A Magic Book: construct, read and play
Alessandra Baretter
Illustrations by Giovanni Frasconi
An editorial project designed to allow any educational publishing house to reach the following strategic objectives:
Each book of the series is dedicated to children and adults who want to discover, build, talk, and play together. A pop-up story to be created, to introduce little ones to the «magical» world of books.
THE KIT
Every kit is composed of 2 booklets:
The Magic Book
Each book tells the protagonists’ adventurous journey. The story is divided into 7 episodes, which correspond to the days of the week, during which Riccio and Dolphin get to know many new friends who become playmates.
Before each episode of the story, there are two preparation/construction pages, containing instructions, objectives and specific advice for the creation of the Magic Book.
Instructions for constructing the Magic Book
In addition to instructions for creating the pop-up Magic Book, the booklets contain an introduction to the characteristics of the proposed activities, 10 helpful tips for the adult, and 60 figures for the child to cut out, fold, and glue.
Moreover, there are 4 adhesive velcro strips included in each kit, to be used for positioning the cut-out characters when they moved along the story.
HOW TO BUILD AND USE THE MAGIC BOOK
Each episode of the Magic Book is structured in 2 parts.
PART 1
The first part consists of 2 preparation/construction pages about the story and the games that can be played:
PART 2
The second part consists of two pages dedicated to the episode, where the figures which were previously cut out according to the instructions, are to be glued.
Once the preparation/construction phase is complete, the pages can be glued together. In this way the instruction pages will disappear, making the remaining story pages of the book more rigid and suitable for supporting the figures that will later be animated. At the end of the seven days of activities, the Magic Book will only be made of the pages dedicated to each episode, and characterized by elements of the narrative setting which can be raised and lowered, along with a series of characters to move around.
At this point, the adult can read the story. After that, adults can tickle children’s attention by reading the riddles written on the back of some figures.
Once the book is finished, the story can be told in reverse. By retracing the adventure of Riccio backwards, the child will have the opportunity to imagine “what happened in the meantime?” and in turn will be able to invent another story, freely reusing and processing the information learned.
THE OBJECTIVES
Through the construction and reading of the pop-up Magic Book, children can learn:
AUDIENCE
Each kit is aimed primarily at parents of children in pre-school (3-6 years), but it can serve as a valuable tool for teachers, professionals and educators. The contents of the Magic Book can also be a useful support for children with difficulties in language development and, in particular, it has been proven to be effective for children with stuttering.
Leaf through some pages of each Magic Book that have been translated in English to facilitate your evaluation.
More translated pages are available under request.
7 days with Riccio – Find out more!
7 days with Dolphin – Find out more!
THE AUTHOR
Alessandra Baretter is a speech therapist and has been dealing with children with language difficulties for several years now. She has taught at the University of Padua and at the Scuola Superiore di Sanità in Bolzano, she has participated as a speaker in numerous courses and conferences throughout Italy and is the co-author of many articles and books.