Our Fun with Lentil

We had a wonderful time with Lentil. I wanted to share what we learned about at the Robert McCloskey Museum. Robert McCloskey was born and raised in Hamilton, Ohio. We learned that he taught a soap whittling class in Hamilton. I wonder why Old Sneep was whittling?:) He was then asked if he thought he could whittle a totem pole. He gave it a try and as a result won the rights to do the ornamental designs on the building in my photos(in post below) and on the link above.

There is a photo of a harmonica in the slides. This was Robert McCloskey's, we were told that he was in a harmonica band. I guess that's why Lentil played the Harmonica.

We got to see his Caldecott medals, his paintings (which were beautiful), his paint brushes. We also enjoyed seeing drawings of Lentil that were not in the book. We learned that Lentil's first name was actually Frederich. There were drawings of Lentil actually whistling (which he cannot do in the book). We also enjoyed seeing drawings of Lentil's parents. The museum was very small, but oh so worth going to. We were told that McCloskey's daughters donated the items and one of his daughter's lives in Maine on an island that McCloskey bought there. Very interesting.

Right across the street is a Soldier and Sailor's Monument. You can visit on the inside, but each time we went they were already closed. Right down the street, actually on the same block as the museum was a statue of Lentil and a dog (which Gracie asserts was Lentil's dog). Gracie named the dog Candy Cane :) This was very fun to see. From there we headed to Flubb's an ice cream shop to enjoy some ice cream.