Reading Comes to Life for Children Hunting for Treasure in Museum Maze

Bea Thurber was tired of seeing kids throw aside books in favor of video games. Shouldn’t reading be as much of an adventure as playing Super Mario Brothers?

With the help of a local artist, architect and writer, Thurber created a life-size, three-dimensional adventure book. The Creative Journey Maze lets children trek through its winding corridors, creating their own adventure story as they go.

The maze will open to the public today at the Children’s Museum of San Diego.

As they enter the 600-square-foot creation of vividly painted passageways and alcoves, children are challenged to find three clues that will help them recover the queen’s stolen jewels. The clues are numbers that unlock a safe where the missing jewels are kept.

On their journey, the young travelers encounter a variety of choices as they read the signs posted to guide them. Should they travel by plane or train? Follow a trail through the Bat Cave or brave the Woodsman’s Lodge? Take advice given by the red parrot, or his contrary counterpart, the blue parrot.

“Explore. But remember, people have disappeared in here,” warns one sign. There are so many twists and turns in the maze, it is not hard to believe the warning.

Should the players reach the maze’s end without finding the treasure, the game is not necessarily over. They can simply return to the beginning and start their journey again, this time choosing a different route and creating a different story about the queen’s lost jewels.

“For many kids today, reading is something that they only do in school,” said Barbara Broderick, a museum executive. “This way, reading is seen as something outside the classroom that is a good, fun thing to do.”

Thurber, a reading teacher and the museum’s director of exhibits, said she had become increasingly distressed with the mostly “dry, boring, meaningless” books students were reading in school. Often, the author’s narrative didn’t allow them to participate, she said. Thurber wanted students to determine the outcome of their stories.

The maze allowed her to do that by combining reading with a three-dimensional structure. While traveling through the maze, children are asked to read signs, make choices, and create a story rather than let an author make the decisions about whether the best route will take them through a jungle, a desert or a volcano.

In the maze, each child becomes the main character. The story unfolds as the youngster decides which paths to take and what will happen. He could even become lost in an Arabian marketplace or get eaten by a grizzly bear. He might have to escape from an Egyptian tomb, or a bawdy late-night cafe.

“I wanted to give the children the sense that reading and paying attention to words is exciting and necessary. In an adventure story, it’s necessary for survival,” Thurber said.

Because there is no correct route through the maze, children cannot make a mistake--another plus, Thurber noted.

To design the unique labyrinth, Thurber recruited local artist Phil Matzigkeit, architect and designer Kotaro Nakamura and writer Bart Thurber, who is her husband and an English professor at the University of San Diego.

The team spent hours brainstorming, deciding how the story should fit with the childlike artwork painted by Matzigkeit, a muralist. Then, Nakamura devised a way to mount the panels to give children more options in creating their adventure story.

While writing his often-funny, tongue-in-cheek script for the maze, Bart Thurber used a computer program that allowed him to write the story in separate vignettes.

Once completed, the computer mixed the 24 episodes Thurber devised, creating myriad options for students to follow through the maze.

The project, the museum’s most ambitious in its six-year history, also drew the interest of the San Diego County Edition of the Los Angeles Times, which donated $45,500 to build the maze.

“This project is a joyful expression of two of The Times’ favorite causes: kids and literacy. It’s also an expression of two of the museum’s favorites: learning and fun,” said Phyllis K. Pfeiffer, the edition’s general manager.

The maze is designed for children who can read, up to age 12. Younger children can enjoy the maze by walking through and looking at the pictures. Or an adult can accompany them and read the story aloud.

The Children’s Museum is inside the La Jolla Village Square shopping center. Cost is $2.75 a person, $1.25 for senior citizens. Children under 2 are free.