Top Things to Do with Kids in Brooklyn this January
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Dance Like a Dragon
Learn about the Chinese New Year -- in the Chinese zodiac, we are beginning the Year of the Dragon: a mythical symbol of power and control of water, rainfall and hurricanes. Learn the Dragon Dance and create a paper dragon of your own to take home. January 21, 1:30-2:30pm. $7.50 museum admission.
Brooklyn Children's Museum, 145 Brooklyn Avenue, Crown Heights. 718-735-4400. www.brooklynkids.org.
All Puns Intended
It's fun to brag about how much Brooklyn culture shapes the world. A prime example is The Phantom Tollbooth, the classic children's book equally appreciated by adults, that was written and illustrated by two renowned Brooklynites: author Norman Juster and illustrator Jules Feiffer. Juster is an architect by training with a love for puns, oddball colloquialisms, and weird phrases. For Juster, writing was an avocation, but when he and Feiffer hatched The Phantom Tollbooth in the early 1960s, Juster's penchant for language yielded a book that surfaced in classrooms and bedrooms across the world. The story follows Milo, a child bored with everything who, in a dream, receives a package containing a toy tollbooth. Upon driving through this supposed gift in his toy car, Milo is transported into the Kingdom of Wisdom, where people and places have names that make literal meanings out of idioms. This month, Big Movies for Little Kids presents the 1970 movie adaptation directed by the great animator Chuck Jones-the genius behind Looney Toones. January 23. 4pm.
Big Movies for Little Kids at Cobble Hill Theater, 265 Court Street, Cobble Hill. 718-596-9113. www.bigmoviesforlittlekids.blogspot.com.
Traditionalists
In music business lingo, Americana refers to a genre that reprises and reinvents American music from the late 1800s through the first half of the 20th century. The strand that links Americana artists is a concentration on the music of the 1920s and 1930s, a particularly fertile time when country, blues, and jazz were evolving as distinct styles and coalescing in various ways to become modern country, rock and roll, R&B, and their many hundreds of subgenres. The Wiyos expertly mine the Americana territory, dressing like newspaper boys in the '20s, playing unplugged period-correct instruments, and enlivening their performances with Vaudevillian humor. As popular children's entertainer Dan Zanes knows, Americana makes for perfect kids' music, and this special children's concert will undoubtedly feature a kazoo solo or two. January 28. 1pm. All ages. FREE.
Brooklyn Public Library, Central branch, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Prospect Heights. 718-230-2100. www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org.
More than a Side Dish
Hot Peas 'N Butter is a five-man band that knows just how powerful and engaging music can be for children, especially when approached in an interactive, multicultural, and, to borrow a term from progressive education, "experiential" way. At its core are Danny Lapidus and Frank Cotto, both veteran NYC performers and composers. Their songs, often in Spanish, are full of international rhythms and percussive flavors, with inspiring lyrics about dreamy places to visit and the joys to be discovered in life. Their videos appear with regularity on Nick, Jr. and Noggin, testimony to their upbeat appeal. This live appearance will hardly be a sit-down affair. January 29. 2pm. $7.
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, 2900 Campus Road, Midwood. 718-951-4500. www.brooklyncenteronline.org.
