On the last two Fridays in February 2014, three of us—Kris Sunday, Laura D’Aveta and myself—made our long deferred visits to an after school program to make simple turn up books. Our aim was to answer the question of whether “After more than 300 years from the first known child-made flap book, do children continue to find the simple design appealing?”

During the first visit, we shared and played some simple movable books with flaps, tabs and slots published for young children today. Then I quickly showed them some facsimiles of the historical turn up books I have been discussing in the blog. (I was so nervous with children I rushed too quickly—I would rather be at a conference or with curators!) We emphasized the notion of transformation by moving the flaps up and down, providing the children with a single page of paper with two flaps folded into a single panel. We encouraged them to orient the paper vertically, rather than horizontally, so that the top would lift upward and the bottom flap would lift downward.

The children were delighted with the idea and set about making their panels. To my delight, similar to children in the 17th to 19th centuries, the contemporary children’s drawings mirrored themes and images that are prevalent in their visual and material cultures of their world.  While scholars believe historical children used the existing flap books as models for their own creations, these contemporary children used library books, film and television, and each other to frame both content and style of their work. Themes of pirates, monsters, mermaids, princesses, snowmen, and Star Wars were prominent.

On the second visit, we provided the children with a single sheet of paper that was now configured into a simple, four panel accordion book. The children were reminded of the previous visit by reviewing their single panel drawings. Additionally, the children were shown two examples of texts, one that featured dinosaurs participating in the winter Olympics and another showing forest animals gathering together for a winter party.

The children needed very little instruction and went to work immediately. The content themes from the first week remained constant and the children were excited to explore their ideas in a familiar, but extended, format.

We concluded that our sessions in the afterschool program revealed the timeless and exciting nature of simple flap books. Paper, pencils, and markers offered children from the 21st century an opportunity to explore literacy in similar ways as children who lived centuries before them. It also demonstrated the enduring appeal of the fantastic: mermaids, skeletons, and the unusual configurations that come with simple transformations.

Due to unfortunate events the visits to the school were postponed to the last two Fridays in February (the 21^st and 28). Also by this time Kris had tested out the idea of making turn up books with small children and decided not use the turn up book with partial drawings for the children to complete. Rather she used a piece of paper folded and cut into flaps.

We pre-tested the activity with a little girl who is the daughter of a fellow faculty member loves puppies. Ignoring the theme of winter (snow play) she persevered and made a carefully drawn set of puppies. As seen the transformation in the first panel shows several manifestations of a cat in a cup transforming into a dog playing outside on a summer’s day. The puppies on the other panels have little friends on supports like mushrooms, and balloons. The panorama view shows the party atmosphere.  When all the flaps are open four individual dogs looking directly at the viewer are dancing on two or four legs in the sun and grass and bright toned setting.