Bookmaking With Kids

Yesterday was the birthday of Beatrix Potter, born in London in 1866, who gave the world the enchanting illustrations and stories found in The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (1903), The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904), The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908) and many others.

If it’s not too hot where you are, kids could cele-
brate by trying to look at their corner of the outdoor world with Potter’s artistic eye and her fascination for nature.

If air conditioning is a must, I heartily recommend a new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum and its many compelling online components. Peter Rabbit: The tale of Tale presents the story behind Potter’s first book

• Why Potter first penned Peter’s adventure (to amuse a 5-year-old boy recovering from scarlet fever in 1893)
• How years later she reclaimed her illustrated letters to the boy and his siblings and reworked them into stories
• How, her work rejected by a half dozen publishers, she arranged for a private printing of 250 copies with black and white illustrations and colored frontispieces, followed within a year by a second privately printed edition of 200 copies
• How one of the publishers who originally rejected her manuscript, Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd, approached her anew
• And how, working together, Potter and Warne brought out a shorter, full-color edition that has since sold 40 million copies.

The V&A holds the world’s largest collection of Potter’s drawings, manuscripts, letters, photographs and related materials, and always has an exhibition devoted to some aspect of her work. The museum also has a wealth of online displays that prresent many aspects of her life and work. At this link, you’ll find an overview of its online offerings. Enjoy!

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’m becoming shockingly ruthless in my campaign of domestic divestiture, saving fewer things as moving day draws closer (and as I tire of packing). But today I came across a wonderful little ABC booklet called Words, and I’m definitely keeping it.

It’s puzzling, because I have no idea whence it came. It’s sophisticated, because for the most part it tackles concepts rather than objects. And, for me, it’s especially beguiling because it uses typographic wit in its definitions. Click the link to see A–Z. more…

This bike rack, in front of my branch library, makes me happy … though I couldn’t possibly have carted my current stack of library books home on my bike.

My children’s first dog—a much beloved dog, I should say at the outset—was selectively, secretively and bizarrely destructive. He chewed off the hands and feet off their Barbies, inadvertently instigating recurrent games of doll hospital. He gnawed the corners of my husband’s wallet(s). He pulled out and ate his credit cards (more than once on the eve of a trip). And he was especially fond of the soft plastic pads on my husband’s eyeglasses, the part that sat on the bridge of his nose.

So you can see why I’m partial to Maira Kalman’s book What Pete Ate From A—Z. Her fictional dog just doesn’t seem so terribly far-fetched to me. Plus, it’s an alphabet book, and I love ABC books.