Novella Marble, left, and Camille Brown, both 4, play with raccoon puppets on the "Raccoon Log" in the new "Animal Secrets" exhibit at the Austin Children's Museum in the Texas capital.

Erich Schlegel / McClatchy-tribune

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AUSTIN, Texas — Leo Tolstoy once said that all happy families look alike, which is also something that can be said about most children's museums. There are the obligatory, though wonderful, hands-on activities and crafts, the puzzles, the computers, the magnifying glasses and the bubble-making machines.

And then there's the Austin Children's Museum.

What makes this place stand out is its embrace and incorporation of Texas culture. You can see both the Capitol not far from the site and a model of it within the museum as part of an exhibit that challenges kids to find various geometric shapes in that model. Austin is home to the "Austin City Limits" music program, so the Austin Children's Museum, working in cooperation with "Austin City Limits" producers, offers Austin Kiddie Limits, where children select music (from the likes of Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett and Asleep at the Wheel), play dress-up and see themselves on television monitors as they perform.

Then, too, apropos of nothing but just plain fun, there's that three-story slide. I had a hard time getting my kids off that one, and, at ages 10 and 13, they're on the old side for a museum that caters to the 12-and-under crowd.

There's been an enormous growth curve for a nonprofit that started in 1983 as a museum without walls, taking exhibits to local classrooms rather than having a home of its own where kids could visit. In 1987, it opened as a 5,000-square-foot site on West Fifth Street. A decade later, the current $7 million museum opened with the help of a $1 million gift from the Austin-based Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and 10 years of free rent from Schlotzsky's Inc. President John Wooley and his brother, Jeff.

Under the leadership of executive director Michael Nellis, the museum, with a 2006 operating budget of about $2 million, occupies 20,000 square feet on West Second Street, downtown. Nellis is raising money for a move to a two-story 30,000-square-foot site on the corner of Guadalupe and Third streets, north of City Hall.

"We try to emphasize what is unique about Austin," says Nellis, who points out that even their animal and butterfly exhibits focus on species that kids can see locally, such as bats. It makes sense for a city that boasts the world's largest urban bat colony, under the Congress Avenue Bridge.

And since Austin is known as a technology leader, that fits right into Nellis' plans to emphasize more science and technology components in the upcoming expansion.

At the time of our September visit, the building had recently been transformed from beige to an appealing lime-green. And in addition to the busy buzz of kids moving from the miniature train depot (the train tracks extend over the other exhibits) to the Funstruction Zone, where kids operate heavy machinery, special events were under way. Story time was going on near the entrance, and the Austin Nature and Science Center brought a turtle, snake, salamander, crayfish and cockroach into a classroom for kids to pet.

What quickly becomes clear is that the kids are leading their adults here and not the other way around.

Paul Slobodnik, 39, of Austin, and his son, Joshua, 5, are regulars, too.

When asked his favorite activities, Joshua, who was busy examining objects under magnifying lenses, offered: "I like everything."

"Yes," says Slobodnik, trying to help the interview along. "But what do you like best?"

"I like everything the best," says Joshua as he moves on to the microscopes.

Slobodnik laughs. "This morning I said, 'What do you want to do today?' "He said, 'I want to go to the museum.' So I said, 'How much time are we going to spend?' He wanted two hours. I said, 'How about one hour?' "

Slobodnik agreed to two hours.