"Memories are like heartbeats, they keep things alive, make us who we are." ― Olivetti by Allie Millington
Although I typically use this space to muse about books, libraries and education more generally, today I'm going to take a slight detour to share a bit about something else I love: Lego.
My love affair with Lego did not begin in childhood. Toys like Lego, Lincoln Logs and other name brand engineering playthings were too pricey for my family. Although I remember playing with (and even coveting) Lego while visiting friends, I never owned any brightly colored bricks myself. Then... in 2021, on a whim, my husband bought me the Lego Home Alone House for Christmas, which he'd seen online and thought we'd get a kick out of building together. As fate would have it, my neck of the woods, which is known for exceptionally mild weather, experienced a snowmageddon of sorts that year, trapping us at home for nearly 2 weeks. Naturally... we spent that time building Lego. And, the rest, as they say, is history.
Fast forward to this holiday season when an incredible gift arrived in the mail shortly after Christmas. The package included:
A gift card from Barnes and Noble (with instructions to use it towards the Lego Typewriter)
A copy of Olivetti by Allie Millington
I'd read Olivetti earlier in the year and have given it away countless times. (It's one of my favorite books of 2024!) so, I immediately understood the assignment: I was to recreate the book cover in Lego.
This was exciting for a lot of reasons. Not only had I yet to really combine my love of books and Lego, but this would also be the first time I'd be building something adjacent to what serious Lego builders call mocs - that is to say, intricate sets of their own design. Though I was really just combining existing sets, I would need to modify them to make the book cover work - which felt like a task that would be both challenging and fun!
And speaking of challenges...
As it happens, the Lego Typewriter set was recently retired. This means that it can no longer be ordered by retailers, limiting quantities to whatever stock a store has left on its shelves - which it turns out, isn't much! As an aside, once a Lego set is retired and disappears from retail spaces, its value goes way up. Retired sets often go for double, or even triple, their original prices online. That said, every Barnes & Noble within 200 miles of me was out of stock. Every Lego Store (including the online mother ship) was also out of stock. Even Target didn't have any left! Eventually, we expanded our search and found one about 350 miles away. After many assurances, from an extremely patient bookseller, we headed east towards the Barnes & Noble in Spokane, WA - where a Lego typewriter was being held for us. I honestly thought I would cry when we arrived at the store and found it waiting for us behind the counter.
We were finally ready to build! But before we get to that, let's talk a bit about the book.
“I suppose there is really only one place to go. The library. What is it about books that helps us be brave?" ― Olivetti by Allie Millington
I love these lines from Allie Millington's debut middle grade novel, and not just because they mention going to the library! (Although that certainly doesn't hurt). In a book full of quotable wisdom, I think these words linger, because at its heart, Olivetti is a book about bravery:
As the book opens, we learn that our narrator is not only a typewriter, but more importantly, readers understand that the titular Olivetti, is taking a great risk by sharing this story with us. Typewriters may not have many rules guiding their silent lives, but NOT sharing the stories of those who press their keys is at the top of that very short list. As we soon learn, however, bravery, determination and breaking a few rules is often required to save what's most important to us.
Though once a cherished centerpiece of the Brindle household, Olivetti has become a forgotten piece of hardware: surrounded by books, which he views as insufferable attention hogs, and replaced by a vastly inferior (in his estimation, anyway) laptop. For Olivetti, who has faithfully preserved the Brindle family's typed memories, this neglect is a testament to his thankless, yet noble, task of collecting and protecting stories in the form of poetry, letters, marriage proposals and even the gibberish typed by the Brindle children as they used his keys to learn how letters create language.
However, when Beatrice, the family matriarch and Olivetti’s once-frequent companion, abruptly leaves him at a pawn shop before mysteriously disappearing, Olivetti realizes that saving his family will mean breaking the sacred “typewriterly code” by communicating with the youngest Brindle, 12 year old Ernest - a quiet boy, prone to anxiety, who finds comfort in the pages of his Oxford English Dictionaries. By revealing fragments of Beatrice’s memories stored within his keys, Olivetti sets in motion a partnership with Ernest that requires bravery from them both.
Their journey to find Beatrice takes them across San Francisco in a series of adventures where courage, ingenuity and trust are required again and again. Ernest, who prefers the predictability of words on a page, must confront the messy, unresolved truths of his family’s past, a task made all the more complicated by the deep wounds that have recently fragmented The Bridles. Meanwhile, Olivetti, a relic of a bygone era, takes on the monumental task of proving his relevance by guiding Ernest through a labyrinth of clues - all while risking his very existence. Together, each character finds their own bravery while untangling a mystery that calls to mind Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me - a comparison I do not make lightly, as this book remains, for me, the gold standard in stories written for middle grade readers.
That said, Allie Millington's Olivetti reads like a classic. There are so many quotable passages, but more importantly, this is a small book with a big, big heart that helps its young readers navigate heavy topics like guilt, grief and what it means to be brave. What's more, this book is funny and full of action and developmentally appropriate peril. To say I loved it is an understatement, but more importantly, I think the kids for whom it was written will love it, too.
ISBN: 9781250326935
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publication Date: March 26, 2024
Audience: Ernest is 12, and some of the situations he encounters (such as bullying and the illness of a parent) are heavy lifts. Still, I think readers in grades 5+ will love Olivetti.
"All it takes is a little sticking together…. And there’s nothing we can’t get through.” ― Olivetti by Allie Millington
In the end, the process of recreating the Olivetti book cover in Lego was as fun as it was challenging. We started by building the Typewriter which is a Lego Ideas set. This means it was conceived by a Lego fan and selected by Lego to be turned into an official set. David and I agreed that even though this set didn't contain nearly the number of pieces as some of the others we've built, the Typewriter proved to be the most challenging build we'd ever tackled. Largely this is because the Lego typewriter was designed to function like its real counterpart. Each key attaches to internal gears that move both the cylinder and typeset keys, so that when a person types something on the Lego keyboard, there's a satisfying clacking and moving of parts to mimic the action of an actual typewriter. As a bonus, the build comes with a letter written and signed by Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, chairman of the LEGO Group and a fourth-generation member of the family - which still privately owns Lego to this day. The note comes in 43 different languages, which I found incredible. That said, although we didn't use it this way, the intent is for the letter to be threaded through the barrel of the typewriter, so that it appears to have been typed by the final build. I mean, how cool is that?
The building of the guts of the typewriter was the most challenging and nerve-racking part. Because these are internal bits, it was hard for us to visualize what they were supposed look like in the end. With other sets, we were always building towards a final product that we could see, making it less likely that we'd make an error. And speaking of errors, the bigger stress came from knowing that a single misplaced part could render the entire mechanism non-functioning. And even though, I knew that by weaving flowers throughout the gears, we would end up making the mechanics inoperable anyway, gosh darn it... I wanted that typewriter to work! Naturally, the first time we tried typing something, we discovered we'd made a mistake, forcing us to take it all apart and start again. Luckily, the second time around, we got it right and spent far too much time pretending to type on our Lego Olivetti before moving onto the next stage of our build.
Once the first part of our build was complete, we assembled the flowers. Compared to the typewriter itself, these small builds were a piece of cake. However, once our bouquet was finished, we had to figure out how to place them in the typewriter in a way that both honored the cover and would prove stable. This required us to remove some of the hard-fought typewriter innards. Additionally, we had to modify the flower stems in a number of ways - from adding and removing stem components to actually cutting prebuilt stems. Honestly, this part, figuring out how to put the sets together was the most joyful stage of the build. While, admittedly, figuring out how to moc together unrelated Lego sets is a relatively small problem, at a time when so many problems feel entirely too big to face, bending these Lego bricks to our will proved to be exceptionally satisfying.
Once the original bouquet of wildflowers was complete, and nestled within the typewriter's gears, there were still two problems to fix. No matter how I arranged the Lego botanicals, there were largish gaps in the arrangements that were both annoying and structurally problematic. Luckily, I had an additional floral set (the Lego Cherry Blossom set) hanging around. Once built, we added them to the build and... voila! Perfection!
Obviously, I'm pretty proud of the final product, which I ended up putting atop one of my other prized possessions: an antique library card catalog that David bought me a few years ago. Both the Lego Olivetti and the card catalog are very, very special to me. I think they belong together.
In the end, we used three sets to make this happen:
Typewriter 21327
Wildflower Bouquet 10313
Cherry Blossoms 40725
“Sometimes, humans do things that don't always make sense in order to make sense of things.” ― Olivetti by Allie Millington
For a long time now, I've been wondering about ways that I could support those who include Lego as part of their work with kids. Given my love of both Lego and libraries, this feels like a natural thing for me to do! Lego has long been a mainstay of library maker spaces, particularly in the area of passive programming, with many librarians investing in Lego Walls as a way to get kids thinking creatively and working collaboratively in a low stakes (ie: non-tested) environment. Additionally, resources like Legos can help kids who don't think the library is for them, find a home in spaces that were built to include everyone.
A recent article from Parents magazine underscores what many of us know to be true: our kids not only need, but are also increasingly seeking out screen-free activities that engage their minds and hands. Further, as we continue to recognize the connection between our kids' mental health and the digital spaces where they spend so much of their time, the need to give them more options for screen-free engagement feels increasingly urgent.
With this in mind, last year I began creating and sharing monthly reading challenges/coloring sheets that centered authentic reasons for reading alongside coloring as a meditation adjacent activity. These creations, coupled with my recent Olivetti+Lego experience, have inspired me to create monthly reading + Lego challenges, too. I'm excited to share the January offering! Download it for free here.
Each challenge contains four sections:
The Book: Kids are challenged to select a book (to hopefully read!) based on a theme.
The Build: Kids are challenged to build something associated with the book. There are no directions. They can use as few or as many Lego bricks as they want. The goal is for them to be creative.
The Share: Kids are challenged to then share their build in a manner that works for the teacher or librarian.
The Scenario: Kids are challenged to reflect on the process in a creative way.
⭐️ Bonus content will include an extra, optional challenge + some fun info about Lego.
As with all the things I create, I've tried to build these challenges in a way that would make them easily modifiable for any age group. I really hope you find these resources useful. And if you do, I only ask for two things in return:
Please don't sell this, or anything else I've created, on TpT (or elsewhere). This should go without saying, but y'all would be surprised.
Share your kids' creations with me! I would love to see them.
Happy building, y'all... and, of course, happy reading!
