The SLSC (5050 Oakland Avenue) is screening four fan-favorite large-format-camera films from the past ten years or so September 5-25. Space Station shows astronauts floating through the International Space Station, shooting M&Ms into each others' mouths in zero-gravity. Star Wars geeks won't want to miss Special Effects, a behind-the-scenes look at how modern-day sorcerers can depict anything imaginable on film, featuring the Industrial Light & Magic gang. The Magic of Flight gets inside the cockpit with the Navy's Blue Angels stunt flyers, and The Greatest Places journeys from the blue icebergs of Greenland to the Namib Desert and beyond ($6-$7/movie, 314-289-4444, www.slsc.org). -- Byron Kerman
It's Never Too Early to Party
At Festival for the Young Child
SAT 9/6 Parents of young children, rejoice! The good people of the Ferguson-Florissant school district will make your life easier today from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at McCluer High School (1896 South Florissant Road, 314-506-9069). At their Festival for the Young Child, you can sign your kid (ages birth-5) up for everything from early childhood education to lead-paint screenings to St. Louis County library cards -- and pick up valuable tips on all sorts of health and safety issues. Pony rides, storytelling, a book fair, an "international village" and other amusements will occupy the wee ones while the old folks TCB. Admission is free. -- Jason Toon
Slosh & Nosh
SUN 9/7
"An ocelot with lots of spots/got oddly overwrought/when humans tried to hunt for her/while on her morning trot." So goes the arch children's poetry of Pat Lorraine Simons, area writer and contributor to Cricket litmag for kids. Simons has a child's ear for rhyme and nonsense, á la Edward Lear and Dr. Seuss. Behold another excerpt, this from "An Elephant Came To Visit Me": "An elephant came to visit me/and brought along her trunk./'I think I'll stay till May,' she said./'I've packed in all my junk.'...some mud in which to slosh...a tree on which to nosh." Simons also founded the Rolling Readers concern, a group who reads books to groups of kids who might not otherwise be read to (www.readyreaders-stlouis.com). Bring your little guys and gals to Barnes & Noble (8871 Ladue Road, 314-862-6280) at 2 p.m. for a free reading of "The Octopuses' Wedding" and other charming anthropomorphic verse. -- Byron Kerman
