A paper sentence?

Amazing paper cutting artist  Aoyama Hino uses only tiny scissors to make these amazing and wonderful creations!  I can’t imagine having to cut out each little part but her work is beautiful and I wish I had the patience to do it.

On her site, Aoyama Hino says

“They are super fine lacy-paper-cuttings done by a simple pair of scissors.
My passion is to create a finest cutoff beyond the level of the very time-consuming needle lace making.

I don’t follow traditional but I am trying to create a mixture of the traditional and modern styles and to produce my own world through this super fine lacy-paper-cuttings technique.”

This particular photo is from her collection called “Sentences” which you can find on her Flickr page.

Wonderful!

Crayons, anyone?

I am constantly working with art supplies when preparing for storytime and although I more often use markers, once in a while, crayons are called for.  I came across this creative artist who uses crayons in a very different way to make his art.

Christian Faur actually uses the crayons themselves to make gorgeous pictures that look like you can just see the pixels in the photo.  But they are made with crayons and viewed from the top.

Can you imagine having to place each of these crayons? I’m not sure I’d have the patience.

What’s on your bulletin board?

One of the most creative things that I get to do as the children’s librarian is to create the bulletin boards for each new season in the children’s area of the library. I always have fun preparing  something new to put up and although sometimes they get the better of me, I usually learn something about design in the process.

These are just a few of the ideas that I’ve created in the past year or so.  Right now, we have the Clifford/Scaredy Squirrel/Grumpy Bird board up trying to bring in Spring (although Judi says I am jinxing us into a longer winter that way).  I always try to use color and shape or texture to draw in our readers, and most of the time, there is a 3D element involved.

What would you put on a bulletin board to get a child’s attention?

Is there more to the story?

Courtesy of Judy Halpern and the Magic Suitcase Online Bookstore

I attended a great session at the Superconference 2009 that really opened my eyes, and I thought it might just be a very simple session about picture books.  Judy Halpern, an instructor at the University of Western Ontario did the session called “Visual Literacy in Picture Books” and she began by telling us that she teaches young education students how to teach science….using picture books!  It was certainly something that I hadn’t imagined and  I sat in rapt attention through the hour learning about the art in picture books and how it enhances the stories.  Her focus during the workshop was to show us that there is much more going on in books than just the simple story, and that often, the illustrations are extremely important in moving the tale along as well as teaching us something.

One of the great examples she uses is a book called Wolves by Emily Gravett. The book itself, if you were only reading the story, is just a simple piece of non-fiction really, telling us all about the lifestyle and habitat of wolves.  Halpern brought the book to life though, by showing us how the illustrations can change what you hear.  The book is witty and fun and tells the story through the eyes of a rabbit who is trying to learn about wolves.  Eventually, the wolf jumps right off the page and becomes part of the story, but it takes an imagination to really do this with such simple text. Her website is fun and gives you a sneak peek into her books, so drop by and see what she is doing.

The entire workshop was very enjoyable and I came up with a ton of book references and ideas that should not only push my storytimes along, but might change how I read books in general.  It also made me look twice at an author and illustrator that I have recently been enjoying very much, only to find that he pushes his stories along with illustrations that are filled with important images.  These books are SO much more than just simple picture books.

The books by author Rob Scotton are wonderful and creative!  This week during our Valentine’s Day storytime, we’ll be reading “Love, Splat”, a charming little book about a cat who loves a sweet little kitten.

Scotton’s story is simple and sweet, and even a bit melancholy and without looking at his adorable artwork, you might even find it sad.  However, one look at the way he uses illustrations to move the story along and tell you things you might not otherwise know, the story becomes funny and silly and not a bit maudlin. If you go to the HarperCollins website, you can actually read the book by going to the tab that says “browse”.  Take a look at the way the tails on the cat and the mouse indicate mood, how Scotton uses grey, and white images through most of the book, popping in bright red for anything about love and how the main character Splat is really the only black cat in the book (his father is black, but we only see his paws and legs briefly).  Does this mean Splat is different than all the other cats?  Can children relate to this as well?

Artwork is so important in pictures books to keep the child interested in the story, but also to say things that might not be said in the text.  This is true not only in books, but in cartoons in general.  Think about this the next time you watch an episode of the Simpsons, for example.  Can you learn anything about the characters  through the images alone? Visual literacy is another key to helping children learn to read although it is often overlooked. I used to think that something funny in the artwork was just a way for illustrators or authors to have a story appeal to adults while they are reading to their children, but it is so much more than that.

Thanks, Ms. Halpern for some great insight!

I learned something today

Each session at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference 2009 was geared toward different groups.  There were three sessions each day and about 30 sessions in each time slot that you could attend.  You can imagine how difficult this would make it to choose what to attend.  Of course, some sessions were clearly not for everyone, but there were always many that sounded interesting and it was difficult to choose which one to attend.  As I just completed my first year as a children’s librarian, I thought that I might be slightly intimidated by the speakers and their ideas, but I was pleasantly surprised. I found each session had a few ideas that I could use and many of the sessions were really thought provoking.

The first session that I attended was called ” TD Summer Reading Club : Reaching Out to Children in Your Community” and it was led by Children & Youth advocate Ken Setterington.  The session was to help libraries promote the summer reading club in our communities with thoughts and suggestions from librarians at the Toronto Public Library and Ottawa Public Library.  They began by telling us about the upcoming summer program which has a theme this year of detectives and will be called “Secret Agent 009″.  After last summer’s difficult theme of “Laugh Out Loud”, I know that more than one of us attending this session were happy with the new theme.  You can find out more information about last year’s theme on the TD Summer Reading Program website.  The 2009 program will not be available until a little later this spring, so check back.

I found this session to be somewhat disappointing, although I didn’t realize it until after I had attended other sessions.  The speakers were good and the ideas that they gave us were useful in some ways, but there weren’t really a lot of new ideas to help us get into the community better with our reading program.  The statistics they gave about last year’s program stated that almost half a million children participated in the reading program, which is amazing!  Our numbers were definitely up as well and we hope to attract even more readers this year.

One interesting thing that came up was the idea of the TD Summer Reading website for kids.  We often get emails telling us about the website and how we as librarians can access it to find out information regarding the program, but they never really stressed the fact that the children’s side of the site was going to be so exciting! (And it wasn’t just me who didn’t know about this.  Other librarians who attended the session were also surprised.)  I guess the fact that the librarian portion of the site is so technical, we just assumed that the site for kids would have limited interest and so it was not something any of us really looked at.  This year, however, I will make sure that our kids know about it!  So, at least I gained an idea or two from this session.

On the way out of the conference center, there is a great sculpture of two giant woodpeckers  which intrigued all of us as we rode the escalators.

I found out a bit more about these birds on the City of Toronto Art Walk : Toronto’s Outdoor Art Gallery’s site.

Woodpecker Column
Fastwürms, 1997

Dominating the south entrance to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre is Woodpecker Column by artists Dai Skuse and Kim Kozzi working collaboratively under the name Fastwürms. This 30-metre tall column rises from the concrete in unexpectedly stark but delightful contrast to the geometric regularity of the building, appearing to be pecked by a pileated woodpecker and yellow-bellied sapsucker. References to nature frequently occur in the art of Fastwürms and in this case it is specific to the site’s history as a swamp where waterlogged and decaying trees would have attracted indigenous woodpeckers.”

More to come on the conference later….

Models made out of books

Artwork on the front of old books can be imagined in new ways as artist Thomas Allen shows us.  He takes vintage westerns and romances and carefully cuts, pastes and props books together in new ways to produce some amazing images!

You can see more of his work right here. Some of the images are a little risque so it is not for all eyes, but he is very creative. You can also read more about this artist at this website for the Foley Gallery.