'Kornering' the market at festival

Seven-year-old Julia Peluso loved the puppet show featured at Kids' Korner during Lake in the Hills Summer Sunset Festival -- and says she even got a chance to be in it, as one of three goats.

Her sister Brianna, 8, on the other hand, liked "everything," including the snowman a clown made out of balloons.

And their mother Christi was delighted the festival set aside a section especially for children.

"I thought that was good," she said. "Today is great."

Peluso has gone to the festival each of its seven years, and kids' activities were basically limited to the carnival rides and live entertainment -- not that there was anything wrong with that.

But with events geared specifically toward children for the first time, Julia and Brianna said 2007 was their best year ever at the festival.

Besides the puppet show and balloons, Kids' Korner offered video games, crafts, face-painting, a bubble machine, coloring activities, Fen State Nature Preserve representatives discussing wildlife, live demonstrations from Mad Science and a version of Bozo's famous Grand Prize Game -- all under one tent.

Prizes, donated by area businesses, were given after each performance.

Liz Wakeman, a village trustee who ran the tent Sunday, says more than 5,000 kids visited it during the three-day run of the festival, with more and more children lining up to get in.

"We were thinking it would be a couple of tables, but it expanded," she said.

What's more, it proved so popular that organizers will definitely bring it back next year, she said.

The idea for Kids' Korner came from Trustee Paul Mulcahy, co-chairman of the festival with his wife Debbie, out of a desire to give children more to do at the festival.

Rose Andaya of Carpentersville hadn't even planned on visiting Kids' Korner with her two daughters Raziel, 3, and Rheana, 2.

They were on their way back from vacationing in Lake Geneva, Wis., and saw signs advertising the festival, so she decided to take a peek.

She enjoyed the clown and the coloring activities for the kids, as well as the free snow cones. Kids' Korner impressed her so much that she says she'll bring her daughters back to the festival next year.