Monday, May 11, 2009

Recycled Alphabet Accordion Book



I had so much fun making this accordion alphabet book of letters formed with materials from my collection of recycled materials. The pages were made from foam core left over from a political campaign project. You can also use pieces of corrugated cardboard cut from boxes. To attach the letters, I poked holes in the foam core with an awl and used yarn, ribbon, and twist ties to hold the materials in place.

I made the book in three sections as the full length accordion was too bulky and awkward to transport to workshops. I joined the individual pages by taping them in the back, leaving a little bit of space between the pages.

You can see the complete Recycled Alphabet here.

LINKS
There are too many wonderful alphabet books to choose one or two to feature so I'm giving links to some bibliographies and other websites.

From the Kalamazoo Public Library
A good list with pictures of the covers and short descriptions

From the Boston Children's Museum
A long list with a particular focus on different cultures and parts of the world

A is for Archive: One Hundred Years of Alphabet Books
View page-by-page presentations alphabet books from history. There's an Anti-Slavery Alphabet Book from 1847 (I just saw a facsimile at the Smithsonian on a recent trip to Washington) and an Alphabet of Celebrities from 1901 which include Diogenes, Darwin, and Dante for D.

Abecedarium: An Exhibit of Alphabet Books
Members of the Guild of Bookworkers created artists' books for this 1998 exhibit. An inspiring collection.

5 comments:

MUS said...

i love them too alphabet books. do you know this one:? ABC3D, Marion Bataille
(isbn: 978 2 226 18020 9)

Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord said...

Yes I am familiar. It's a great pop-up book. Thanks for mentioning it.

You can see a video of it in action on youtube.

Jessica Monte said...

I love this! I may work on something like this and hang it in our art room. Awesome!

Aimee Larsen said...

I absolutley LOOOOVE this project. I'm linking up to this. Visit my literacy blog over at http://www.onthelap.org and join in. If you ever have projects you'd like to share just let me know. Thank you for sharing this, it is so awesome!

Anonymous said...

I signed up to your rss feed! Will you post more on this topic?