Regarding Resourcefulness

As you may be aware, I work at a library. Mum and the Siblings come in on Thursdays to help out with odd jobs around the library, and sometimes one of those jobs is Rearrange The Display Walls For The Season/Holiday/Programme/Etc.

Our (actually, mostly everyone's) Summer Literacy Programme theme this year is Digging Holes And Undergroundness And Things.

There is shockingly little content in the poster-room having to do with that sort of thing.

So we had to be resourceful.

While I worked the end of my shift, Mum & Co. put up some flowers (with children's and authors' names on). After a curry break at home (we live ninety seconds from the library) we went back armed with printouts of book covers and things.

After we'd stapled the covers to the wall, we realised that we needed More Stuff. Luckily Mum was able to find a springy/summery poster and we stapled it to the wall. Unluckily, it cut off extremely abruptly on one side - it was half of a giant posterbannerthing. We were unable to find the other half.

Our half had trees and a sun and words:
 'A good book'
 Obviously there was SOMETHING missing.

'We could put words above it,' Mum suggested. 'Dig into a good book.'

We were about to do that until we saw the problem with capitalisation -

'Dig into
A good book.'

That doesn't work. Unless:

'Now, my fellows
Dig into
A good book
Forsooth.'
-Shakespeare

But that might have gone over the children's heads.

Just then Smallest Sister (D) pointed out that she knew more or less where the other half of the poster was. We encouraged her (vociferously) to go and find it, then.

She came back a few minutes later with the other half.

The other half reads '. . .never ends.' and has on it. . .a picture of an autumn-leaved tree. And a winter tree. And snow.

Oh.

We ended up making The Classiest Arrow Ever to put next to the poster. Our display looks like this:

A good book ---> (there is a book on the top of the shelf below)

Better than snow.

After that there was the small matter of Not Having Any Other Posters Which Go With This Theme. So we rummaged through the poster drawers some more.

After a short time, Mum pulled out a poster of the Justice League (DC is my sworn enemy, but our Avengers poster is in the teen section right now) and had a Brilliant Idea.

A few minutes later, D and Mum and I were sitting around a tiny table in the children's section, surrounded by scissors and pens and colourful paper.

Some time after that, our masterpiece was finished. Pictures will be posted eventually, but I shall endeavour to use words to do justice (no pun intended) to this magnificent thing.

Superman is holding a small gardening spade. Green Lantern has a blocky diamond pickaxe and a tiny plastic yellow beach pail. Wonder Woman's lasso has become a gardening hose. The Flash's lightning-bolt emblem has turned into a golden spade, and Batman, of course, is holding a Bat-trowel. (That one was my idea. I'm rather proud of it.)

Aquaman has nothing.

I'm hoping to conduct negotiations with people and snatch the Avengers poster for our nefarious purposes. Tony Stark will look amazing with a tiny plastic pail.