Aberdeen students are building a literary wonderland

Sep. 11—"A new adventure begins," a sign on a back wall of the library at McDermoth Elementary School says. "Welcome to your new LIBRARY."

Without revealing the rest of the library, since the students and their librarian, Jenny Floch, are supposed to do that for students and parents on Friday morning, it is something any book and-or art lovers will immensely enjoy.

The reveal is set for the morning, but it will be an open house setting so the students' other classes are not interrupted.

One of the best parts of the project is seeing how excited Floch is, not just for the project, but for the students. She's a ball of enthusiasm and joy and it showed through during a short tour of the library.

"This is what I've wanted to do for two years," Floch said. "And it's cool to see it unfold, especially with the help of some really great students."

While it was Floch who spoke about the project, she wanted to give her 10 McDermoth students, from third through fifth grades, and the lead artist, Aberdeen High School Senior Ezri Carroll, the credit.

To keep the art project secret inside the library, there is a large, taped display on the library's doors, warning that it's "under construction." Floch said she loves how they came up with that idea and how it's helped keep the secret. While a few students have trickled in and seen their classmates' work, Floch and the school staff have been able to keep most people out of the space.

The artwork looks like it was done by paid professionals. One of the characters looks like they were made to Disney specifications, as he looked like he was taken off of a book cover and not drawn. But that's the type of talent that was involved in this project. And Floch is utterly impressed by the students and their dedication to making it look as it does.

While one of the walls, one that features drawings from many classic children's books, such as "Where the Wild Things Are," and "Harold and the Purple Crayon" were there when Floch started working at McDermoth, it gave Floch an idea for the rest of the library.

"Ten years ago, the mural behind the desk was drawn," said Floch, who's now in her third school year. "I absolutely loved it. I walked in and I thought it was a pretty amazing thing to take book characters and basically make them known, and have that acknowledgment of characters who have been around since I was a kid and knew these stories. And now my kids are going to know these stories and then continuing on with that."

But the rest of the walls were bare.

As Floch said, those bare walls actually made for a "blank canvas."

Floch explained how this project started. It took help from a friend.

"I contacted her a year ago and we started setting up where Ezri would make this her senior project," Floch said. "So all last year we had meetings about what we would do, when we would do it, kind of getting all of the details worked out with her teacher and the district, making sure we were allowed to do something like this. While I exist in here, it's not my building."

She asked students to brainstorm what they'd like to paint.

"More or less, I had a dozen kids who basically planned this (work) without realizing it," Floch said. "And so, we did that all last year. And then as of the last day of school, Ezri would have been a senior, and you can't start (a senior project) until you are technically a senior for your project."

Ezri and her grandmother came over during the summer and made the rest of the project happen.

"It was 37 hours total work," Floch said.

In addition to the work Ezri spent, it took seven more days — about an hour each day — to finish the project.

Floch said it turned out "amazing." That isn't an understatement. There will be some happy tears when people see the work of their children, perhaps their grandchildren, on Friday.

"I'm very, very excited for the kids to show off their work," Floch said.

Contact Reporter Matthew N. Wells at [email protected].