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In the pandemic summer of 2020, just weeks before they entered grades K-7, some 20 children worked in small groups outside and by remote in Outdoor Book Camp with mentors to write, illustrate, design, and edit A Children's History of Grand Marais, Minnesota: Ice Cream & Fish.
Outdoor Book Camp took place on the porches, lawns, playgrounds, rocks, shallows, and shoreline of Lake Superior in Grand Marais, Minnesota — an outside classroom that embodies the spirit of our county's early Norwegian culture, friluftsliv – which translates to "free air living". We embrace friluftsliv to ensure we always create in coronavirus-safe spaces with lots of fresh air, ample room for children to separate from each other — and play! — while being in proximity to collaborate on a book. Happy and connected — that’s a major goal of Outdoor Book Camp. We also offer creative purpose and achievement. We aim to preserve for children that familiar sense of outdoors summer wonder and release by providing them with healthy, creative, active summer experiences of positive and purposeful socialization through peer interactions — all outside. Friluftsliv! Outdoor Book Camp is a successful creative inquiry-based learning prototype involving four children in grades 5-7, and 15 children in grades K-4. Given Cook County’s Norwegian heritage, Outdoor Book Camp in Grand Marais is a perfect fit for us because it embodies the Norwegian cultural concept of friluftsliv — free air life. Join us in 2021! Details to come! 
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Preview our book,
Ice Cream & Fish! Read the Rave Review! 
To see the whole book, support children creating books with Minnesota Children’s Press by buying a copy or three! Contact [email protected] or check the Donate page. | ||
How We Did It
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Our method: We researched our stories by conducting outdoor primary source interviews with community members Gordon and Joyce Lindquist, and by visiting the Cook County History Museum.
We also learned (and did!) the four steps of making a book! |
Outdoor Book Camp maintained conoravirus safety standards by staying outside most of the time; wearing masks at all times; spacing out at all times; keeping sanitizing stations well stocked, as seen in the red cart on the porch, and reminding people to use them. To help us estimate a safe distance, we made 6-foot long “space noodles” from plumbing foam wrap we got at Buck’s Hardware Store, and decorated. Good for limbo and jump rope, too!
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Poster Parade Project
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While the older kids were making books, the younger kids were part of the Poster Parade in a collaboration with the Cook County YMCA Kids’ Camp. We organized a poster parade of "kindness signs" the children conceived in Minnesota Children’s Press’ empathy writeshop of “staffing” an injured stuffed-animal hospital. Next, we painted the feelings and sayings discovered in our empathy writeshop of healing the stuffed animals. Then we marched our large printed posters over to our local Care Center. Showing residents our signs through their windows kept everyone safe from contagion, and made us all feel happy and connected!
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