{"id":1210,"date":"2023-10-22T11:38:37","date_gmt":"2023-10-22T15:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2023-10-22T11:38:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-22T15:38:37","slug":"around-town-idina-menzel-visits-walker-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/around-town-idina-menzel-visits-walker-school\/","title":{"rendered":"AROUND TOWN: Idina Menzel Visits Walker School"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Students at The Walker School received a treat when the “Queen of Broadway,”\u00a0Idina Menzel<\/strong>, celebrated for her performances from “Wicked” to Disney’s “Frozen,” visited the school with sister Cara Mentzel<\/strong> to promote their newest children\u2019s book \u201cProud Mouse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The visit included the duo reading their book and singing parts of it along with the audience. And yes, no visit would be complete without singing \u201cLet It Go,\u201d a request from a young audience member.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cProud Mouse\u201d is the second picture book the sisters have produced. Their first book called \u201cLoud Mouse\u201d focused on the mezzo-soprano’s experience as a little girl who \u201cdiscovered she could sing really big and really loud.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cBut I wasn\u2019t always sure when the right time was to take up space and call attention to myself,\u201d Menzel told the students. \u201cSometimes we make ourselves a little smaller around people so that we won\u2019t make people feel uncomfortable. My experience has been that it\u2019s not helpful to make ourselves smaller, that we have to share our gifts, so that\u2019s what the first book is about.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cProud Mouse\u201d is about the fact that Menzel has a younger sister who has to deal with her \u201cbeing SO annoying,\u201d Menzel said, drawing laughs. The sisters spell their last names differently because Idina Menzel said she thought that dropping the \u201ct\u201d from her name would help people pronounce her name correctly. She said it didn\u2019t really work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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(Recall during the\u00a02014 Academy Awards ceremony when John Travolta<\/strong>, in introducing her, famously botched her name as Adele Dazeem.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Of\u00a0\u201cProud Mouse,\u201d Cara Mentzel said, \u201cYou get to meet the little mouse who has been so proud of her big sister her whole life. She goes to school for the first time and she\u2019s seen as Dee\u2019s little sister [Idina goes by Dee in our family], so as the little sister she has to figure out \u2018How can I get everybody to see me as Cara Lee? What makes me me? How am I like my sister, how am I different?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The \u201cProud Mouse\u201d characters also sing in the book, so in addition to both of them singing, Cara Mentzel played the ukulele, an instrument she only began learning in January.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI thought it would be fun to learn when we\u2019re reading books to children to be able to bring some music to accompany our singing,\u201d\u00a0Cara Mentzel said. \u201cBut mostly, I wanted to do it to be able to accompany her singing and not always have to sing with her. Because the question I grew up with my whole life was \u2018Oh, can you sing like your sister?\u2019 And of course, I can\u2019t sing like my sister because no one can. But I sing like me, and sometimes it\u2019s really beautiful, and other times it\u2019s not. I learned the ukulele because that\u2019s a fun way to express myself, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The sisters were generous with their time and after they finished the book, they fielded questions from the audience including: \u201cWhat\u2019s your favorite color? What is your favorite \u2018Frozen\u2019 song? What is your favorite role? Can you sing \u2018Let It Go\u2018?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cara Mentzel said her favorite color is orange, which is the color of the text the illustrator used in \u201cProud Mouse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI hadn\u2019t told her my favorite color was orange, so that was a nice surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Idina Menzel said her favorite color is emerald green, which drew oohs, aahs and a big applause from the audience, especially from Upper School drama students and adults in attendance, because of Menzel\u2019s role as Elphaba.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cEmerald green is my favorite color and always was,\u201d Menzel said. \u201cMy eyes are green, my birthstone \u2013 I was born in May \u2013 so it\u2019s green, so it\u2019s just always been green, and then I got to play the Wicked Witch of the West and I was green every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It only took three questions from the audience for a young student to ask Idina Menzel to sing \u201cLet It Go.\u201d She said she needed help because she hadn\u2019t had time to warm up, and \u201cElsa sings in the Ice Mountain and has special powers.\u201d The students were happy to oblige, especially when it came time to belt out the song\u2019s refrain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Trey Veazey<\/strong>, assistant Head of Lower School, who was responsible for bringing the sisters to campus, asked Menzel: \u201cThe first time you heard \u2018Let It Go,\u2019 did you think you would be singing it forever and always?\u201d Her response: \u201cWell, no, I didn\u2019t. I knew that I was very lucky to be awarded the role of a Disney princess. I didn\u2019t know she was going to become a Queen. They were still writing it at the time, and if I would have known I was going to be singing it forever and always I wouldn\u2019t have put it in that key.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Veazey asked Cara Mentzel about growing up and when she realized \u201cI\u2019m me, and that\u2019s good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cOne of the really important things to us about \u2018Proud Mouse\u2019 is that we represented a child who didn\u2019t necessarily know what they wanted to be when they grew up,\u201d\u00a0Cara Mentzel said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t someone who was like \u2018I\u2019m going to be a writer, I\u2019m going to be a teacher,\u2019 even though that\u2019s what I became. It was just a child who was curious about many, many things and even now, we\u2019re here publicizing this book that we want you to read, but I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019m going to do next month, so you don\u2019t necessarily have to know what you\u2019re going to be when you grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She concluded: \u201cYou just have to be excited about what you\u2019re going to learn next and move in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students at The Walker School received a treat when the “Queen of Broadway,”\u00a0Idina Menzel, celebrated for her performances from “Wicked” to Disney’s “Frozen,” visited the school with sister Cara Mentzel to promote their newest children\u2019s book \u201cProud Mouse.\u201d The visit included the duo reading their book and singing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,79],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-77","tag-proud-mouse"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/652ec04e12a4d.image_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-jw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1212,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions\/1212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}