Cardboard Castles now on in The Corner at State Library of Queensland

The Corner at State Library of Queensland is a play space for under 8s and their families. Play gives young children a way to practice what they learn and is an essential part of their development.

The new State Library Corner installation Cardboard Castles provides the opportunity for young people to come on a design and construction adventure where form and function meet fancy and fun. The theme is based on the current exhibition Home: a suburban obsession.

Above: Children exploring a castle in the new Cardboard Castles theme in The Corner.

We install a different Corner theme three times each year to provide a fresh, stimulating, interesting and thought provoking space for children. Each theme evokes new feelings and experiences for young people to learn different words and concepts amplified by the structures crafted especially for the theme. Cardboard Castles is built on the shapes, space, line, texture and form repeated throughout the Home exhibition’s bricks, louvres, and picket fence shapes. This Corner theme is imagined by Home exhibition artist Jennifer Marchant.

The list of in-print titles on the current theme is now on The Corner Toolkit. The Cardboard Castles book list themes are art, builders, colours, design, little inventors, shapes and texture. There are titles to suit ages birth to eight including: Dog Loves Drawing by Louise Yates; Brick Who Found Herself in Architecture by Joshua David Stein; Look by Fiona Woodcock, Square by Mac Barnett and That’s Not My Bee by Fiona Watt.

Above: Books for children and their families on the Cardboard Castles theme in The Corner.

Libraries are welcome to use the titles from the Cardboard Castles book list at their own library story time, in a display, or to print the list for parents. This Corner theme celebrates design thinking because of its link to developing a growth mindset and important problem solving, analytical and spatial thinking skills.

Above: Cardboard Castles now on in the The Corner

If you are looking for inspiration to help renew your children’s space why not use some of the ideas from the State Library Corner themes in your library? Visit The Corner Toolkit for themes and activities to engage young audiences in your library. For more information contact ypf@slq.qld.gov.au.