Category Archives: Book About A Book

The Scarlet Letter – What & Why

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WHAT?

For our book about a book project, we have decided to create 8 journals or reflections of Hester Prynne. The journal is intended to look like something Hester has created. In terms of material and visual display for our book, we’ve come about with the idea of creating a book that seems timeless/old, maybe torn and very used. The material for our pages inside the book will consist of a simple brown paper. My group members and I will enhance the worn out look of it. Also, on the top right corner of each page, our group thought about having a small but visible imprint of the letter “A”. We were thinking, for textual purposes, like how a letter was stamped with wax, we can find something similar to represent the “A”.

We took a slightly different approach for the cover, but with the same vintage feeling. We were thinking, if possible, our cover will be made out of a soft wood, maybe chipboard. But, we would probably use more than one piece for thickness. Also, the binding of our book will be somewhat sewn together out of fabric. The design of the cover will have a large imprint of the letter “A”, also inspired by the paper haptic experience.

WHY?

Being that the narrator of the book itself tells this story based on a manuscript he finds in a customhouse, our group felt it would be appropriate to make a physical book. Since our ‘book about a book’ will be from the perspective of Hester, we are going to make it with specific materials that reflect Hester’s character. As Hester was isolated to the outskirts of the town as close to the woods as one could be, we decided to make the book out of natural-looking materials. The idea being that Hester created this journal herself out of materials she found and made use of around her house. Our group is making the pages look worn being that this will be a book that will have been made during a time of Puritan settlements. The materials we use to make the book will reflect Hester’s individuality such as the binding of the book being sewn, as that was something Hester was known around the town for.

By creating a book about a book in the form of a journal, we hope to make the readers of our book look at the story in a new light. It was originally written by a narrator in the third person, but our book will be from the perspective of a specific character. After I attended the book series panels, I realized the important of the haptic experience of paper. This influenced my group and I to make sure there is a physical component and experience for the reader. Making the paper look and feel worn and marked reflects Hester as an individual as she has been marked with the letter ‘A’ and been through difficult times herself. By stamping the letter ‘A’ onto the paper with a material that sticks out from the paper and can be felt, we hope to highlight the letter Hester had to wear that stood out from everything she wore. We plan to use the materials mentioned above as well as more that we think of in the future to reflect the personality and experiences of the character we are making our ‘book’ from the perspective of.

The Little Prince

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The What

Our group is planning on purchasing a set of 10 small journals for this project, to use as our starting point. We will be purchasing the journals rather than making them ourselves to represent the pilot’s connection to the society surrounding him, beyond the reaches of the desert in which he finds himself. The journal cover will appear simple, and be smaller than the size of a normal sheet of paper. This size and appearance is to ensure that it appears realistic as to what the pilot may have on his person while stuck in the desert, in order to record the events of his days. Although we are looking at a few different options for the journals, we are currently leaning towards one that features a brown, sandy looking cover, to give the journal the look of blending into the sand of the desert.

We will decorate the journal to appear as though it has been used as the pilot’s actual daily diary while stuck in the desert, including some visible “wear and tear.” We are not positive how we will do this yet but this may involve something along the lines of using tea bags to make the edges of the pages look worn.  At the top of each page, we plan to organize it as a journal entry being that we will have “Day 1, Day 2, etc.” as the headings. We will then go on to incorporate the necessary information for the project into those “entries” although we have not yet decided if we will organize our information from the perspective of the pilot or otherwise. Another option we are considering is adding certain journal entries which feature the pilot contemplating the existence of the prince, as it was a large uncertainty to us when reading the book ourselves. In this way we can challenge the existence of the prince from the perspective of the pilot’s experiences, and in doing so address part of the reason as to why we see the book as being great.

The Why

We want to use a physical book in this way to connect the story as much as possible to the actual events that took place in the pilot’s life. In reality if the story were to have actually happened and the pilot had wanted to record it, he would have done so on whatever he had with him. For most taking part in such travels as he was, this could very likely be a small journal in which he keeps track of what happens every day during his time away from home. In this way, we can bring our own description and interpretation of the key elements into the form that most accurately represents his experiences.

Much of this interpretation also came from one of the field trips which I attended, at the Grolier Club. In this exhibition I witnessed a variety of different paper forms which featured different engravings. What was noteworthy about this samples on display was that the engravings were simply added to regular paper after they were completed, without using paper that has meaning such as what I learned many did from the panels at the Center for Book Arts. In addition, the engravings often had personal meaning to the artist, and not even the people for whom the engravings were being done. This relates to our own project because we will be taking already made paper, and adding something to it such as the “wear and tear” as earlier explained. In addition, the features of the book such as its sandy color and the worn appearance we will attempt to create, will relate to a personal meaning the narrator of the story may feel and not necessarily its readers. The sandy cover can remind the pilot of the desert while not impacting readers in any way. Although final details of our physical book are not yet set in stone, we plan to follow this description as closely as possible to give our book the greatest possible accuracy as it relates to the original story.

American Born Chinese – The What & Why

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Group American Born Chinese – Samantha Chong, Sarana Mohammed, Hnin Aye, Caleb Orange

Our group has decided to create a physical book for this project. It is going to be a graphic novel just like American Born Chinese. We are not going to draw the graphics like the graphic narrative exercise we did in class. Instead, we are going to create the book using Adobe programs. After all the content is finished, it is going to be printed out on tabloid size paper. A tabloid size is 11in. X 17in., and it is going to be folded in half so the final product will be 5.5in x 8.5in. After we fold it, it will be hand bounded like how Professor Allison taught us at the book making event. The reason why we decided on utilizing Adobe programs to create our book is for consistency. It would help us manipulate presets on the program rather than drawing over and over again. Additionally, it’s also best for when we print and create the actual book as each copy will be almost be exactly the same. By creating a graphic novel, we hope to pay tribute to the original creator by adding in our own ideas and to keep a consistent theme. Graphic novel also makes it more engaging for readers because it displays facial expressions and other visuals. Since we are focusing on creating a graphic novel, we will print it in color to further reinforce our story. The reason why we wanted to hand bound like how Professor taught us at the book making event is because two of our group members, Sarana and Hnin, were able to make it to the event. Thus, they would teach us what they learnt; we think it will be unique skill to have. Lastly, we will try to incorporate colors such as red, green, and yellow in our cover. According to an online source, these colors are symbolic colors for Chinese culture. Red symbolises joy and good fortune whereas green represents health, prosperity, and harmony. Lastly, yellow is the color of heros. Since American Born Chinese included a heroic character, a Chinese character, and each character finding happiness, we thought it’d be best to emphasize the title or images on our cover with these colors.

What and why? The Beloved group

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THE WHAT

Our group has decided to create a physical book for the classroom presentation of Beloved. We all agreed that a physical book could help us create the feelings needed in order to understand the background of each character. Our book will be average size, thinking about 4 x 5 inch paper, few pages long. The cover page is still in the works but the context will (more or less) go as follows:

  1. Why is this text great? – a description of our opinions and experience reading the book; light colors and standard text to be aesthetically pleasing to the reader.
  2. History of the book – a detailed description of how the book and material came together. How and why the book gained popularity; using paper with old texture and style to stimulate history and the time the book was written (after the civil war)
  3. How has this work been persevered over time? – connecting to the reasoning of “why is this text great?” we can use the context in why we and how we think this book has been persevered. How we plan to do that? – create a page for the characters we feel had the most impact and influence in the text; each page will be personalized to each character’s personality and characteristics. We’ll include a strong quote that stood out to us and why we chose that character.
  4. Close reading analysis – using our papers, we’ll combine our analysis and create unique pages for each; to describe the close reading quote or phrase chosen, we’ll use colors, attach certain textures and use specific font types as well.
  5. How does this work connect with the authors other works? – There are a number of works by Toni Morrison in which we can compare Beloved An obvious comparison we can make is the consistent cover pages and fonts she uses for her books. She also has many novels written in the same time period as Beloved which we can compare.
  6. Creative Response – we are either going to create a graphic adaptation or a poem
  7. How does a text become great? – As a group, we will discuss and put together our own opinions on how a text can become great. We will give each other our own page to describe what we believe is great and then compare our opinions.
  8. Bibliography – same text used in “why is this text great?” to keep the appeal.

 

THE WHY

The reason our group chose to do a physical book is because of the event at the Center for Books Art called “History of Art Series, Panel 3: Paper as Haptic Experience.” The event described many different books that used creative paper and textures to make the reader really feel what was happening. Beloved is a book filled with strong emotional moments where we feel that can only fully be portrayed through color and texture.

The book goes back and forth from the present and the past. The character Beloved represents the past as well. In order to reflect that in our book, we will be using paper that appears to be older mixed together with paper that is newer. We have not completely agreed on a cover page, but Toni Morrison has a collection of books with the same font as Beloved on the cover. We think using that same font will be a good comparison for us to use later on in our book.

In the third section (listed in the what) we want to create pages for the characters and moments we feel were the strongest and that made the book great. With this, we want to use colors, textures, fonts, and more to give a better feeling of the moment and/or the character’s background. An example of this would be when Sethe chooses to try and murder her children rather than letting school teacher take them. Although we can put that moment into words, a page with red to represent blood, rips to represent the beatings she took during slavery, and wet spots for tears (from the pain she’s haunted by), is more powerful than words.

For the close reading, we are going to put our papers together and pick two or three of the strongest quotes or phrases to further elaborate on. Each close reading will have its own page with a unique background to fit the feelings portrayed in the text. In the seventh section (listed in the what) we also will be putting our thoughts together and give each other our own page to describe what we believe is great. We think this is an effective way to actually come to a definition, because “what is great” is subjective. At the end, we will put together a page with our similar opinions with the conclusion of what we think makes a work great.

BOOK-ABOUT-A-BOOK PROJECT, CHECK IN #1: Due 4/24/17 @ 9am

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By 9:00 am, Monday, April 24th  one person from your group should post a description of what your group plans to do for the book project.  Remember to check all relevant category boxes. If your group is a little undecided, you may propose two descriptions (but no more than two).   Each description should include a WHAT and a WHY. 

THE WHAT is a detailed description of the book (e.g. Making hand bound books from wasted copy paper from expired campus flyers.  OR Launching a digital children’s book. OR Choreographing a living book where various students dressed in the words of various pages of the book walk around individually and come together.  OR anything else.)  You should be as detailed as possible about the WHAT.  Don’t just say you’re going to make a physical book or do a performance.   Explain the nature of the physical book (size, material, etc.).  Detail the vision of the performance (Improvisation? Scripted, Lyrical, Dance? Musical?  Three acts? A one person show?  A Musical? And so much more.)  Your description should be 2-3 paragraphs.

THE WHY is where you reflect on how your WHAT satisfies the requirements of the assignment (please see the assignment description).  You should explain why you chose the form you chose, and while your explanation might be partly out of personal interest in that form, you need to articulate a rationale that relates that form/medium to the content of your book.  How does the form of your particular book speak to the themes/questions/claims you want to highlight in your book?  Your WHY should at least be 2-3 substantive and informative sentences, but if you want to write more, you are welcomed to do so.

I gave a quick example in class using The Scarlet Letter, but here is another detailed example:  Maybe my group is doing the physical book made out of recycled campus flyers.

Maybe we came to the idea partly because we were just joking around and partly because half our group is passionate about making Baruch more green and the other half just thought the idea was cool.  That’s a fine way to come to the idea (the logistical details of  which we will spell out in the WHAT), but then in order to produce a strong WHY, we had to do the WORK of considering how a book made out of expired campus ads might speak to the ideas/themes at play in our novel Beloved?  At first it was tough, but then we thought of two things, one that the main character was a fugitive slave, and so there’s something in the print ad that resonates with the danger of escape and hunt.  But also the ads we are using are expired, which signifies a passing of the terror, but then by recycling them, we both honor the end of that present life of the ads while acknowledging that something of them lives on.

This WHY might be enough right here for the Monday check-in, but since the purpose of the check-in is to get the ball rolling, our group can go go further by 1) limiting the type of expired ads you used, so if you only used ads that seemed to ask students to market or sell themselves or conform themselves to the needs of institutions, well then you can now make your form in even better conversation with the content because just as the form speaks to the content (the ads for runaway slaves) the content of Beloved and the use of the ads in this way gives new life to the content of the ads, making us think about the content of those expired ads in a new light.

Jin and Suzy’s Hidden Secret

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I chose to illustrate an instance in which Jin and Suzy become friends outside the school despite rumors about their arranged marriage. One day, Suzy stops by 490 Bakery Cafe, the bakery where Jin and Wei-Chen reunites at the end of the story, since she was hungry after school. As Jin is a regular customer at the cafe, he offers a recommendation. From then on, they became close and the cafe was their usual place to hangout together after school. In the second panel, however, Suzy is paranoid by the constant rumors in class and thus, decides to stop seeing each other. Finally, in the last panel, they’re both seen during lunch time at school. Although they want to hang out together like old times, they sadly continue avoiding each other.

I decided to make the last panel the largest among the rest to bring the main focus to how these two children suffer as a consequence of others being stereotypical about their race. I kept the background blend in contrast with some objects such as the tree, grass, school, and so on sketched or colored in order to convey that while they are surrounded by such a bright and happy environment, it feels empty for them inside. It was the same feeling portrayed when they didn’t know each other yet in the first panel. The second panel, however, is filled with a dark blue and black background to indicate the sadness and gloomy dark day had arrived.

The reason why I decided to add this scene is because I was really interested in how their friendship would be like if they were to unexpectedly meet elsewhere. As an elementary child, they are both confused as to whether they should ignore or try to fit in with the rest. In the end, they decide to part since they are unable to stand up for themselves among the majority.

Jin’s Transformation

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In this graphic narrative assignment, I chose to add on to the ending of American Born Chinese. After Jin reconciles with Wei-Chen, Jin unexpectedly bumps into Amelia on the streets. In the first panel of my illustrations, Amelia was surprise to see Jin because it has been so long since they last saw each other. Jin is blushing because he was also surprised to see his first love. In the second panel, Amelia tells Jin that they should catch up with everything. Jin was brave enough to ask she was free to catch up right now instead. In the last panel, it shows Amelia and Jin talking in the bubble tea shop.

I decided to have the first panel the largest because I think that’s the most important scene in my illustration. That’s when Jin and Amelia first encounter, after everything that had happened in their past. Instead of having a blue sky, I made it pink. I want to display the heart thumping atmosphere when Jin sees his first love. And in the last panel, I used the color red because I want it to convey that a love interested is going to spark.

The reason why I decided to add this scene to the ending is because I wanted to show how much Jin has changed. He is now able to finally accept who he is. Jin comes to terms with his Chinese heritage and no longer feels the need to assimilate within the majority. He missed out on his opportunity with for Amelia back then, and he won’t do it again. He will pursue those feelings for her and will not back down because someone told him to. Jin is making the most out of his encounter with Amelia.

Graphic Narrative Assignment Due 4/12 (Plus Examples from Past Students)

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Hey Everyone.

Remember your graphic narratives are due, Wednesday April 12th by 5 pm.  Your narrative should add or revise some aspect of your final project book. Think about it like fan fiction.  You can add a deleted scene, or a piece of back story, or a memory, or add a minor character, or change an ending, etc.  Just make sure you have some reason for your choice and some main objective that you hope to accomplish by way of the choices you make for this revision.

Please upload your picture as a compressed, jpeg file to the site.  Remember to check all appropriate category boxes.  If you feel extremely shy about your graphic narrative, you may email it directly to me.  Please know that being a perfect or super-skilled artist isn’t necessary.   What I’m looking for is thoughtfulness about all your choices from  panel size and layout, to color, to inking, and dialogue.  I am also looking to see that the product looks complete and finished.  While it’s not required that you ink, inking does help give the graphic a sense of completion, so you should consider inking, or at least inking the panel frames.

Don’t be afraid to do more than one draft!

Click Here: We Monsters to see examples of students’ finished graphic narratives.   Please note in the past the graphic narrative workshop was part of my Young Adult Literature course (ENG 3045) and not Great Works, so their assignment was different.  Instead of creating a graphic related to their final project book, their assignment was to make a graphic that engaged the ideas of adolescence and monstrosity.    All the same, I hope these examples  give you a sense of the range of possibilities.

 

Graphic Novel Wkshp. – Bring Three Panel Graphic Strip Idea

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For next Wednesday you should come to class with an idea of what you want to represent in your three panel graphic.   Think about a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.  Having a beginning, middle, and end doesn’t necessarily mean you  have to squish a novel’s worth of action into three panel.  You can think about a scene or a moment.

Your moment, scene, panel should in some way engage the book which  your group is working on for the final book project. Think about the assignment as fan fiction in a a graphic art form.   So, for example, you might revise a scene in your primary text, or maybe you add an additional scene, or change the end or beginning.  Or perhaps your panel is something like a prequel, or the beginning of a spin off.  You can also insert  other characters from other stories, from  history, or your own life into the story.

While I hope you find the experience fun, you should also keep in mind how revision and adding and mixing can actually be a powerful way to make a point about  what a text is doing or about it’s limitations and possibilities.   Remember how in ABC the image of Chin-kee is a visual allusion and revision of the 1882 political cartoon in a way that calls forth so as to challenge and put pressure on the racist imagination at work in that image and how that racism persists even into the 20th and 21st century imagination of the Chinese/Asian other.  You might consider how your own graphic illustrations might engage something in the book you’re focusing on in such a way that helps make an argument or emphasize your interpretation of a key part of the novel.   Your group might decide to use some of the graphic illustrations in the final project.

Book About a Book Group Assignments

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Below are the group assignments for the final “book about a book” project.  Because we only had one person on the Kafka, I cut that text. If your name is in bold, it’s because you were previously in the Kafka group or absent last Wednesday, so I have just assigned you a text.  Please let me know if you have serious reservations about the text to which you’ve been assigned.

BOOK ABOUT A BOOK GROUPS

Scarlet Letter:  CJ, Ruwani, Alisha, Domonique

Notes from Underground:  Mark, Jia, Media, Shannon

Quicksand and Passing:  Sanam, Gudman, Andrea, Ishaana

Little Prince:  Katherine, Tom, Jasmine, Jamaul

Beloved: Abby, Danay, Jelandi, Mamady

American Born Chinese:  Caleb, Hnin, Samantha, Sarana