How To Make The Books

What you need: White A4 paper, scissors, some cardboard, glue, and pencil crayons or small stickers to decorate the covers.

You can either write the text yourself on the computer, or just copy it from somewhere. There are whole books to be found on the internet, which you can copy and paste onto a writing programme, or you could make your own books by, for example, writing up your favourite poems or making up stories for a miniature story book. You need a computer programme where you can move the text around and see what the page will look like when printed out. Choose a small font and divide the page into columns. Divide the text into "pages" of a chosen length by leaving a blank line at specific intervals. Arrange the "pages" in this order:

Sheet 1

Sheet 2

The left and right margins need to be the same width so that the "pages" on either side of the sheet will match. Print out the two sheets on the two sides of an A4 paper. Now cut up the sheet so that on each side of every piece there are two pages; for example pages 1 and 4 will be on one side of a piece and pages 2 and 3 on the other side. You may want to use a ruler and a pencil to mark the cutting lines and make sure the pieces will be the same size. Now fold each piece so that the pages are in the right order and arrange the pieces to form the book. Measure the thickness of the book and then make the cover. Cut a piece of cardboard, height the same as the height of a page, width twice the width of a page plus the thickness of the book. Make two folds to make the spine. These folds are shown in red in the picture.

Draw a picture on the cover if you want, and write the name of the book on the spine. Put a small amount of glue onto the inside of the spine, and, holding the pages firmly together, press them onto the glue, folded edges first.

Let the glue dry before you close the cover. Make sure all the pages are firmly in place.