Bookmaking With Kids

Look at these pads of Post-It notes I found!

I think they’d be fabulous, here and there, in the pages of a hand-
made book. I can see them as recur-
ring elements in a story, contribut-
ing a goofy design twist and serving up bits of dialog.

Watch for future posts in this series to see how these finds were actually used.

NOTE: This post is one in an irregular series about training your eye to see opportunities for bookmaking, opportunities that may be triggered both by “stuff” that catches your eye and by books that kids read. I’ve tagged these posts with the “From Idea to Book” category, and you can get a list of all such posts to date by clicking here.

Year after year, the 1st graders in my friend Debra’s classroom do awesome work. Including lots of handmade books, I’m happy to say. Recently Debra turned photos of her kids’ writing projects into a video. You can watch it here. Kudos to Debra and to the kids she calls “the best 1st graders in the universe.”

I found this dreamy tropical-island stationery in my paper stash and decided to turn it into a book.

Click the link to see the transformation from 2D to 3D. more…

I recently turned up a 2nd-grade homework log for my younger daughter (now 20!) and was charmed to see what she was reading solo, what her father and I were reading aloud to her and how her grandparents helped out, too.

During the particular week shown above (just in case you can’t read the handwriting), our chosen reading included The Math Curse, several Fractured Fairy Tales and six poems by Jack Prelutsky. But the best idea was my mother’s: taking turns reading the Chance and Community Chest cards from a Monopoly set that featured the city of London!

My parents lived there on several occasions, and I did, too, as a kid, so stories about London always abounded in our family. Reading the Monopoly cards was not only practice in reading for my daughter but no doubt also a prelude to hearing about family adventures in a great city.

What strikes me now about this entry in the homework log is my mom’s creative approach to reading practice. It was a brilliant idea! Thank you!

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 think this nifty cover+bookmark idea deserves to be adapted in the classroom. It would make a great book-review project! Kids could create a dust jacket to wrap around the book they’ve read, write promotional text on the inside flaps and back cover, and create a handmade bookmark as the finishing touch.

I’d suggest some brainstorming about graphics before kids choose a book. The story should lend itself to a bookmark design. That is, it needs some striking characteristic—like the white rabbit’s ears, Robin’s arrow or Sherlock’s pipe—that’s both emblematic of the story and easy for kids to draw and cut out as a bookmark.

You can see more photos of designer Igor Udushlivy’s Jacket+Bookmark concepts here. And thanks to Swiss Miss, where I spotted a post about this concept for book promotion.