How an old photograph brings new colour to JPL’s NBCL

The grid mural created by JPL Youth patrons ahead of Chanukah, 2025.

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When I first moved into the role of Youth Outreach Coordinator for the Archives, I met with my biggest collaborator, Natanya Belle de Smit, the head librarian of the Norman Berman Children’s Library (NBCL), the youth-centered division of the Jewish Public Library. She suggested I start simple. “They want to create, they want to craft, but they need a little guidance.” That excited the artsy kid in me: Art was good; art I could do.

The Children’s Library is full of windows and sunlight. I immediately remembered a project I’d led as an art teacher years ago: a large grid mural. The kids were each given a small piece of the grid to work on, and when brought together, it formed a larger picture. When they realized that their piece had contributed to something much larger, their general feeling of belonging grew. I wanted to see if I could duplicate that in our library.

I loved the idea of adapting the project for Chanukah because during Chanukah, it is tradition to light the menorah and place it in the front window to spread the news of the holiday miracle. Flanked beside it is often window decorations in the old tradition of ‘vitrage’ or stained glass. I decided to create a new twist -- a stained-glass effect befitting the holiday.

Dreidel Parade with adults and children at Snowdon Nursery, 1976. Montreal, Quebec. Courtesy of the JPL Archives, Young Men's-Young Women's Hebrew Association Fonds, ID: 1256-12-[1044]-PR017314.

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As a base, I wanted to select an image for the mural from the JPL Archives. That way, Library youth could be a part of illuminating and invigorating a piece of community history. In our Photograph Collection, I found the perfect photo: a 1976 photograph of Snowdon Nursery’s Chanukah celebration, titled “Dreidel Parade”. It is joyous, fun, and vibrantly full of activity so that each colouring panel would have enough detail to keep a child engaged.

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Crafting the community mural

I tried a myriad of computer programs to turn the historic black and white photograph into an outlined colouring page. All failed to produce the line-art image I needed to create the colouring pages. And so, in true artsy kid fashion, I decided to do it the old fashion way—by hand. I created a makeshift lightbox and traced the image onto tracing paper. Many hours later, it began to take shape.

Archival photograph traced over lightbox.

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I added patterns on areas which would have been mostly left blank, but otherwise, the photo provided enough detail to engage young colour-ers. With the image finally complete, I scanned it, segmented it into a 5 x 5 grid and printed each section on its own transparent vinyl adhesive page that we could safely adhere to the windows. I put together kits of permanent markers and smocks. Lastly, I created a guide for the numbered colouring pages so children could see where their page fit into the grid, and we began recruiting them to help us.

The response was incredible. Young children would start the colouring, and their elder siblings would step in to assist, making sure the page was fully saturated. Occasionally, parents would join in. Each page became a collaborative effort, and now, three weeks in, the finished project has been fully realized on our window, even as I write this. It is bursting with colour and life and was lovingly crafted by our community.

It stands as a reminder that each of us plays a small part in the bigger picture, and that our combined efforts are what creates our wonderful library community.

Reconstructing “The Dreidel Parade” from 1976

The mural is at the heart of our Chanukah celebration this year. On December 14, the NBCL’s Chanukah party includes crafts like making wearable dreidels and a plan to reconstruct the lively dreidel parade through the Library.