Bookmaking With Kids

Look what I made! It’s one of 10 pop-up projects in the newly published Pocket Paper Engineer, Volume 2, by Carol Barton at Popular Kinetics Press.

My flamboyantly colored turtle floats about ¾ of an inch above its nautical background, suspended by three concealed tabs. Making it was easy—I cut four pieces of paper and applied six dabs of glue—because Carol’s illustrated, step-by-step directions are absolutely the best around. Her writing is straightforward and concise, her illustrations clear, and the component parts of each pop-up are numbered and colored coded!

In fact, I’m as impressed by the design and construction of the book itself as I am by the pop-ups it features. The spiral-bound Pocket Paper Engineer, both Volumes 1 and 2, presents each of its projects on one or two perforated pages that contain pre-printed designs, backgrounds and tabs. You tear out the pages, make the pop-ups and then tuck your completed models into pocket pages bound into the book. So you end up with a bookful of colorful samples, plus all Carol’s instructions, tips and ideas for variations still intact.

The projects in Volume 2 are all platform pop-ups or prop pop-ups, plus many, many variations. (I count more than 40!) Platform pop-ups float above a flat, fully opened page, like my turtle. Prop pop-ups spring forward from a page that opens halfway, to a 90° angle, and serves as a backdrop and foreground for the pop-up image. Here’s one example:

You can see all the projects in Volume 2 by clicking here. The first four pictures are platform pop-ups; the rest are prop pop-ups.

Who’s the audience for these pop-ups? I’d say Volume 2 is a good match for kids in the upper elementary grades on up to adults, while many of the projects in Volume 1, which covers more basic structures, could work with kids as young as 1st graders. A lot depends on you and the amount of advanced planning you can do. Click here for a look at the projects in Volume 1.

I got thoroughly excited working my way through the latest Pocket Paper Engineer, and I’m busily conjuring book ideas to pair with some of the new pop-ups I’ve learned. So please, visit Bookmaking with Kids again to see the projects I’ve devised.

There’s been a certain levity to the last couple of bookmaking projects featured on Bookmaking with Kids. So now for something a little more serious. Except that it’s still fun. Bookmaking is always fun.

This is one of a series of projects that lets kids recreate book formats used in times past. In the process they learn a little something about the evolution of books over the centuries as well as the different cultures that developed them. Making historical book models is a wonderful lens for looking at the past.

A hornbook was what children of the 14th through 18th centuries used to learn their ABCs.

“When little children first
are brought to schoole
A Horne-booke is a necessarie toole.”
— Nicholas Breton, 1612

It wasn’t really a book at all: it consisted of a sheet of parchment or paper with the alphabet, phonics and a prayer printed or in manuscript, mounted on a small, wooden, paddle-shaped board and protected by a thin sheet of transparent animal horn that was attached with metal strips and nails.

The hornbook is an easy-to-make project that’s suitable whenever Colonial America pops up in your curriculum. I’ve taught it to 2nd graders, 3rd graders and 5th graders. The larger of the two replicas pictured to the right is good for younger students. It consists of a piece of stiff paper held inside a plastic sheet protector by brads and attached to a wooden paint stirrer! How easy is that?! The smaller one, more historically accurate in shape, is cut from cardboard. The written sheet is held in place with clear sticky-backed plastic. And four brads secure strips of gold-colored paper that mimic the metal used in real hornbooks.

Some curious facts about hornbooks:

• Hornbooks were made of many materials beside wood, including ivory, silver, leather, bone … and occasionally gingerbread. When students learned a letter, they were allowed to eat it!
• Children wore their hornbooks. There was a hole in the handle so they could be attached to boy’s belt or a girl’s girdle.
• Because they were fairly indestructible and went everywhere with their owners, hornbooks were often used as bats when children were at play.
• English and European hornbooks typically had a cross in the upper lefthand corner. But there were no crosses in New England hornbooks, because the Puritans abhorred the symbol of the cross.

Click the link for a diagram you can print as a template, links to useful web sites and other information. more…

For another too-cool-for-school bookmaking project, try magnetic paint on the book covers!

The process is pretty much the same as for making a book with chalkboard-paint covers. And the sources for the paint are the same, too.

Once kids have made it, what do they do with it? The first project that pops into my mind is magnetic poetry. You could mete out words from an old magnetic poetry set. Better still, let kids create their own magnet-backed words. And pictures! Don’t forget pictures.

Let students cut out words and pictures from magazines or used, large-print children’s books—from a secondhand bookstore, from RAFT or from SCRAP—and then attach them to magnetic sheets. Your best bet for magnetic sheets is the specialty area at RAFT, the Resource Area for Teachers in San Jose. But many variety, craft and hardware stores stock them, too.

By the way: Both the chalkboard- and magnetic-paint covered books have survived both ordinary kid-testing and event-testing. That is, these projects work well with large crowds, under high-spirited, slightly chaotic circumstances!

I’ve recently discovered dry-erase paint, which turns a surface into a whiteboard. I haven’t tested it for bookmaking yet, but when I do I’ll let you know.

The words Too Cool for School were written by a child on the first page of the book immediately to the left. So you can be sure kids are really going to like this bookmaking project.

What’s cool about this book is its chalkboard-paint cover. Kids can write on it, draw on it, erase it, write on it, draw on it, erase it, over and over, with white or colored chalk. The paint is available in black or green; it’s made by Rustoleum among others, and you can find it at hardware stores, Target, Lowes, paint stores and other outlets.

You’ll need fairly heavy paper for the book covers (otherwise the paint will cause the paper to buckle), cut to size before painting. The cover above measures 8½ x 17 inches. The text pages are letter-size sheets folded in half as a group. And the finished book measures 8½ x 5½ inches, closed, with the cover paper wrapping part way around the first and last pages of the book. Paint the cover first, before folding it in half and stapling or sewing the text pages through the fold.

If you can set up a painting station in the school yard, great. Otherwise, a corner of your classroom will work, for two students at a time. Each cover should get two coats of paint, with a little drying time between coats. Then the covers should dry overnight. And then kids can attach the book’s innards and start having fun with the covers.

A couple months back I found a gently used children’s dictionary in secondhand bookstore, bought it for just $2 and then abandoned it on a shelf while I waited for inspiration. Finally it came: I’d turn the dictionary’s pages into fodder for a combination scavenger hunt/art project.

The teachers in one of my Summer Bookmaking Intensive workshops were the first guinea pigs for the Dictionary Scavenger Hunt. And because they left the Intensive with 25 or so loose dictionary pages apiece, their students will also get to try the project. Here’s how it works:

1. Every student gets a page that’s been sliced out of the dictionary.
2. Kids scrutinize their pages, tracking down answers to a series of questions about definitions, grammar, parts of speech, syllables and the like.
3. Then come some silly challenges:
   • Write a sentence (that’s sort of sensible) using two or more words on the page.
   • Invent and define a word, and show where it belongs on the page. (I’m fond of the bogus word I shoe-horned between wizard and wobble. It’s wizlet, meaning a young, wizard-in-training.)
4. Finally, for artistic merriment, kids can add or alter an illustration for any word on their page.

The questions, the answers, the dictionary page and the artwork all go into a booklet made from a folded tabloid sheet. Click a thumbnail image, above, to get a good look at each page; then click the Back arrow to return to this page.

You can download a template, to be printed singled-side on 11 x 17 paper, by clicking here. This is a fun activity anytime you work with students on dictionary skills. But I think it’s an especially good project when your kids are reading Frindle by Andrew Clements, since it’s the story of an ersatz word and the trouble it causes.

The basics for bookmaking are probably already in your classroom: paper; scissors; pencils, markers or crayons, and a stapler or two.

But some added supplies will let kids tackle projects with a little more pizazz or complexity than just folded and cut paper, and help improve their bookmaking skills. What follows is a list of my favorite tools, plus sources with good prices.

Bone folders … for scoring paper and making folds

Truth to tell, kids could use tongue depressors instead of bone folders. But I find that giving kids a special tool for scoring and folding encourages a special attentiveness and respect for the task. In fact, I’ve had a roomful of 30+ kids fall entirely silent as they used their bones to fold Japanese paper for a stab binding! And that’s the kind of mindfulness that hand bookmaking deserves.

That said, you can save money by getting plastic ones. I suggest Provo Craft’s 8-inch plastic bone folder. The best price I’ve found is $2.24 each at Misterart.com

Sewing Needles
The eyes in John James Darners #18 needles are wide enough to children to thread themselves. You’ll find them at Talas Online, item #TTS039007. A package of 25 is $4.75. Here’s the link.

Sewing Thread
I use different weight threads for different projects: a heavier weight (known as 12/3) for Japanese side-sewn stab bindings and a lighter weight (18/3) for small pamphlet bindings. Again, Talas has excellent prices. Here’s the link. A spool of each of these two weights will see your class through one or two years of projects, maybe longer:

• TTS043042 12/3 (250 GM) for $31
• TTS043043 18/3 (250 GM) for $34

Awls … for piercing sewing holes
You need awls with strong handle to withstand taps from a hammer. The ones I use with children are the #1 Awls from Talas Online at $2.68 each, probably less with a price break for a large order. Here’s the link.

Hammers
I got my hammers at Asian variety stores on Clement Street in San Francisco, the kind that carries everything from chopsticks to dishware to socks to luggage! You should be able to find a short hammer with a plastic grip on the handle for under $3. I have kids work in pairs to pierce holes, so you’d need one hammer per two kids.

A trip to RAFT is your best bet for …

• Staplers (and staple removers)
• Two- and three-hole punches
• Paper clips
• Reams of paper (letter, legal & tabloid)
• Scrapbooking paper (nice colors, textures, 12 x 12 inches)
• CD cases
• Mrs. Grossman’s Stickers
• File folders
• Envelopes
• Yarn
• Pipe cleaners
• Dice
• Envelopes
• Tongue depressors