Making books and the adorable childrens book, "Marcel the Shell"

 These are a few pages out of a collaborative book one of the first grade classes made together. The books are the end to a series of classes that used several skills and began with our intense insect drawings. After four weeks of drawing, cutting and layering- I brought in the book "Marcel the Shell". I'm COMPLETELY obsessed with "Marcel the Shell"!! The illustrations (paintings) and concept are precious! Here is a glimpse at a few of the pages.....

 

They offer a super adorable  audio book download so I burned it and "read" along with it in class. Marcel is a tiny shell with one eye and over sized shoes. He makes his home in a human"s house and encounters every day objects with a quite different point of view than us humans. 

As a class we discussed what it would be like to be super small in our world. Then each student chose an insect and came up with a way to personify it. Each class had to agree on a setting, this class chose a tree house ;). Each child illustrated a page with their personified insect encountering life in a tree house in a humorous or frightening way. It was great to see how richly detailed the pages became. This class was hysterical- they spent quite a bit of time discussing what tree houses would be "girls only" or "boys only", I was pretty tickled by the conversations! 

Binding the books has been quite time consuming but I'm slowly getting them done. I'll post how those looks when I finish them!