Tired of constantly recycling those old newspapers that seem to collect around the house? Have you ever thought of making them into furniture? Well Jinny Baeckler, the wildly creative director of the Plainsboro Public Library, has.
“I remember the era when people used to have cardboard furniture in order to have cleaner living spaces and that got me to thinking about paper chairs,” she says. “We’re really trying to find ways to bring science and engineering back into people’s everyday lives.”
As a part of its summer program theme of the city of Trenton, the library will host a newspaper chair making competition on Tuesday, August 1, at 7 p.m. “With two longstanding newspapers based in the city (the Trentonian and the Times), it was a natural way for us to combine engineering and history,” says Baeckler. It will be another in a continuing series of science and civil engineering competitions that the library regularly holds throughout the summer. Open to both children and adults, the winner will receive a trophy. The competition is free. For more information, call the library at 609-275-2897.
The requirements for the newspaper chairs are challenging. The chairs can only be built out of newspapers and one roll of masking tape, must have a back and four legs, and be strong enough to hold stacks of Encyclopedia Britannicas. “We thought using encyclopedias would be better than people, who might take a tumble trying to sit on them,” she says.
As far as anyone knows, no one has ever held a newspaper chair making competition before. “I try to keep my mind open about these things,” says Baeckler. “I’m not exactly sure where the idea came from. I believe that there was an episode on the PBS show Zoom where they built a paper chair. I started thinking about it. I couldn’t find anybody else who had done it. We’re as excited as everybody else because we don’t really know what the results will be.”
Earlier competitions have featured such imaginatively conceived competitions as egg droppings, cardboard canoe contests, a spaghetti bridge building competition, and a wildly successful Pringle packing competition last year. The object of the competition was to pack and mail a Pringle’s potato chip from somewhere outside of Plainsboro to the library without having it break. “The night was filled with so much fun and drama,” says Baeckler. “Each person would open his or her package one by one and you could see how everyone else packed their Pringle.” The break-rate, Baeckler adds, was only about 20 percent. “Everybody did a wonderful job.” (It will be repeated again this year on Thursday, August 3, at 7 p.m.).
Baeckler says that the annual summer competitions are designed to allow kids (and other participants) to learn new concepts and skills without having the rigidity and pressure for grades that they face during the school year. “We really have a lot of fun with these competitions,” says Baeckler. “That is one way that we can be different from a school because we don’t have to be tied to a curriculum, yet we can be stimulating and yet have people be exposed to things they may not have seen before.”
Long known as one of the most active libraries in the state, the Plainsboro Library has been growing each year. “This has been one of our busiest years so far,” says Baeckler. “I am hoping we all have fun with this year’s chair-making. Everyone, especially kids, love to see things crashing and breaking.”
Newspaper Chair Competition, Plainsboro Public Library, 641 Plainsboro Road, 609-275-2897. Design and build a newspaper chair to bear the load of many books. Trophy to the winner. Tuesday, August 1, 7 p.m.
