Bookmaking Project-Where I Live Book

I just did a workshop at Children's Hospital and this was a favorite form for the artists and educators there. Since each successive page is larger than the one before, it's great for helping young children understand their place in the world from their school or street address through their town, state, country, and finally planet.

Use three sheets of paper and follow the instructions for the step book. I wanted to use recycled paper so I glued the sides with writing of two pieces of paper together to make each sheet. I used strips cut from a plastic bag for the ties but yarn also works well.

You can find written directions in English and Spanish and a pdf to print and share at makingbooks.com.

Taxonomy Step Book

As I worked on the image for this year's Samhain greeting using the remains of a sunflower leaf, I thought of the step book I made about the sunflower to illustrate its taxonomy, which wikipedia defines as "the science which deals with the study of identifying, grouping, and naming organisms according to their established natural relationship." My mother-in-law taught me the importance of Latin names in gardening and I enjoy learning the names of individual plants and their families.

I used three panels from the front and back of grocery bags for the pages and strips cut from a plastic bag for the ties.

Here is a slideshow of the pages:



And here are directions for making a step book:



Written directions for making a step book

In Spanish

A short film about Carl Linnaeus
who developed the system in the 1700s

Classification Rap by T.H. Culhane and his class

This month's giveaway will be a CD about the Spirit Books. Look for it next week on Book Arts Tuesday.

Very Hungry Caterpillar Step Book

Step Book written directions (web and pdf)

Step Book youtube tutorial

June 25th is Eric Carle's eightieth birthday and The Very Hungry Caterpillar turns 40 this year. To celebrate, June's project is a Hungry Caterpillar Step Book.

I made the book from 4 pieces of paper (US Letter or A4 paper cut in half the short way). It has 6 steps (Monday through Saturday) plus a extra layer for the title and butterfly page. It is easiest to make a three-step book and then line the fourth piece up with the first small step and fold it around the back. Children can write their own words or you can print out the words here.

Page by page pictures of this book are on Flickr.

BOOKS AND LINKS

Eric Carle's classic book which turns forty this year.

The Official Eric Carle Website
This wonderful website includes a photo and video gallery and Eric Carle's blog among other offerings.

Eric Carle talks about The Very Hungry Caterpillar
In this youtube video produced by Waterstone's bookstore for the fortieth anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle talks about its creation.

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art
The website of Eric Carle's Museum in Amherst, MA. There are lots of events planned for this birthday/anniversary year as well as exhibits by other children's book illustrators.

Narcissus Step Book

Written directions




Every year after Thanksgiving we place paperwhite narcissus bulbs in a bowl filled with gravel, add water, watch the sprouting of the green leaves, and enjoy their growth until we get the rich scent of the delicate white blossoms. It's a tradition carried on from my childhood which I have expanded to include a second round of bulbs started in late January to bring us through the cold winter days.

The process of getting bulbs to bloom is usually called forcing. One of the websites I looked at talked about coaxing rather than forcing which I liked a lot. Paperwhites are the easiest because they do not need to be chilled ahead of time. However, they can't be planted after. This will be their one and only time to bloom. I love what The Great Plant Escape said about bulbs: "A bulb is a promise."

The step book was made with four pieces of paper cut from the side panels of a grocery bag. The ties were made from the plastic bag bananas came in. I used colored pencils for the drawings as I found that the white pencil showed up the best on the brown paper.


BOOKS AND LINKS


Delightfully illustrated with cut paper, Paperwhite tells the story of two bunnies, Lucy and her neighbor Miss Mamie. On the first day of winter, they gather stones and put them in a glass jar, place a paperwhite bulb on top of the stones, and water them. While they wait for it to "bring a little spring into this dark winter day," they enjoy their friendship, baking and making music.

Information on coaxing bulbs as well as curriculum connections can be found here
http://www.kidsgardening.com/growingideas/projects/sept03/pg1.html

For some very nice close-up photos of flower buds and blossoms, along with other flowers, visit http://www.charawilliams.com/eye/frontyardflora.html

Kids learn about bulbs as they solve Case 5: Mysterious Parts That Surprise in the Great Plant Escape.
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/gpe/case5/index.html

Step Book Tutorial on Youtube

Korean Counting Book

http://www.makingbooks.com/step.shtml

My husband and I went to Korea last month where I was part of the Seungnam International Book Art Fair. I exhibited some of the Spirit Books and gave a coupleof workshops to children. We were welcomed with wonderful hospitality and had a chance to make friends from Korea and around the world. Our trip was only six days with two of them in airports and in the air so it took us a while to recover after our return home. I'll be posting information about the trip sometime soon. I always like to show some sample ways of using the books I make in workshops. Here's a book that I took to Korea. The first page says counting book followed by the numbers from one to nine.

I used five sheets of 4.25" x 11" colored copy paper (standard size sheets cut in half vertically). The step book works great for a counting book as the page revealed after lifting each step gets larger as you move along the book. For a variation, you can bind it using the stick and elastic technique instead of yarn.
http://www.makingbooks.com/elastic.shtml


Links

Numbers in Different Languages
A counting book can be an entry into a different culture. I'm planning on making a larger counting book with the following:

1 palace (we visited Gyeongbokgung (Gyeongbok Palace),
2 chopsticks (Korean chopsticks are made of stainless steel),
3 azalea blossoms (I was introduced to one of Korea's most famous poems by its translator David R. McCann who is the brother of a friend from the Children's Museum),
4 handmade brushes (I bought a beautiful one in a shop in Insadong in Seoul),
5 birds (as far as I can tell the common birds we saw and loved were black-billed magpies),
6 children playing badminton (we saw lots in the park on the weekend),
7 bowls of kimchi (the fermented cabbage dish is served at every meal),
8 pairs of slippers (there were slippers in the hotel room, outside the dining room in a restaurant, and in bins at the airport where we had to take off our shoes),
9 Dunkin Donuts coffees (we were surprised to see containers of Dunkin Donuts coffee arrive at the exhibition hall especially when we have friends in the western US who miss them terribly)

Wikipedia has well organized sets of numbers from one to ten in different languages.

Korean Numbers

There are two kinds of numbers in Korean: pure Korean numbers and Sino-Korean numbers. The numbers in the Counting Book above are Sino-Korean numbers.

Sino-Korean Numbers

Pronunciation:
1= il
2= ee
3= sam
4= sa
5= oh
6= yook
7= chil
8= pal
9= goo
10= ship

You can hear them and then test yourself with a concentration game here.

Korean Number Song
You may find this cute or irritating but it does go through the Korean numbers from one to ten.

Adapted from the May 2007 issue of Making Books Monthly
Free subscriptions available at makingbooks.com