Books & Puppets at Co-Op Opening

The UConn Co-op Book Store, Le Petit Marche Café, and The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry are destined to be the cultural center of Downtown Storrs  They had their grand opening on Saturday 1 March 2014, at Storrs Center.  A little girl, about 5 years old and knee high to a grasshopper, was seen following her father from the café area into the book store.  She tugged at her father’s coast and said, “I didn’t know this library had food.”

The co-op had surprises for all of us. The puppet museum had colorful and historically important exhibits, the book store was chock full, not only with books but also with authors, and the food from Le Petit Marché was excellent. 

As well as exhibits, the Museum of Puppetry had two performances of Reverse Cascade by Anna Fitzgerald.

Among the many authors present were, novelist and editor of the writing program at the woman’s prison in Niantic, Wally Lamb; children’s author Pegi Deitz-Shea; children’s authors Wendell and Florence Minor; young adult author Barbara McClintock; fiction author David Johnson, prolific writer and inspiration of the Dead Poets Society, Sam Pickering, physicist Ron Mallett, and novelist Ellen Litman.  Music was provided by a piano Bass duo and a woman’s acapella group

Suzy Stubach and her staff at the bookstore put together a wonderful afternoon of puppetry, music, and literature.  Rumors of the death of the codex have been greatly exaggerated.  Books are thriving at the UConn Co-op.