Book Makers Show Kids How To Turn Trash Into Tomes To Treasure

Book makers show kids how to turn trash into tomes to treasure

NEWS PHOTO-ALAN WARREN

A book cover designed by Gabriel Frye-Behar, a student at Middle Years Alternative school.

By ANNE RUETER

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

The blank looks and a few mutters -“Do I have to do this?” - disappeared fast in teacher Eric Britner’s seventh-and eighth-grade class at Middle Years Alternative school Wednesday mom-ing. Within moments, the students became avid book designers, guided by two visitors from Cuba.

The visitors, artist Rolando Estevez and writer Alfredo Zaldivar, are masters at creating elegant, fanciful volumes of poetry and stories from materials most Americans throw away. From a heap of bright cardboard scraps, nut shells, leaves, ribbon, stones and junk mail, the students pulled the raw materials to create their own editions of “The Ugly Things,” a poem in Spanish by Teresita Fernandez about the hidden beauty in cast-off objects. Engrossed, they worked right through their usual morning break.

“We never had someone like these people in school before,” said Ariel Rogers, 13, as the group listened to Zal-divar’s rapid instructions in Spanish, translated by Ruth Behar, classmate Gabriel’s mother. Behar, a University of Michigan anthropology professor and native of Cuba, helped bring the two Cuban book makers to Ann Arbor for workshops and talks at the U-M and displays of their work at Shaman Drum Bookstore and the Michigan Union.

Zaldivar showed Leysi Palacio, 12, how to form a small cylinder from a scrap of a magazine ad. “It’s a little garbage can!” she exclaimed, gluing it to her cover, then gluing tiny stones inside.

A larger-than-life paper dime from a Sprint ad fills Lisa Lennington’s similar trash can, or basura in Spanish.

“I know-‘Things that are worth something, people throw away’ -that’s what it means,” she said, grabbing a message from her medium.

Later, students tied text to cover with string and posed for pictures with their books.

Zaldivar and Estevez, who have led many such workshops in Cuba,

South America and Mexico, remarked on the more formal designs students tend to make in the United States.

“I’m veiy interested in fostering cultural interchange between Cuba and the United States,” says Behar. Ever since she met Zaldivar and Estevez six years ago on one of her frequent trips to Cuba, she has been eager to bring

their imaginative approach to book publishing to a wider audience.

“They’re books to read, but they are also works of art,” said Behar.

One poet’s volume has twigs from her own garden on the cover. Fabric, a music score, seeds and moss adorn a volume of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s

poem, “Dirge Without Music.”

Other examples leap beyond the usual confines of a book. The text of the poem “El Guerrero,” written on a sheet of white paper, folds around a 2-foot-long brown cardboard sword, which then fits into a paper sheath covered with ink drawings. Another evokes a window: a poem text appears on a pleated shade. In their workshop employing 10 people, Estevez and Zaldivar’s Vigia Press has produced handmade books in limited editions of 200 since 1985. Started because their friends couldn’t get works published, Vigia Press now publishes bilingual editions of poetry by such writers as Emily Dickinson, Boris Pasternak and Arthur Rimbaud.

What: A book party celebrating the work of Alfredo Zaldivar and Rolando Estevez. Their handmade volumes of poetry and prose will be on display and for sale.

When: Today, 4 - 6 p.m.

Where: Shaman Drum Bookstore, 313 S. State St., 662-7407.

Related events: A reception on Monday, 6 - 8 p.m., in the main lobby of the Michigan Union will kick off an exhibit of art by Rolando Estevez and handmade books from Vigia Press, which will be on display through Wednesday.