Bookmaking With Kids

The other night I found myself in a standing-room only auditorium packed with some 1,600 souls, thunderously clapping and whistling and cheering. It was the kind of jubilant noise that in my little circle might be reserved for the president-elect … or maybe Rafael Nadal … or Evgeny Kissin.

But this outpouring was for the quietly magnificent poet Mary Oliver.

Her appearance yesterday in San Francisco was sold out before I had thought to get tickets. But a tip from California Poets in the Schools—thank you, CPITS!—sent me to Santa Rosa for Oliver’s reading on Monday night instead.

Oliver has a mystic’s soul, exquisitely attentive, alert to quiet transformations, reverent and appreciative whatever her day’s walk serves up. And she’s so meticulous a craftsman, her words simultaneously spare and lush, that you can smell the salt air of her coastal home as you read. She’s my kinda celebrity.

Here’s an excerpt from one of the poems she read, called Mindful:

“Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.”

This February, the San Francisco Center for the Book is fortunate to host English book artist and children’s literacy expert Paul Johnson. He’ll be teaching seven (!) work-
shops—four for teachers and three for fans of paper engineering—as well as a making free, evening presentation at the SFCB.

This visit is Paul’s fourth time at the Center. I remember being mesmerized by his gifted teaching the first time he was here, so I rummaged around in my old email and found my reaction from July 2002:

Johnson’s specialty is doing exceptional things with single sheets of paper, and he uses his magic in two ways, teaching book arts to school children (and training teachers to use bookmaking in their classrooms) and making many-layered pop-up paper constructions. His show-and-tell session was electrifying, the most inspiring talk I’ve heard. The audience applauded and applauded—they just couldn’t stop. There was a lot of hugging, too, as if people hoped to catch some spark of his.

Paul himself is modest, low-key, soft-spoken, undemonstrative. Except that as he talked, something extraordinary began to happen: a quiet passion seemed to take possession of him and spill over into the audience, too. I was completely carried away by the story of how he discovered paper—he said he didn’t notice it until he was 45, and then he couldn’t help but change his life—his endless fascination with the possibilities in a single sheet of paper (“I didn’t add anything, I didn’t take anything away, but look what it turned into! I think this must be Zen.”), his work habits, his love affair with color, his belief in book arts as a compelling path to literacy for children.

You can hear Paul at a free presentation Monday February 4th at the BUG meeting (Book Arts Users Group) at the SFCB from 7 to 9 p.m. Click here for directions to the Center.

Follow this link to learn about Paul’s SFCB workshops for teachers. His other SFCB classes include Secret Gardens in Boxes, Books You Can Hang Like Pictures and A Box of Fireworks. Finally, here are some photos to feast your eyes on. Click each one to see an enlargement.

I know it sounds too good to be true, but I more often have trouble getting eager authors to pace themselves than persuading reluctant writers to take up their pencils. Kids really do get excited about writing in books they make by hand.

Because I want them to follow the writing process they’ve been learning, I don’t usually let kids write much more than their title page during a bookmaking session. But when they’re unstoppably eager, I get them started on About the Author pages.

Invariably, they’re eager to do their best when writing about their favorite subject—themselves—and often ask thoughtful questions. Recently a 5th grader working on a Yakety Yak book asked whether his bio should be written as a narrative or presented as a list of facts, like this:

• Age: 10
• Hometown: San Francisco
• Achievements: Etc., etc.

Then, one of his classmates asked whether he should write in the first person or the third person! His teacher and I were over the moon. Click the link for more pictures of Yakety Yak books. (more…)