Bookmaking With Kids

TURN THIS INTO A COLLAGE OF IMAGES, with text below.

For myself, I’m apt to use the nearest scrap to hand—an old grocery list, a postcard, a receipt, a ticket stub, a playing card, an empty seed packet—to mark my place in a book. But for kids, bookmarks should be treated with respect and enthusiasm, artistry and humor.

Taking time to make a bookmark can be helpful for new readers, kids who’re in for challenge and pleasure (in unequal parts!) when they open a book. It’s like making a gift for themselves and the books they’re planning to reading; it marks books and reading as something special.

Kids can make bookmarks from pretty much anything: a column of appealing postage stamps re-glued on card stock; cut-up artwork, a magazine page or birthday card; a snippet of ribbon with pony beads on both ends; plain paper plastered with stickers, and so on.

I don’t know why, but right now I’m smitten with bookmarks that look like the books they’ll be used in. All it takes is a stop at a copy shop after you’ve been at the library. For Elise Broach’s Masterpiece, I made a color xerox of the book’s spine on card stock. For E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I copied the cover at a slightly reduced size.

As it happens, neither of these books is for beginning readers. But they’re wonderful read-aloud books for good listeners as young as 7. The Mixed-Up Files should be read first, BTW, then Masterpiece, which owes a lot to Konigsburg’s classic.

Bookmark templates abound on the web, of course. If you google the authors or illustrators of your child’s latest library books, you may find something to download from their web sites or blogs. Here’s one example I particuarly like, from artist Quentin Blake’s web site. It’s also fun to look at the bookmark photos on Flickr.

ADD MORE HERE

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A fallen leaf

Shaped bookmarks (a check mark, giant exclamation point, phrases such as “I’m Up to this Page!”, images from a magazine, etc., their own photos, )

Pendaflex tabs!!!!

You may think this is a picture of a cute white dog sprawled comfortably in the open pages of a book.

And that, indeed, is what it is. It’s equally true, however, that this is a picture of
me. Not that I see myself as a dog! But this is the way I feel when I disappear into a good read.

This charming illustration is from Louise Yates’ new picture book, Dog Loves Books. It tells the story of a canine bibliophile so smitten by books that he decides to open his own bookshop. His first two customers, alas, are anything but: One is a lady who mistakes the place for a tea shop, the other a man seeking directions. To pass the time waiting for real customers, Dog begins pulling books off the shelves at random and reading. And then comes Dog’s Ah ha! moment:

When he read, he forgot that he was waiting.
When he read, he forgot that he was alone.

So Dog reads and reads and reads. And when at last someone wants help choosing a book, Dog knows just what to recommend.

With more illustrations than words, this is a lovely book to explore with babies, toddlers and preschoolers—rich in opportunities for grown-ups and kids to pretend their way into the pictures and enter into the spirit of Dog’s adventure. I’d also read it to kindergartners, early in the school year, because it serves nicely as an implicit reminder that the business of learning to read leads to the pleasures of reading.

Another book I often share with teachers in my workshops is Antoinette Portis’s Not a Box, a magical book about imaginative play.* It features an inventive bunny, a box and an unseen, somewhat clueless adult who asks questions. When Why are you sitting in a box? appears on one page, the bunny appears on the next, sitting in the box-as-race-car and replying indignantly, It’s not a box!

To me, it’s a wonderful reminder of the creative byways kids will wander down, given a chance, some time and a springboard—whether it’s a cardboard box or fixings for a handmade book.

Imagine my pleasure, during a bout of domestic divestiture, on discovering Ten Dots Can Be, a book made by my older daughter. Same principle as Not a Box and its successor Not a Stick, but pretend-published years and years before Portis came on the scene. My thanks to the creative teacher who provided her students with the black dots and the opportunity to transform them.

*Another book I like by by this author is A Penguin Story.

Click the link to see more pages from the Dot book. (more…)

I had the pleasure the other day of intro-
ducing three beginning books to a group of 3–5-year-olds, accompanied by their parents, at U-Me Place. Our activities included THE best project for first-time bookmakers—the Frame Book—plus the irresistible Barn Book with hayloft and stable doors that really open, and that perennial favorite of young fashionistas, the Necklace Book.

Click here for a Frame Book template and here for Necklace Book instructions.

Watching the kids at play reminded me how much I love stick-figure drawings. They may look like primative, wiggly lines to us grown-ups. But in fact, every crayon scrawl is emblematic of a story. And to the children, they speak volumes (as you can see in the last set of pictures, where I acted as a scribe).

Among preschool teachers in a recent bookmaking workshop, pictures of yummy foods and intriguing animals were the favorite starting point for turning empty plastic boxes into collage books.

The youngest children can simply fold a precut sheet of paper in half to make book pages, then cut out magazine pictures and glue them inside. Older chil-
dren can fold a longer, precut sheet into a four-panel accordion. Yes, cutting out pictures and gluing them on the pages will likely make a mess! But the terrific work-out for fine-motor skills kids experience with this project is more important.

I love this die! It cuts nine 1¾-inch squares, each with a perforated side. In other words: an instant lift-the-flap page!

You’ll find it at RAFT in San Jose, where members can do die-cutting for free. If your school has an Ellison die-cut machine but not this die, you can get it here.

With a die-cut page, kindergartners and pre-
schoolers can make their own lift-the-flap activity book, illustrating varied categories with stickers, glued-on pictures or drawings. Here’s an example to get you started.