Educational Alternatives Worldwide: How To Make A Book, pt. 2

I'll conclude this Lucknow chapter of my blog with some final praise for the books that our students created. Not their stories this time, but the books themselves: the covers, the pages ... the works of art they made from the materials we'd collected around the city. We worked on bookbinding throughout the writing process so that while some students composed and illustrated stories, others took turns putting their books together. The process involved several steps. First, each child covered two pieces of pre-cut cardboard with cloth s/he had chosen. The cloth was cut and folded - wrapping paper style - and fixed to the cover boards with all-purpose glue (Fevicol is the most common brand in India). Next, the two pieces of cardboard were joined at the spine with bookbinding cloth - again using Fevicol. To create pages, we had pre-sized paper prepared and the kids used embroidery thread and needles to sew the sheets together. Finally, they glued their pages into their covers and the basic books were complete. (If you would like to try this activity with your students and need more detailed instructions, please email me and I'll be happy to work with you.) I discovered that my students grasped the mechanics of the bookbinding process very quickly and that once the first few of them had finished, they became self-appointed instructors for their peers. This left my me and my colleagues free to focus on the revising and editing of stories. When that process was complete, final text and illustrations were copied into finished covers and when that process was finally done ... then we got to everybody's favorite part: the decorations! In India it's easy to find a wonderful assortment of buttons, lace, beads, sequins ... all of the accessories that go with the thriving personal tailoring trade. There's a great store in Lucknow called Button House that carries all these products and we managed to make a deal there for a big bag of assorted end-pieces: the short remnants from the thousands of rolls of fancy trim they stock. The students loved personalizing their covers with our treasures from Button House and it was a great way of finishing up the project. The results speak for themselves. (Click on each picture to see a close-up version.)