Two New Books! -

Our school librarian, who has a contagious love of books, showed me these two books by Brian Selznick. I fell in love with them! I ordered them last week and they came in the mail today, so I have not read them yet.

The books are over 500 pages and are about half illustrations and half text. The illustrations are gorgeous and I am going to incorporate them somehow into an art lesson when I teach shading, crosshatching, and contrast. The middle school art teacher does a lesson involving shaded hands. There are a few great illustrations of hands in the books. Here are some of the images:


Look at how thick they are!

Close-up pencil sketches: one of a textured surface, the other of a human face focusing on the eye and mouth.

Look at the beautiful soft hatching and crosshatching!

A grayscale illustration of people walking near a large, detailed building with arches and staircases.

Gorgeous!

Illustration of a close-up hand holding a fountain pen, writing in a book with intricate patterns in the background.

One of the hands pictures!

A hand holds an open book, displaying an artistic illustration with a large number five.

Hmm.. interesting! I will have to read to see what this is all about!

A hand holds open two books to a page with an illustration of a boy and the titled chapter, "7 The Visit.

About half of the pages are text.

A hand holding open a book, revealing a page with text on the right and an illustration of a hand drawing on the left.

One last example. Aren’t you intrigued for more?

I really love to incorporate and show books to my students. Maybe they will see art as something they can pursue later in life. Maybe they will become interested in reading more books. And hopefully they will see real-life connections!

I sent out those forms for my Halloween crafts class and 27 kids signed up already! So, I decided to split the class into 2 groups in order to not turn anyone away. I am going to teach the class on the next two Tuesdays. Of course I will take pictures and show them to you! If you ever decide to do something like this, make sure you shop ahead for the wreath bases. I found reasonably priced 12″ grapevine wreaths at Walmart and each Walmart I went to had about 7 or so in stock. So, I went to all 3 Walmarts in town and cleaned them out of their wreaths. Then I went to Hobby Lobby and while I cringed at the price (about $5 per wreath) I went to the register and they were on sale for 40% off because they were fall items. So, all in all, not too bad. This was definitely a pricey project after I bought all of the fabric and stuff, but the kids had to pay a fee to cover supplies and these are going to be so AWESOME!