Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Building the Emerald City

See this? It's a cut and build Emerald City by Dick Martin, published by Dover Publications.

I bought one of these years ago when I was collecting Oz books. My baby brother Daniel saw it (I was still living with my parents at the time) and expressed interest in assembling it. I told him I'd buy another copy for us to cut up and put together.

That, however, didn't happen until after I'd moved out. However, he'd often mention it when he visited and look for it on my bookshelf.

When I went to Winkies, one of the activities was helping Karyl Carlson assemble one of these. I remembered Daniel and then realized his birthday wasn't far off.

Due to some concerns from doctors (he is a Type 1 diabetic) and actions by the state, Daniel is being placed under the guardianship of (and will later be adopted by) my eldest brother and his wife, who happen to live the next street over from me, so it's only a short walk away. And as it happened, this week, he's staying with them.



Daniel visited the day before his birthday, so I pulled the book off my shelf and gave it to him and told him sometime we would put it together... Together!

So, last night, I headed over there, and we engaged in two hours of cutting, gluing, taping, and talking. We managed to build five buildings that we put carefully on top of his bookshelf.

Since I have today off, I headed over again and we did a bit more...

All that's left now is the Palace... The big one! We'll have to find some time to do it...

2 comments:

James C. Wallace II said...

Time well spent.

Karma rewards good deeds!

Nathan said...

I had one of these, but I never got anywhere near that far along. I remember doing a fair amount of cutting, but not much assembling.