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Tag Archives: picture book craft
bob the artist + artsy beak craft + giveaway!
Bob the Artist by Marion Deuchars (2016).
This picture book is about creativity. About how it can solve problems in unexpected ways. About how—and this is the most important thing—it can solve a problem you’re having with yourself.
Filled with the signature creativity of its creator, this one’s fun and full of flair.
(click image(s) to enlarge)
Bob has long, skinny legs. (They are good for walking.) Bob likes them. But then, others tease him about those legs and his perception begins to change. He tries to alter his legs, to make himself different. (You might guess his attempts don’t work.)
So Bob does what he always does: goes for a walk.
I like that Bob goes for a walk. It seems simple enough, but it does so much. It shows how walking or movement or taking a break—I’m a firm believer in this—is integral to figuring stuff out.
His legs take him to an art museum, and there, he’s inspired (by Matisse! by Jackson Pollock!). Getting out of our own heads and experiencing something new often is inspiring, isn’t it?
Bob brings his attention from his legs to his beak: something he can change. But not because he doesn’t like it. Because his beak can be his canvas.
At the beginning, Bob is a bird with skinny legs. At the end, he is an artist. He discovers himself. And he discovers that a physical attribute others mock doesn’t make a lick of difference when he’s found what makes him really tick. And while that thing may be on the outside, it comes from the inside, from his own creativity.
Big thanks to Laurence King Publishing for images!
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Let’s design our own artsy beaks the way Bob did! They can double as party hats!
Marion Deuchars is all about encouraging kids to make art so that they can be artists—like the great masters, like her, and like Bob, so this craft fits the bill. (haha.)
What you need:
White cardstock
Pencil
Markers/crayons/colored pencils/paint
Tape (double-sided works best)
Scissors
A one hole punch
Elastic cord
Your artistic imagination!
First, cut out a party hat shape in cardstock (I loosely followed this template). After you test that it will wind up like a cone, lay it flat again and get creating. Draw whatever design you like. Then roll up the paper and tape it so the beak/hat sticks together. Then make a hole on each side and thread elastic through the holes. Tie the elastic through each hole and around it, making a knot. (Make sure the length of the elastic is just right to fit you or yours.) And, voila!
I hope you feel inspired like Bob!
Finally, Laurence King is generously giving away three copies of the book + a Bob the Artist tote bag to three lucky winners!
penguin problems + penguin paper doll craft
Penguin Problems by Jory John & Lane Smith (2016).
This picture book is full of the narrator’s problems. Which means they’re the penguin kind. But basically they’re the kinds of problems anyone can relate to. The kind that stem from being bummed out about every little thing and how the world and our place in it sometimes feels completely utterly wrong, wrong, wrong.
Luckily, this little guy is hilarious.
Penguin’s problems include a cold beak and a lack of fish, the too-salty ocean, the inability to fly, and the way everybody looks the same. This narrator even mistakes the wrong penguin for his own mother. See?
The voice here is downright hysterical and as a reader you’re right there with the narrator’s list of grumbles. Until. There’s a big until in this book. The until is for a walrus. When the walrus talks, the whole tone changes. No more clipped complaints. Instead, a long zen speech about mindfulness ensues. And you know what? It works! It works in the book as a technique and it works for our little penguin’s problems. Well, sort of. You know how it is when you’re trying to be mindful and grateful and stuff. Your beak might still get cold.
A perfect prescription for a grumbly kind of mood or a book for when you want a good laugh. Penguin Problems is super clever and amusing at the same time and one of my top-shelf picture books in recent memory.
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My favorite part of the book (aside from the waddle demonstration) is the “Everybody looks the same as me” section. So, I thought this craft called for not just one penguin, but many penguins. The kind that all look pretty much the same. Enter, penguin paper dolls!
(Extra points if you spot one that’s slightly different!)
What you need:
White paper
Pencil
Scissors
Black marker; orange marker
Black colored pencil or marker
Fold an 8 1/2 by 11” sheet of paper into quarters long ways and then cut along the folds. With one long strip, fold in half and in half again until it’s all folded like a book. Then, unfold and refold accordion style.
Draw half a penguin shape along the left/folded edge of the top of the accordion booklet making sure its wing extends beyond the edge of the paper. Cut around that shape and unfold to see your paper doll penguins! Then, draw in the eyes and belly and color in. Voila! Penguins holding hands. (Repeat if you want more penguin chains.)
These would be cute on a wall, in a doorway, or as company any place. It’s nice to have company when you’re dealing with so many problems, right?
a hungry lion + lion cake craft
A Hungry Lion or A Dwindling Assortment of Animals by Lucy Ruth Cummins (2016).
I don’t want to say too much about this book because it’s full of surprises. But I think it’s safe to say it’s mischievous, brave, and oh so much fun!
(click image(s) to enlarge)
A Hungry Lion plays with our assumptions, with page turns, with wordless or nearly wordless spreads, and with a spunky narrator. And then it turns everything on its head. Possibly more than once.
The beginning spreads set up a pattern. There’s an assortment of animals. And it’s dwindling. We can all imagine who the culprit is. Just look at his fangs! His angry orange mane!
Look how he hums, innocently, but how pig looks quite nervous nonetheless. But need she be? That is the question this book asks. One of them anyway.
Here’s a surprise I referred to! A cake and party surprise, one of the best kinds! Oh, but the story doesn’t end there. Not at all. There are more surprises in store, along with an answer to the question of who’s king of the animal kingdom after all. It might have less to do with fangs and an angry orange mane than was first assumed.
Big thanks to Simon & Schuster for images!
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Those dwindling animals as cake toppers immediately came to mind for this picture book craft. There’s even a cake in the book itself! So, cake it had to be. As such, I enlisted the help of my dude, Todd Davis, to whip up a lion cake with a ribbony mane. Because he’s the guy to ask for stuff like that. Come see what we made!
That’s a hungry lion cake. And that’s a dwindling assortment of animal cake toppers.
What you need:
A cake! If you make it like we did, you can go homemade or boxed in terms of cake and frosting. For eating, buttercream is best (and mentioned in the book). We used three cake layers for the base/mane, and one layer for the face.
Three 9 ” cake pans
One or two 6 ” cake pans
Cake ingredients
White frosting
Bowls
A spatula or butter knife
Pastry bags
Decorating tips (104, one small round one, and a large round one—or whatever you choose)
Food coloring (red, yellow, and black)
Skewers or slender candles (we used these candles in white)
White paper
Colored pencils or markers
Tape
Plate or cake platter
We made our animal cake toppers first. We eyeballed the animals in the book to draw them, colored them in, and cut them out imprecisely. We taped one or two to each slender cake candle, and done! This is a great thing to do while your cakes bake. And when you’re ready, mix your food coloring with frosting (it takes a lot of red to make that deeper orange) in three separate bowls (two oranges and one black for face details).
Frost between layers and stack them, then frost the entire surface area. Next, decorate, face first! Frost with orange and add features. Play! Our nose is made from part of that extra small cake we made and set on the face. But you can do it however you like. For the mane, Todd used a 104 petal decorating tip and went around and around with it making a thick squiggly line.
Voila!
You won’t be hungry after eating this cake! And you will be satisfied after reading this book, making this craft, or both.
Huge thanks again to Todd Davis of Davis Handmade (my husband)!
ursa’s light + cookies from kellie at the kaleidoscope
Ursa’s Light (2016) by Deborah Marcero.
This picture book is out this month, coincidentally the same time of year the Ursa Major constellation is most visible in the night sky. And a bear who shines is another way of describing this main character. A gleaming debut all around!
“There were all the bears. And then, there was Ursa.” Ursa is different. Just look at her lying in the green grass, rainbow sweater-adorned. She’s a dreamer. Even on the first spread, she’s already looking at the sky.
Ursa goes big and thinks out of the box with every undertaking. When her focus turns skyward again, she decides she wants to fly! She applies all her other attributes—observing, making, trying—to the dream of flight.
There are many fantastic details in this book. Ursa’s little sibling who serves as sidekick, for example, whose shirt says what’s on big sister’s mind. Ursa’s own spirited outfits. And I love how her name reminds us of the bear constellations, how it brings us immediately to the clouds and stars above.
I also love the illustrations. Aren’t they delightfully engaging? The book alternates from dark spreads to light, spanning all the times of day in beautiful ways. And the texture of the dark bits, including the night sky and the bears own faces has a speckled quality that gets me thinking immediately of stars in the city.
Ursa takes cues from pigeons, dandelion seeds, and bats, all fly-ers. But it’s only when she finds her own medium, her own opportunity, that she truly learns to soar in her own way.
I’ll let you read the book to find out what that is! And as Deborah Marcero reminded me when we talked about this post, there’s always a “feeling of ‘flying’ when you do something that’s totally YOU and you do it well.” That’s it’s own kind of flying as well and sometimes, as in Ursa’s case, it takes some trial and error to get there. Which makes the feat that much sweeter.
I think you’ll want to read Deborah’s blog post about the process of creating the artwork in this book. She has a lot in common with Ursa herself!
Big thanks to Peter Pauper Press for images!
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We are so lucky to have Kellie as crafter in the picture book kitchen today! She’s an artist and book lover I admire. You may already follow her on Instagram, but if not, I highly recommend her delightful feed: The Kaleidoscope. (She made some fantastic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland cookies too!)
Over to Kellie!
With four little boys, reading and snacking go hand in hand. Thanks to Danielle, I am excited to share a fun little project inspired by Ursa’s Light.
Ursa is a unique little bear. I didn’t think my regular bear face cutter would do her justice, so I sketeched a little picture of her onto a heavy card stock paper. After cutting her out, I used this recipe for the cookie dough.
While the dough was setting in the fridge, I decided to make salt dough stars. I used this recipe and a small star cookie cutter. I used a paper straw to make holes in the dough for stringing after. By the time I had finished baking the stars, my cookie dough was ready to roll out.Once you have rolled out your cookie dough, I used a butter knife to cut along the paper shape.
For painting the cookies, I used icing sugar, a splash of milk and the most important part is cream of tarter, which helps it set. I used a paintbrush, just small plastic brushes you can get at any dollar store. The most important part of painting your cookies is waiting for the icing to dry before you add on details. I started with my base coat, in this case it was black and red. Once the icing has set, you can add the eyes, and pink for the ears and nose.
After the stars had cooled, and while I waited for my icing to set, I painted the dried stars with some glow in the dark paint and strung them together with some bakers twine.
We hung them above the bed, and it’s the perfect inspiration for reading and dreaming about how we can dream big like Ursa.
About Kellie:
In University, she studied children’s literature, minored in child development, and went on to complete her fine arts degree. She is fond of picture books and painting. She’s always sharing her love of books in her community and through the online community (where we were lucky enough to meet!).
Thank you, Kellie for these Ursa cookies! I’m in heaven gazing at them!
You may want to check out Kellie’s Frida Kahlo peg doll from last year’s Viva Frida post too!
normal norman + tissue paper collage craft from homemade city
Normal Norman by Tara Lazar, illustrations by S. Britt (2016—out today!).
This is a book about trying to define “normal” by way of science—measurements and observations and interview. And I don’t think I’m giving anything away to say that, well, normal is not so easy to pin down. In fact, there may be no such thing as normal at all.
(click image(s) to enlarge)
The narrator, lab coat on and clip board in hand, proceeds to examine Norman, an orangutan. What I love is that the reader can already tell Norman isn’t normal. I mean, he’s purple and, I adore this detail—he’s wearing glasses. It’s like the reader already knows where this is going and we get to watch as the narrator figures it out.
Norman doesn’t like bananas (he likes pizza). Not normal. He doesn’t make animal noises (he speaks English). Not normal. He doesn’t live in the jungle or sleep in a pile of leaves (he sleeps in a bunk bed). Could that be normal?
The more we find out about Norman, the more he surprises us. And so do his animal friends. And this is when S. Britt’s illustrations start to remind me of Jolly Roger Bradfield‘s wonderful, imaginative books from the 60s! Those spreads match Norman—they’re colorful and offbeat, full of pizazz and unpredictability. A tiger on a motorcycle, a rhino painting a portrait.
The narrator herself abandons her project and makes music and dances and has a rambunctious time with the others.
One last thing I love is how the narrator’s science teacher stands by in many scenes. He appears at first to be the arbiter of the narrator’s performance while her project falls apart. But in the end, it’s as though he’s orchestrated this whole thing. He wasn’t looking for a definition of normal—he was looking for her to illustrate its elusiveness. Its absurdity as a notion at all.
There is no normal. Just look at Norman!
Thanks to Sterling Children’s Books for images!
Reprinted with permission from Normal Norman © 2016 by Tara Lazar, Sterling Children’s Books, an imprint of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Illustrations © 2016 by Stephan Britt.
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I’m so pleased to host Margaret Muirhead of Homemade City as craft-maker extraordinaire!
Margaret loves both picture books and crafts, so mixing the two together sends her over the moon. She is the author of Mabel, One and Only (Dial Books for Young Readers) and a devoted maker of wacky, colorful crafts at Homemade City. By day, you can find her wearing cat glasses and cardigans as the children’s librarian at Hardy Elementary School in Arlington, Mass.
Over to her!
Norman is my kind of guy. A dune-buggy-driving, jet-pack-flying, tiara-toting, out-of-the-box orangutan dude.
Norman’s multi-hued self is decidedly not orangutan normal, but it is fun-loving, just like the big guy. And tissue paper collage seemed the best way to capture Norman’s coat of many colors. Tissue paper collage is also great because it’s very forgiving in less experienced kid hands–you can smudge, rip, and layer exuberantly, and still the results are delicious.
What you need:
Tissue paper in fun colors
Paint brush
White card stock
Stick-on googly eyes
Paper fasteners
Popsicle sticks
Trim the tissue paper into 1″ squares. (We sorted our tissue squares for easy use: purples, blues, and greens in one bowl, yellows and oranges in another.)
Next trace Norman’s orangutan bulk, his adorable eggplant-shape head, and his two longish arms onto card stock. (If that step seems onerous, we traced some basic shapes for you here.)
Brush a layer of Mod Podge onto a small area of your shape and cover with tissue squares. Make sure to overlap squares to create new hues. Seal the squares by brushing another layer of Mod Podge over the top of them. Continue in small areas until you’ve covered the shape.
Give your collage time to dry. Once dried, cut along the outlines of each shape. Adhere the face with glue or Mod Podge and attach the arms with paper fasteners (to give them a little orangutan swing).
Now for the best part: accessorize!
Add goggly eyes, brown specs, a teeny tiara and tutu, or even a dual-rocket jet pack (Norman’s preferred not-normal way to get around). Attach a popsicle stick to the back of your creation to make a puppet. Do not forget to make some friends for Norman: a magenta clarinet-playing hippo, a rollerskating giraffe, a top-hatted snake!
Big thanks to Margaret for contributing this incredible, colorful craft! You can see more photos of tissue-papered Norman and other wonderful stuff over at Homemade City.
Come find me on twitter for a giveaway of the book! (@writesinla)
Check out the other blogs Normal Norman is visiting this month too:
