Monster lovers, it’s officially the best and creepiest Tuesday of the year. It’s Papertoy Monster Day! Last year, there were allsorts of invasions as the papertoy monsters clawed their way into our tortured hearts and our libraries full of the macabre. How are the monsters celebrating this year?
Pharaoh Thoth Amon selects a giant cake as his unsuspecting party snack....er, date.
Scorpion Robot prefers to party in a too-large, seasonally-inappropriate hat.
And Wingy Wingy takes a joy ride on a private jet with her new fiend.
............
……What? Why the intense stares, little monsters? Oh! Presents? Fine.
Queue up Tchaikovsky on iTunes, decorate the tree, and while you’re caught up in the spirit of decorating, pull out the crayons and scissors for some holiday playtime.
From puppeteer Noel MacNeal, author of 10-Minute Puppets, here’s a brand new 10-Minute Puppet just in time for Christmas! Maybe you can help these two archenemies from The Nutcracker become friends in time for Christmas (how’s that for a plot twist?). And while you have the crayons out, prepare for Act II by making a whole fleet of Sugar Plum Fairies (download the Teeny Ballerina template, here)!
1. Download and print The Nutcracker & Mouse King template. Color in the two designs.
2. Cut out the two designs from the page.
3. Carefully cut around the dotted lines of the Mouse King’s ears and gently curl or fold them forward.
4. Attach strips of tape along the white edge of each of the templates, then lay the templates facedown (so the tape is sticky side up). Press an empty toilet paper tube into the tape on each template and wrap the template around the tube.
5. Secure the open ends with tape. Then insert the tubes onto your fingers, and it’s on to the Kingdom of Sweets!
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The Nutcracker & Mouse King are a brand-new puppets by professional puppeteer Noel MacNeal, based on his book 10-Minute Puppets.
As a publicity intern at Workman, my regular work includes putting together press kits and mailings. But every once in awhile, I get a task that’s a little more out of the ordinary! Like when I was recently asked to find a snake piñata for a Splendid Spotted Snake event.
After some brief research, I became determined to make a piñata myself. When I left work that day, I had my mind set on a large, snake-like balloon and papier-mâché piñata, which I would then paint and cover with crepe paper. Once I arrived home and consulted my mother, however, my plan quickly changed after she wisely reminded me that papier-mâché has never been my artistic medium. (To bring you up to speed, I’ve had some scarring formative papier-mâché experiences: Picture a bespectacled third grader attempting to make a festive paper bowl with just a balloon, newspaper, glue, and a dream. Now imagine a loud balloon pop, a crumpled blob of gluey newspaper, and a newly disillusioned third grader. You get the picture.) Not to mention, my mother was also careful to point out that the piñatas of my youth were radically unsafe (thanks, Mom), and that newer piñatas are equipped with colorful strings that, when pulled, open a secret trap door in the body of the piñata. The candy is then released into the ecstatic and, most importantly, uninjured group of waiting children. Oh, the wonders of modern piñata technology!
My very splendid, very spotted piñata!
I decided to go to Home Depot to look for a wide pipe of sorts that I could cover with a splendid spotted exterior. Luckily I found one that was lightweight and somewhat flexible. The downside: it was black and ribbed. I bought it anyway, took it home, and cut a hole for the trap door in its “belly.” To cover it, I wrapped it in a taut layer of plaster (the type used to make casts for broken bones — this can actually be found in craft supply stores). This step got rid of the ribs, giving me a splendidly smooth snake body, and covered the black exterior. For the head, I used this same plaster over a balloon (almost too close to the aforementioned bad experience for comfort) and for the tail, I wrapped the plaster over a freehand newspaper cone. Then I waited patiently for these parts to dry and attached it all with yellow duct tape.
Instead of painting it, I decided to give the snake texture by wrapping it in yellow crepe paper. I sprayed the snake with adhesive and then wrapped the snake in strips of the crepe paper.
Lest you think it was ALL about the piñata...there were lots of activities to keep kids entertained!
So now I had a yellow snake with a big hole in its belly! I crafted the spots and face out of felt, and glued them all on with tacky glue. To keep with the theme, I then filled the snake with: gummy worms (like little snakes), gold and red Mardi Gras-type necklaces, and confetti (aka flying spots).
Spots, spots, and more spots! Kids decorated their own spotted snake art.
SPOTTED at the event: Authors Betty Ann Schwartz and Alexander Wilensky!
To seal the great beast’s belly, I sewed one ribbon onto a big sheet of felt, and taped 15 or so ribbons to that same sheet. These were the trick ribbons! Only the magic ribbon would unleash gummy worm joy onto the children. So once the snake’s cavity was stuffed, I fitted the felt into the hole and my snake was complete!
After about 7 hours of crafting, a few haunting childhood memories, and a major glue meltdown, I was done! I drove my masterpiece into the magical land of New York City, and led it into the magical offices of Workman Publishing, where my efforts were recognized with the esteemed title of “Intern Extraordinaire”!
The Splendid Spotted Snake piñata made its grand appearance at an event at McNally Jackson in NYC on Saturday, November 5, 2011 where it was a big “hit”–or pull, as the case may be. Thanks again to everyone involved in the success of this event!
After a brief hiatus, welcome to another installment of Inside the Author’s Studio, where we give you a peek into the minds and studios of your favorite Workman authors.
Loved: Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and The Magician King. The series gets tagged as “Harry Potter for Grownups,” because it’s about a kid who goes to school to learn magic. But he’s a teenager, with all the self-involvement, pettiness, shortsightedness and drama that goes along with that. So the enemy isn’t a Voldemort-type figure as much as it’s the hero’s tendency to sabotage all of the relationships in his life. It’s hard to create a hero who’s basically unlikeable for most of the story and make you want to keep reading, but Grossman pulls it off in the first book, and then improves on that in every way in the second.
Learned from: Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw. Gladwell can write on something as simple as why there are lots of brands of mustard and only one major brand of ketchup, and make it something profound and engrossing.
Favorite bookstore
Books of Wonder on 18th St. in Manhattan. My kids are 3 and 6, so a bookstore devoted solely to children’s books is a great place to spend a rainy afternoon. I’m also fascinated by pop-up books, and they have the biggest selection I’ve ever seen. And they have a cupcake bakery in the store. Books and cupcakes? That’s pretty much all I need out of life.
Hidden talent
I am the best fantasy sports commissioner in America. I have a football league that’s been going since 1988, and I have a league that combines football, baseball, basketball and hockey into one wondrous, all-consuming monstrosity. In both cases, I don’t use Yahoo or some other fantasy sports web site – I input the stats by hand, because my scoring system is better than theirs.
Bookmark, dog-ear, or virtuality?
I tend to use the receipt from the book as a bookmark, which has the unintended side effect of reminding me, weeks or months later, of where I was and what I was doing when I bought the book, which is kind of nice. But I tend to move back and forth between dead trees and the Kindle. I love browsing in bookstores, but I also loved being in rural Ireland, probably an hour’s drive from the nearest bookstore, sitting outside in the middle of a field, and buying another book in 30 seconds because I had just finished one. I don’t think one’s going to replace the other; I think we now have different options that each have their own advantages.
Book you are most ashamed never to have read
I know I should be most ashamed at never having read Hemingway, or Faulkner, or the many classics I managed to get an English Lit degree without reading. But at the moment it’s No Country For Old Men. I love McCarthy, I desperately want to see the Coen Brothers’ film, but I want to wait until I’ve read the book, and I keep putting it off for no good reason.
Most frequent form of writerly procrastination
Mostly reading. Let’s just say that being able to access the entirety of human knowledge on the internet is both a blessing and a curse.
Favorite childhood book
Every day after lunch, my 4th grade teacher read us The Book of Three, the first book of Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain. When we got to the end, I decided I was going to read the rest of the series myself, and that’s really what got me reading in a serious way. I had always been a big reader, but that was the start of having favorite authors and tearing through everything they had written, which I still do.
Alternate ambition (i.e. If you weren’t an author/Workman studio guru, you’d be…)
I ran my college radio station, and then an internet radio station for about 7 years, and long dreamed of being able to do that for a living. And my unrealistic career choice after college was music critic. I quickly learned that neither of those are real jobs for more than maybe 5 people in America each. So now my unrealistic goal is to be the person who picks the songs for movies, which is also only a real job for about 5 people.
Your perfect meal
I’ve been to the South maybe three times in my life, but I’m hooked on the food. Fried catfish, garlic mashed potatoes, greens, cornbread, fried apples, crawfish pie (which is impossible to get, post-Katrina and BP) and some sweet tea. Lucky for me, there are plenty of Southern transplants who have opened restaurants in New York.
Big dream
My wife’s from Ireland, so I’d love to have a house here and one there. Or if I’m dreaming big, the top floor of the Chrysler Building here, and an 800-year-old castle there.
Super power of choice
Being able to fly. Apart from anything else, it would make getting home from work so much easier.
If you could miniaturize any other game or sporting event (with a limitless production budget), what would it be?
The big problem I encountered when trying to develop a sequel for The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf is that most sports are played in the same place. Every football game is played on an identical regulation field, so what do you put on page two? Golf lends itself to a book well, because every course has 18 different chapters to it, in a sense, and no two courses are the same. So I developed an idea for a Miniature Book of Real Golf, with different heights of “grass” for the rough, the fairway, and the green. The tallest grass was tall enough that you could tee off from it, you could hit the ball into the air, and it would take about 4 shots to get across the course, just like it would for one of the pros. But for that to work, the book was 10″ x 12″ (opening up to twice that size) and nearly twice as thick as Mini Golf with die-cuts and fake grass on every page. So, basically, I had invented the most expensive book in the world. But I still think it would be a lot of fun to play, if money were no object.
What Workman book would you like to receive as compensation for your involvement?
I already have so many! I’ll go with Joshua Jay’s The Complete Magician. My 6-year-old recently saw a magician at a birthday party, and now he wants to learn how it’s done. I just realized that every book I’ve mentioned in this thing has “magician” in the title. I swear that’s unintentional.
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Mike Vago spent middle school study-hall periods mapping out elaborate miniature golf courses, which not only directly led to authoring The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf and then The Pocket Book of Pocket Billiards, but also to his career as a graphic designer. He has written for New York Press, The Stranger, and Artvoice. He lives with his family in Jersey City, New Jersey. His books, mini and pocket-sized as they respectively are, make excellent stocking stuffers.
Dogs, dogs, dogs! We can’t get enough of them here. And as all dog people know, your most important responsibility is making sure your pup is in tip-top shape. After all, a healthy dog is the happiest dog! In the final installment of our family-friendly My Dog! video series, author and dog expert Michael J. Rosen takes you through a basic 60-second check-up to make sure your pooch is feeling fabulous.
Simple, right? Give it a try — and then go whip up some Liver Lover’s “Brownies” to thank your dog for being so awesome. Trust us, despite your human “eww-that-sounds-gross!” bias, your dog will love ‘em!
We know, you’re a procrastinator. You had all weekend to work on a costume, but you were just too busy (or lazy, but maybe that’s just me…). Well, thank your lucky stars, because this morning Megan Nicolay of Generation Thas come to save the day!
With the help of former Workman intern and videographer Elan Bird, Megan put together 10 quick and easy Halloween costumes that are clever as can be. Check out the video below for a tutorial. (I’m personally quite fond of the Deviled Egg…) Be sure to visit Generation T’s website or on the Gen T facebook page to ooh and ahh over the clever sketches while you’re pondering which t-shirt will make you the hit of your Halloween party.
It’s no secret that we love dogs. Prettypups, baddoggies, and those that need a little training to bring out their best–by which we mean all of them. And now we’re welcoming a new breed into the mix: My Dog! A Kids’ Guide to Keeping a Happy and Healthy Pet. It’s the ultimate family owner’s manual that teaches everything you need to know about your pet, from choosing a family dog to training, care, feeding, games, and more.
So, what’s the first step? Figuring out what breed might be right for your family. Let’s turn to the expert, author Michael J. Rosen, who breaks it down in a handy little video to help you learn about different breeds for different needs.
Unless you DO plan on asking your dog to herd reindeer or rescue you from a snow drift, any well-trained dog should fit perfectly in your family! Now go out there and adopt the large/tiny/fuzzy/hairless/regal/smush-faced pup you’ve always wanted!
Happy Month of Halloween! We here at Workman love a good costume just as much as we love our Papertoy Monsters, so we thought, “Hey, why not create a Papertoy Monster COSTUME?!” Genius, if we do say so ourselves. Simply click, select one of three monstrous masks, print, cut, and then go out and scare your fiends friends!
Want to win a free Papertoy Monster?* Head on over to the Papertoy Monsters tumblr and submit a picture of yourself, your kid, a friend, a pet, an arch-nemesis, or whoever wearing one of the spooky monster masks. Easy as papertoy monster-shaped pie. (And what monster doesn’t dream of having a mini-me monster of one’s own?)
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