Hello from us all at Chelsea Library! Chelsea Children’s Library has been very busy as we ran a number of successful children’s events over the school holidays. This month we’re starting a new mini series on The Chelsea Blog – some interesting facts about Chelsea Reference Library.
Children’s events
Our events this month tied in with the London wide Cityread London campaign. This year’s book is ‘A Week In December’ by Sebastian Faulks. We tailored our craft events to themes in the novel.
For our first event we prepared materials with a London Underground and football theme. Boys and girls relished making their very own designed bookmarks.
And as you can see the results were impressive! The children then gathered around for a Thomas the Tank engine story.
Our next event was on the lines of an Easter egg hunt only this time we used miniature chocolate footballs. First of all the children cut out a card template and then assembled with glue a little Easter basket . This was then filled with shredded paper to resemble straw.
We hid clues for the hunt throughout the children’s library and excitedly the boys and girls went off in search of the chocolate balls. We then read ‘Football crazy’ by Colin McNaughton.
Baby rhyme time was exciting this month as it had a London theme too – we all sang:
- London Bridge is falling down
- Oranges and lemons
- Pussy cat, pussy cat where have you been?
- Do you know the muffin man?
Everyone joined in and promised to come to storytime the next day where we continued the London theme – we adapted ‘Puss in Boots’ and to a London setting and the Marquis of Carabas became the Marquis of Sloane Square and the river in the story changed to the Thames.
Details of when our children’s events are can be found on the ‘What’s on page’ on our website.
Rob Symmons
Lending Librarian
Great facts about Chelsea Reference Library
#1.The Fashion Collection
Chelsea Reference Library has an extensive collection of fashion books as well as a large archive of fashion magazines dating back to 1924.
The book collection covers a wide range of subjects such as costume and fashion history, regional and national costumes, occupational attire, military uniforms and different types of accessories including jewellery, shoes, hats etcetera. Our fashion books are beautifully illustrated and have great content. The fashion and costume collection is widely used by students from Chelsea College of Art and Design based in Chelsea as well as other library users with a particular interest in fashion.
Our magazine archives include Vogue Magazine (1923 till present) Harper’s Bazaar (1950 till present, albeit with a small gap in the sequence) and L’Officiel (1947-2001). We also have a small collection of Manufacturing Clothier (1973-1988) and Vogue USA.
More information can be found on our costume collection web page.
The Chelsea Reference Library Staff
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