Bird Shapes

Here are two fun little journals to bring out the artist and/or birdlover in you.

Bird Book 1 Journal cover

Bird Book 1 Bookmooch Journal

 

Bird Book 2 Bookmooch Journal

These are a pair of small booklets (each page about double the size of a credit card), on each page of which is the outline of a bird. (I’m no expert, but the shape makes me think of the small garden birds commonly seen in the British Isles.) Journallers are invited to decorate a page (or more) using that outline. (Some participants have stuck their work over the top, if inspiration didn’t involve using the given outline.) It looks like the pair have so far travelled together, though they don’t need to.

There’s been a lot of very creative work done on these already, particularly in multi-media, but there are still some blank pages too. I’ve just added these to our inventory, so they’re available at the moment.

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Gifts of Water

I like water. It’s my preferred drink, and a medium I’m pretty comfortable being in, too!

BMJournal: Water Water Everywhere and Not A Drop To Drink

I’m only the second recipient of this journal, but it’s one I’m going to enjoy filling in, I believe. I touched on my watersports experience in discussing the Surfing journal but there’s a lot more to say on that, as well as on other related topics. There’s a given space here to recommend books about water, the ocean and more, and some of the books I’ve discussed here recently seem relevant, particularly The Sea Kingdoms, Dolphin Island, and perhaps Landfall. Shogun is a possibility, too. There’s a whole lot of space in this book, which has roughly A4/Letter size pages, and a good number of them, too. The first few pages have things stuck to them, too, and if that continues the book will become bulky and made need thinning of blank pages. That’s not a worry yet, however.

Cover of The River that Gave Gifts

17. The River That Gave Gifts: an Afro American story by Margo Humphrey

I’ve been wanting to try really reading a book from the International Children’s Digital Library for awhile now, and this seemed like a good book to try, as it’s got beautiful bright full page pictures and text and a story aimed at children who can read absolutely confidently. The delivery system certainly works very well, and I mostly enjoyed the book as well, emphasising as it does the ability of all to use their own skills and talents to provide for others. I do think the moral (about making use of one’s own talents, even if those of others are more generally recognised, and showing respect to elders)  is possibly laid on a bit more thickly than it needs to be, but that’s not necessarily a problem. Obvious morals have the advantage of being reasonably clear to an accepting reader, where hidden morals run the risk of being insidious.

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More Journals

So, I told you about the first BookMooch Journal we’d had, but I haven’t told you about any of the others, and since we just received a whole new stack of them yesterday, it behoves me to catch you up on some of the ones we’ve already sent on before I get to these. I think I’ll start a new page listing the ones we’ve seen and added to, for my own convenience as much as anything! More information about how these journals work can be found there. (The list includes the journals newly come into our possession, even though I haven’t as yet had the chance to look inside them – there are four I’m currently in a position to discuss, although I may not get to all of them tonight.)

Cover of Altaired Images Journal

BMJournal Altaired Images – a handbook

As may be seen from the slideshow of completed or partially completed pages in this journal (to be found on the page linked above), this one is all images, unlike the others which tend (in my current experience) mostly to text. It’s based on the commercially available books of line images for colouring as the fancy takes you, and each participant is asked to do precisely that on one (or possibly more) page before sending it on. Anyone who can colour within lines can use their imagination on this one, and come up with a picture of interest. It looks like this one is not currently available, but you can certainly wishlist it!

Cover of BMJournal Surf and surfing

BMJournal Surf and surfing

This is a fairly new journal (I was the second participant, and it looks like it’s still with the third, but again, can be wishlisted) and I haven’t yet been surfing, although the information provided by others may actually get me started, once I’m ready. Looking forward to that a lot!

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My first Bookmooch Journal

Image via Wikipedia

So I told you a short while ago that we joined Bookmooch, and that’s been going quite well – we’ve sent off a fair few books we didn’t especially want to keep, for whatever reason, which freed up some shelf space, and we’ve started receiving some books we did want, either definitely to keep, or to read and then decide. (There are currently 33 books available in our Inventory, if you’re interested, and 241 on our Wishlist, which has expanded from the things we definitely wanted to several things that simply sounded intriguing, since our points total began rising.)

It came to my notice that Bookmooch has its own system of travelling journals, or books that a self-selecting variety of contibutors create sequentially, and since there were a few available here in Israel, (so that it’d arrive faster and take one point rather than two) I thought I’d try getting one, to see was I interested in doing any more, before making a big(ish) commitment of time and effort while looking after a small baby.

Well, that first one, The Literary Guild Reader’s Journal, arrived today, and it really didn’t take me long to read all the previous entries and add my own, so it’s now relisted and available to other Bookmoochers!

It’s a collection of contributors’ lists and descriptions of favourite books, and musings on preferred authors, and I enjoyed adding a few pages of my thoughts, so I’ve mooched a few more journals that were local. If those go well I’ll have to go for some that are overseas.