Susan's Visit to Korea

It's almost a month since we returned from a short trip to Korea where I took part in the Seongnam International Book Art Fair. I was very inspired by the experience but have not had time to write or create much about it. I did compose a short letter with photos to preschool children at the Cambridge-Ellis School in Cambridge, MA where I spent a few days last month. Here's a slightly modified version.

R ur kids 4getn how 2 rite?: Fun writing activities for summer

Newburyport writer Aine Greaney has written an article full of great ideas for getting kids writing over the summer. She kindly lists makingbooks.com as a resource. You can read the article here.

You can learn more about Aine and her work on her website.

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

Love Letters Final Report

The Love Letters exhbition at the Firehouse in Newburyport ended yesterday with a reception for the children and their parents. The response to the project has been fantastic from the children, librarians, and teachers in the creation of the work to the enthusiasm of the viewers who took such pleasure in reading the letters.

View a slide show of the opening evening of the Festival including the Love Letters exhibit by Chris McGarry.

For those who are interested in doing a similar project, here is a pdf of information and samples to get started.

Love Letters To Our Favorite Books

Love Letters To Our Favorite Books is a community celebration of reading in association with the Newburyport Literary Festival.The walls of the The Firehouse Center for the Arts in downtown Newburyport are covered with over 900 letters to favorite books, authors,or characters. Almost all the letters are from the children of Newburyport. School librarians Judy Avery, Karen McCarty, Karen Twomey, and Ellen Menesale coordinated the projects at the Brown, Kelly, Bresnahan, and Nock Schools. Children at the Newburyport Montessori School and Ann McCrea’s KidsArt classes also contributed letters. The project was the brain child of Festival director Vicki Hendrickson and organized by local artist and educator Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord. The installation was accomplished by Karen Dardinski, director of the Firehouse Art Gallery, and Susan with assistance from Kendra Gaylord and Ada Horne.

Love Letters To Our Favorite Books
Firehouse Center for the Arts
One Market Square
Newburyport, MA
April 12-29
Reception: April 29, 2-4 pm

a Newburyport Literary Festival event

Earth Day Wish Scroll

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

I am thrilled with how well my shift to recycled materials is going. In the past few weeks, I have worked with children from kindergarten to second grade. Starting with brown grocery bags and cereal boxes, we made a variety of books. It seemed even more fun than bookmaking with precut materials. What I love most is that the children can easily continue their enthusiasm by making books at home. In this spirit of environmental awareness, this month's project is for Earth Day. Wish Scrolls are based on scrolls made in Ethiopia as talismans.

My example uses a plastic film canister (I am thinking about a replacement for when everyone's camera is digital), old buttons instead of the beads, and brown paper bag for the scroll. I did use new crochet cotton but you could save old ribbon or string. I used a bookbinder's awl to make the holes so they are not that large but an ice pick or a regular awl would make a larger hole and give you more options for the thread. If you're doing the project with a large group, most places that develop film will give you canisters that they save for recycling.

Links

All About Earth Day
Earth Day was founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconson in 1970. This site has some history, profiles of Nelson, Rachel Carson, and others, and a Teacher's Lounge with classroom actvities and a pdf of great quotes about conservation, wilderness, and nature.
http://earthday.wilderness.org/history/

Recycling Revolution
A friendly site created to encourage recycling and give basic facts and strategies to make it easy.
http://www.recycling-revolution.com/recycling-basics.html

Images and Information about Ethiopian scrolls
http://www.freelancefarm.com/ordinaryaura/archives/000093.html

http://www.uihealthcare.com/depts/medmuseum/galleryexhibits/artthatheals/01overview.html

Students of Tom Trusky at Boise State University in Idaho made protective scrolls based on ones from Ethiopia.
http://english.boisestate.edu/ethiopian/index.html

Grocery Bag Biography Book

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


I have started to use recycled materials as much as possible in my workshops. One of my favorite materials is brown grocery bags. The inventor of the flat-bottomed grocery bag is Margaret Knight. March is Women's History Month.

Cut out the front or back panel of a brown grocery bag. Make a hot dog booklet. If the bag has writing on it, it should be on the inside (not showing) when you make the first fold (like a hot dog).

Links

Article about Margaret Knight from the Portsmouth Herald
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/04232006/maine/99159.htm

Women Inventors: Improving Our World
A small website from Girl Scout Troop 2409 in Briarcliff, NY about Margaret Knight which includes a mix and match quiz about other women inventors.
http://www.engineergirl.org/Troop2409/index.html

Marvelous Mattie by Emily McCully
A wonderful book about Margaret Knight's determination which led to her invention.
Marvelous Mattie: How Margaret E. Knight Became an Inventor

For Adult Readers
Henry Petroski who has written a number of books on objects, The Pencil, The Book on the Book Shelf, has a chapter on the grocery bag in his book, Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design.
Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design

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