Community Projects
 

Take a Great Picture and Win a Great Prize!

It’s time to dust off those cameras and show off your hometown!  The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum and the Hannibal Convention and Visitor’s Bureau are sponsoring a “My Mark Twain, My Hannibal” photo contest.  Two Grand Prizes will be given away: 1 for the best photo in or around the Boyhood Home properties and 1 for the best photo of Hannibal.  We’re looking for pictures that express the uniqueness, beauty and excitement of Hannibal and the Museum.  Photos will be accepted now until June 10^th.  Winning photos will appear in the July issue of Hannibal Magazine!  Contestants could even see their pictures appear in national publications or on billboards! Photographers interested in taking pictures in the Museum for the contest can visit the museum free of charge by bringing their entry form (and camera) with them to the museum. 

Prizes:

The winner of each category will win a Lake of the Ozarks getaway: a 1 night stay at the Resort at Port Arrowhead*, 2 adult and 2 child tickets for the Tom Sawyer sightseeing Cruise at Bagnell Dam, 2 adult and 2 child tickets to the Main Street Music Hall – the Lake’s #1 Nightly Entertainment AND a $50 gas card to get you there!

All the rules are on the entry form, which can be found here.  Remember, you MUST have a completed entry form for your photo to be eligible!  Good luck and start snapping!

 

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The Museum enjoys collaborating with members of the community on various projects. Presently we are working with three Highland Elementary School teachers - Tracy Marold, Traci Mosby, and Chrissy Abell. These teachers attended one of our week-long workshops last summer, and now they sponsor "Twain's Travelers" - a group of 20 third and fourth grade students that meet every Monday after school to study Mark Twain's adventures in Following the Equator. The students each created a passport in which they record countries "visited" through books they have read. They also created a 2008 calendar of Mark Twain quotes (since each chapter in Following the Equator begins with a quote) and a travel brochure illustrating countries visited by Twain during his travels. They are presently working on a picture book about Twain's travels, which they plan to submit to Scholastic Books "Kids Are Authors" program. The students have already visited the museum once to hear a lecture about Twain's travels to Russia. We are proud of these teachers for expanding their students' horizons with Mark Twain.

We are also working with Dr. Caroline Collins of Quincy University whose students are writing papers for their African-American literature class. The papers focus on providing helpful background to a particular historical period, but they also bring in segments of literature from or about the period. Students' final projects are shared below:

Following the Unpaved Path includes local history with mentions of the Lincoln-Douglas debate and the Eels House, a safe house for runaway slaves in Quincy, Illinois.

The Jazz Age addresses some of the aftermath of slavery.

If you have an idea for a community project, please contact us at Education@MarkTwainMuseum.org.