The Museum of Really Interesting Things

Welcome to The Museum of Really Interesting Things, where you will see room after room of amazements: your favorite memory perfectly preserved, a gallery of wonderful smells, shiny robots who wind themselves up, a garden of talking plants, an actual cave, an octopus named Jack, and so much more! This rhyming storybook is a delight to read aloud, and the vibrant illustrations leap off the page.

Eric Lane Barnes (author)
I loved taking field trips to the Natural History Museum in Cincinnati when I was in grade school. They had built a cave inside the museum that I thought was real. From a glass bridge above the cave you could gaze down onto a wonderland of stalagmites and stalactites. I marveled at the depictions of saber-toothed tigers and wooly mammoths that used to roam North America. I still have a favorite dinosaur: triceratops, hands down. Creating this book with my friend Rob has been a pure joy.

Eric Lane Barnes is the author of the critically acclaimed and award-winning revue Fairy Tales, which enjoyed numerous runs, including in Chicago, Off-Broadway, and in London's West End. His original musical adaptations for Chicago's Lifeline Theatre include Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, which continues to play in theaters across the country. ELB has written hundreds of songs that are performed by choral and theater groups around the world. He is the Director of Music at East Shore Unitarian Church in Bellevue, Washington, where The Museum of Really Interesting Things had its first public reading.
www.ericlanebarnes.com
Rob Dorn (illustrator)
When I was a kid, I loved filling pages with pencil and crayon drawings, often featuring characters from The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, and Snow White. My art has been influenced by W. W. Denslow and my biggest hero, Charles M. Schulz, the creator of Peanuts. During grade school trips to The Field Museumin Chicago, I was amazed by the huge dinosaurs, explored a coal mine, toured an enormous human heart, and experienced acoustical magic where whispering from one end of a vast room could be clearly heard at the other.

Rob Dorn has created illustrations for The Stooge Chronicles by Jeffrey Forrester and for the Cardthartic greeting card series Through Our Eyes. He is the creator of the ongoing semi-autobiographical digital comic BobFred. Rob's work has been featured in theatrical and film poster designs for Chicago's Three Cat Productions and Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, as well as for the groups Three Hits and a Miss, Josh and the Empty Pockets, American Pop, and for Stephen Wallem and Edie Falco (featured in The New York Times).
Rob lives in Chicago with his husband Jason and their dog Milo.
www.robdorn.com