Zablocki students create handmade books

Art lives here, there, and everywhere at Zablocki Elementary School, 1016 W. Oklahoma Ave. If you walk through the clean bright halls with shiny floors you will see student art wherever you look-on bulletin boards or hanging from the ceiling or walls.

A recent bulletin board exhibit entitled “No ‘Lion’, It’s March” featured round-faced lions made from looped yellow sticky tape. Down another hallway, dozens of handmade kites hung from the ceiling-perhaps more hopeful harbingers of spring. Colorful handmade quilts made collectively by the students hung in the stairwell.

But the real buzz this winter and early spring was occurring quietly inside the classrooms and was not on display yet.

Students have been busy making books under the direction of Robin Kinney, Milwaukee book artist and co-owner of Bay View Book Arts Gallery. With a grant from Arts @ Large, a local arts education organization, Zablocki hired Kinney as a part-time resident last November to teach bookmaking. Kinney, who visited Zablocki two or three days a week since then, said the grant provided funding for bookmaking instruction for K-4 through fifth grade for over 90 percent of the students in the school. Almost everyone at Zablocki-student and teacher alike-has been touched by the bookmaking. 

What is Bookmaking?

Bookmaking stretches the concept of book to include many types of “books” and defines a book as a work of art in and of itself.

For instance, second graders each made a “career book.” They used a colored file folder to hold their handmade “resumes,” in which they articulated their adult career ambitions. The students envisioned themselves in many different careers including Humane Society worker, dental assistant, basketball player, swim teacher, veterinarian, bull rider, tap dancer, college student in Mexico, and soldier. The second graders then created a “business card” in which they drew a picture of themselves in their chosen career. The business card was housed in a plastic pouch inside the front leaf of their personalized career portfolio.

Zablocki Arts @ Large coordinator Pam Kacala said bookmaking builds self-confidence. She said that the process of bookmaking encourages students to realize how competent they are, improves writing and organizational skills, and enhances cognitive development. “It is very fun and interesting to watch their creativity come out,” she said. “Each child’s personality comes through.”

The bookmaking program, an extracurricular art component touching on subjects from math and reading to social studies and science, has been “hectic, but wonderful,” Kacala said. “Some kids were resistant at first but they have taken ownership of the books and they are very proud of them.”

Kinney said that children who may be reluctant to write have less of a problem when they are writing in their own book. “That is a testimony to the power of handmade books,” Kinney said. “They fill the book with the power of their own point of view.”

Third graders made “flag books,” creating pages by carefully folding a long strip of paper into accordion folds with rows of flags attached to the sides of the folds. They collected old newspapers, magazines, and wrappings from which they cut out favorite images, then used the cut-out recycled images in collage arrangements to illustrate the books. They also learned how to sew a thread into books with multiple pages to create a simple binding.

The third grade children displayed their books with a shy pride while explaining the imagery used and how they made them. Ciara Fritsch said her book contained memories of childhood. Qari Carrasquillo, who used stickers to make his book, said that his cousin gave him the stickers and helped him create the book at home. Dominic Hamilton found pictures of flags from different countries for his flag book and said that he would like to make more books.

Another book project involved a buddy system which partnered first graders with third graders, who made ABC books called ABCedariums together. These books created a narrative using the letters of the alphabet as prompts for the first letter of the illustrated image.

“The level of inventiveness in both third and first grade classes blew me away,” Kinney said. “The idea was not just to make a blank book and fill it up with whatever but [for the students] to really think about what they are doing and learn how to make a finished book. There is a great advantage in teaching someone how something is built.”

First graders made what is known as a “four-room book.” They were instructed on how to fold paper to create four distinct sections or rooms. The theme for these books was Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday celebrated in Mexico and by Latinos, and others, living in the United States and Canada. The celebration takes place from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, in connection with the Catholic holidays of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. The holiday commemorates friends and family members who have died.

One of the rooms in the four-room Dia de los Muertos book was an altar room for foods, flowers, and other pretty things made as offerings. Another room featured an image of a skeleton, which the children decorated as they wished. In another room, they wrote about their experience going to the Dia de los Muertos exhibit at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts. Kinney worked with the first graders, helping them with spelling in their narratives about the art show. Some children memorialized deceased people or animals they had loved.

After doing their Dia de los Muertos books, the first grade teachers gave the students blank bound books, which the students then covered and illustrated. The students hand-wrote narratives to accompany the illustrations, which their teachers typed out for them; the students then pasted the printed text onto the appropriate pages of illustration.

Kelly Shannon, a first grade teacher, said students enjoyed creating the books, and some even wrote several books in a series featuring different adventures of the same character. The books are kept in a box in the classroom. Shannon said the students particularly enjoy reading each other’s books during their reading time.

Freedom to Create

“Bookmaking allows for happy accidents. You can’t make a mistake,” Kinney said. “The students start worrying about, ‘Is this perfect?’ or ‘Is this right?’ I tell them that the answer to any question in bookmaking is ‘yes.’”

An answer like that prompts some students to ask questions like, “‘Is it okay if I put my book in the garbage?’ ‘Can I make this whole page black?’ What that really means is, ‘Is it okay if I put this picture here?’ They very quickly get it. They understand that it’s not okay to rip your friend’s book in half. But it is okay to go a little off from where we started,” Kinney said.

Fifth graders worked with the librarian creating four-room books. One room was devoted to Melvil Dewey, the creator of the Dewey Decimal System, and recreated his study. Another room listed all of the numerical categories for the numbering system. In yet another room, students were asked to recreate their favorite book.

Fifth graders and one third grade class made comic books. Kinney said they developed their own superhero character and wrote his or her biography. Fourth graders made hand-sewn Wisconsin history books.

“The creativity and individuality that students are using to create their own [books] … is amazing,” said Patricia Walia, Zablocki’s principal. “It’s a creative outlet they did not have before, since we didn’t make those kinds of books. Typically you made the little books, put on covers, stapled the pages together, and that was the end of it. These are just totally way beyond anything like that.”

Walia said the children seemed to thoroughly enjoy the bookmaking. “‘Can we doit? Can we do it? Robin’s here.’ They get all excited when she comes. The teachers are learning the skills along with the children,” Walia said. “It’s been a  phenomenal program.”

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