BUENA PARK : History of Printing, Pages of Freedom

A program premiering this month at the International Printing Museum will introduce schoolchildren and other visitors to the Constitutional Convention and two of its most important participants.

Actors portraying Benjamin Franklin and John Adams will lead a condensed re-enactment of the convention in the museum’s new exhibit called Pages of Freedom.

Students and others touring the museum will play the parts of delegates from the original 13 colonies, and they will argue their adopted colony’s position on four key issues that were discussed at the convention.

“The idea is to give schoolchildren a chance to see what it would have been like to be a delegate,” said Kent Johnson, who plays the part of Franklin. “They will see how our Constitution was shaped.”

The tour includes a display of what Johnson calls “documents of freedom” from the Magna Carta to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Period photographs, newspapers, maps and other artifacts are displayed with the documents to complete the historical setting surrounding them.

Another tour recently added at the museum is Pages of Adventure, a program designed to get children excited about reading for fun. Moving among six period backdrops, actor Sheldon Craig reads from books and newspapers reflecting various eras.

The museum began offering the tour in September, and it has quickly become a favorite attraction. Students, teachers and parents especially like Craig’s reading from Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

“I used to read some of Twain’s more obscure stuff, and it would get a good response,” Craig said. “But then I read the scene where Tom is whitewashing the fence, and it has everybody laughing, kids and adults, so I do that now.”

Craig, one of the museum’s three full-time employees, said introducing students to the clever way young Sawyer gets others to do his work on a summer day motivates them to read the rest of the classic.

Craig also takes museum visitors to New York in the 1940s, reading from “The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson,” the tale of a young Chinese immigrant whose love of the Brooklyn Dodgers helps her feel welcome in her new homeland.

In addition to the tours, the museum has more than 100 pieces of printing equipment, double what is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, Craig said. Most of the pieces were collected by Ernest Lindner, whose father and uncle bought and sold typesetting equipment.

The museum’s star attraction is a Stanhope press, the first all-metal printing press, circa 1810. The museum claims to have one of 20 left in the world.

The International Printing Museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is $6.50 for adults, $4 for students and seniors and $2.50 for children 7 to 12. The museum is at 8469 Kass Drive. Its phone number is (714) 523-2070.