Extrapolating from my experience growing up, my
children’s experience growing up, I’m going to go out on a limb and say
everyone’s first book is handmade. Who here did not fold a piece of
paper and make a book? How can you complete six years of elementary
school and not make a book?
So everyone’s talking about ebooks
and phone books and Twitter and FaceBook and even print-on-demand and
how no one really
reads anymore. I say bah. People read the backs of
shampoo bottles, they read cereal boxes. People read all day on
computers (whatever the size). They read advertisements and newspapers
and junk mail and the scrolling text at the bottom of CNN. No one’s
going to stop reading. An illiterate in the modern world is a severely
handicapped. What is going to change, what’s already changing, is
publishing.
Used to be you got your different mediums of
communication: phone, fax, letters, books, papers, records, photos,
movies, tv. Some came on paper, some on tape, some on vinyl, some
through the “air.” Now, everything comes the same way: all 111s and
000s. I’ve got one device that fits in my pocket and all that stuff up
above comes to me with the flick of my thumb. What do I need a tv for?
And a book?
I need a book, a physical book, when I’m building a
library on a certain subject. It’s still easier to scan physical books,
and I like to write in mine. I also want a physical book if its concern
is art – I want the big picture. Finally, I want a book if it’s
special, either to me or because it’s one-of-a-kind.
A few days
ago, David Buchan sent me an invitation through
ForeWord’s generic
write-the-editor email to view his handmade and limited edition books.
What the heck? I did. They’re wonderful. Look at this:
I
asked David about himself and he said he’d moved from Chicago to Puerto
Rico in 1999 and he prints the books himself on an old press. “In
Chicago, I worked in theater but found that when I got here that my
Spanish was just not up to the task of doing theater. So, I made
children's books. My first book about a mouse who can only speak in the
language of the cats was an expression of that language change for me.
My Spanish is still pretty so-so, especially compared to my three year
old daughter, who is bilingual by nature, or nurture.”
The
Bilingual ABC Book will charm the pants off any youngster who’s
starting school and realizing, perhaps, that there are two different
ways of saying the same thing. The adult version is wicked funny. See
the whole collection at
http://davebuchen.com. He makes beautiful
calendars as well.
It was Dave who got me
thinking about first books and handmade books. Once I made a flipbook
for my daughter by drawing on the corners of Molly Katzen’s
MooseWood
Cookbook! And I have this friend in Mexico, Ambar Past, who made a
business out of making books. Here are a couple of examples of her
work, the first one being a book of spells, remembered by Mayan women
of Ambar’s acquaintance. Appropriate cover, eh.
And
this is an example of a kind of magazine she used to put out once a
year. The whole thing is silk-screen then glued together as a long
scroll. Magnificent. She’s got a beautiful store if you ever make it as
far south as San Cristóbal de Las Casas, or visit her online at
http://iweb.tntech.edu/cventura/paper.htm.
