With only a week to go to Halloween we wanted to do something spooky for our Family Fun yesterday, and luckily we have some very creepy owls in the Special Collections! One of the treasures of the rare books collection is a copy of John James Audubon’s Birds of America, which was published in instalments between 1827 and 1838. The illustrations are hand-painted, which means that there are very few copies of the book in existence and no two copies are exactly alike. Audubon drew the birds using stuffed specimens, arranging them with wires in life-like poses – and in the case of the illustration of barn owls, the result was very sinister and atmospheric!
Using the Audubon owl images as inspiration, our Family Fun participants made paper bag owl puppets and felt finger puppets.
Some children took the Halloween theme even further and made bats and vampires too. We also made a spooky window display with Halloween silhouettes.
Our next Family Fun is on Saturday 17th November, when we’ll be making a sculpture garden using recycled materials. We hope you can make it!
Posted by: Sarah and Lynsey
UoA Collections 
We had a really great time at the Halloween workshop. Thanks so much to the workshop team!
Thanks Sandra!