collection of American art including folk art; important American 18th- and 19th-century landscape, genre, and portrait paintings; more than 125,000 historic photographs representing the technical developments made in photography and providing extensive visual documentation of the region’s unique history; and the renowned Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art comprised of nearly 900 art objects representative of a broad geographic range of North American Indian cultures, from the Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, Plains, Southwest, Great Lakes, and Prairie regions. Visit FenimoreArt.org. 

Museum Hours
Through December 31: 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday (closed Mondays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas). Museum admission is free for visitors 19 and under. Find more information at FenimoreArt.org.