Every Picture Tells A Story, Every Story Is A Song
I’ve been working with Tippecaone & Dover schools, which will soon merge to form Parkside School for the Arts & Humanities, to create a picture book about community. For the last five weeks the 686 students have been working with me to write and illustrate the book. So far we don’t have a title, but we’ve been working hard on our collage artwork. Here’s how the project has developed…
1. Students in grades K4-8th grade brainstormed with me to find themes within the idea of community. We needed 22 themes as there are 22 classrooms within the two schools. Each student wrote about that theme that was assigned for their classroom. This writing could be either a narrative story or a poem. Students also drew a picture related to the topic. In addition to the students’ drawings and writing, we used pages from the book that each grade is reading (11 books were selected by the teachers to help students explore the idea of community a bit deeper) and sheet music that the students created with composer, Dr. Mark Mantel.
2. With these materials, tissue paper, and glue, we created unique collage paper. The students brainstormed symbols to represent the theme each classroom is working on. These symbols are then created as a collage artwork and incorporated into the larger collage. The finished 22 collages will be photographed and used as page spreads in the book. The teachers will be working together to create the cover for the book.
3. When the artwork is complete we will work together to compose the story, refining the rhythm, wording, and composition.
4. The final book will be released on June 5, 2014 and an accompanying CD of the music that Dr. Mark Mantel created with the students will be included with the book.
Here are some photos of the work we’ve done. The drawings are storyboards of the page spreads. There will be a tree included in each page spread. The tree helps connect the story and symbolically represents the people and community of the story.
