Bookmaking With Kids

Welcome to the new blog that grew out of three days of classes for K-8 teachers that I organized for the San Francisco Center for the Book this summer.

I wanted a place where I could think out loud about kids and books, arts, curriculum, our experiences, challenges and brainstorms, and where classroom teachers could join the conversation. Librarians, principals, reading specialists, arts educators and parents are welcome, too.

Running this blog is also my way of continuing the special atmosphere—of sharing and learning, excitement and discovery, artistry and fun—that comes from teaching kids or teachers to make a book.

I hope you enjoy reading the posts here. Click on upcoming months in the Calendar and see what happens. And please talk back to me, and to each other. Whenever you’ve got something to share, just click the word Comments (in blue). It’s that easy!

Best wishes for the new school year. And keep me posted about your bookmaking adventures.

What a handmade book looks like makes a huge difference in the energy that kids invest in writing and illustrating it. Take the whale-tail pop-up books that I’ve been teaching a lot lately.

Pop-ups are always kid-pleasers, for a couple of reasons. For starters, they’re pretty easy to make: this one has just two folds and some cutting. (It requires a little finesse with scissors, but kids as young as 1st graders can usually manage it.) Second, something exciting happens. With this book, the tail pops forward at the touch of a finger. And every time kids open and close it, their whale appears to dive (or breach).

Kids start writing instantly, every time I teach this. “I was amazed at how the whale structure inspired the kids,” a 1st grade teacher told me, “and most of them had their own ideas on what to write about, right down to a beginning, middle and end.

“I had been teaching the writing steps all year—prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing—and they took off on their own with this project, perhaps more creatively.”

Click here to get a PDF template for making a Whale Tail Tale.

Every so often I have the privilege of displaying several hundred books made by kids in the wonderfully large exhibition cases of the Fisher Children’s Center at the San Francisco Public Library. I always read all the books, and I’m always awed by the kids’ enthusiasm, creativity and talent. I’m also a sucker for their earnest errors.

Here’s a group of Necklace Books. I treasure one in particular, quoted here in its entirety, because of its artless misuse of homophones. It’s called Boo Boo My Dog:

“Just two days ago I got a Dog! My freinds sold me the dog because it was actualy my freinds dagter dog but she got caut shoplifting 2 times so her mother said she was knot responsible so she sold us the Dog! Know we have a great Dog and he is very happy. Our Dog is a full bread Shih-tzu.”

Isn’t curious that the 5th-grade author could manage “responsible,” “shoplifting” and “Shih-tzu” yet err with “not,” “now” and “bred”? And what a tricky business it is for teachers to honor kids’ efforts while steering them toward accuracy!

The recent Summer Bookmaking Institute for K–8 Teachers was so resounding a success that I’m eager to share some statistics about it.

There were 110 participants—teachers, librarians and two principals—in 12 workshops over three days. Lots of people enrolled in more than one class. One woman took five! Five students took four workshops each; seven students took three classes, and 16 people enrolled in two sessions apiece.

The Summer Institute drew from a wide geographic area: all the Bay Area counties as well as Sonoma, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Clara, as well as the states of Maryland, Oregon and Arizona. The Arizona students were a couple—a middle-school principal and a 3rd grade teacher—visiting San Francisco for an education conference. They found the Institute on the web Wednesday night and decided to spend the morning of their anniversary taking a class together!

Thank you, Linda Block, for introducing us to your easy approach to paper-marbling. A 5th grade teacher who also teaches bookmaking to teachers, Linda presented her technique at the Summer Bookmaking Institute for Teachers this past July.

Linda’s secret ingredient is Prang Freart Chalk. She has her students use plastic knives to scrape little shavings from different colored sticks of chalk into pans of water. Working in pairs, students briefly place a piece of paper onto the surface of the water, fish it out and place it on paper towels to dry.

The process is quick enough and neat enough for all the students to marble several sheets of paper in one class period! Best to give it until the next day to dry. Then use the marbled paper to add an eye-catching, original touch to your bookmaking projects.

Prang Freart Chalk is widely available; do a Google search to find current best prices.

The only animals I can draw are frogs. So it’s probably no surprise that I like teaching kids how to make frog books. Happily, that one critter can spawn lots of different book projects: fairy tales like the Frog Prince, life cycle books, Ribbit books where frogs with pop-open mouths appear to talk as kids open the page, and more.

My goal for this school year: Get good at hedgehogs! And I will. I’ve found great instruc-
tions on Jan Brett’s web site.

If your class will be reading about hedgehogs, let me know so I can start conjuring book projects.