After Dark Silent Auction: One of a Kind Signed Books
Bidding is now open for After Dark’s silent auction! Text MTC to 76278 or go to https://MTC.givesmart.com to enable mobile bidding.
While many of our shows at Metro Theater Company are newly commissioned world premieres just for St. Louis audiences, we are always delighted to bring beloved children’s books to life on stage – whether it’s something as recent as Jason Reynolds’s Ghost or iconic classics like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Children’s literature shapes the hearts and minds of young people in powerful ways, inspiring imagination and a life-long love of reading and discovery.
It made perfect sense for us to have books be front and center in our After Dark silent auction. As part of the MTC Super Fans auction item, you can get copies of the children’s books that accompany many of our upcoming productions. And thanks to the generosity of one St. Louis book collector and educator, Robert Swingler, we are able to provide a number of extremely rare autographed children’s books and YA novels to our friends and supporters during After Dark.
Robert has built relationships with authors across the country over the last two decades, inspiring young people at his school, Hazelwood East High School to connect to literature as a living, breathing part of our present. To MTC, he has donated a complete set of first editions of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series (which inspired the blockbuster musical), signed by the author with hand drawn illustrations in each book. The first book in the series is also autographed by the musical’s composer Stephen Schwartz – making it one of the only first editions of Wicked of its kind.
Robert has also donated autographed first editions of Hillary Clinton’s picture book It Takes a Village (signed by both the author and illustrator, one of only three in existence), both of Chelsea Clinton’s picture books She Persisted and She Persisted Around the World, the complete autographed set of Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and the complete autographed set of Glee star Chris Colfer’s Land of Stories series. Combined, these rare books are worth over $3,000.
We encourage children’s book lovers, book collectors, and more to consider bidding on these wonderful rare books – adding something deeply special to your home library while supporting Metro Theater Company during these challenging times.
— Joe Gfaller, MTC’s Managing Director
