Make Magazine – Mom Read It

Making Simple Robots: Exploring Cutting-Edge Robotics with Everyday Stuff, by Kathy Ceceri, (March 2015, Maker Media), $24.99, ISBN: 9781457183638

Recommended for readers 11-17

If you haven’t gotten into robotics because you think it’s too expensive to lay down the money for a LEGO Mindstorms set, this is the book for you. Combining plain-English engineering explanations with household materials (and a short list of goodies you can usually get online or at Home Depot), Making Simple Robots walks readers through making robots using paper, balloons (think Baymax, from Big Hero 6, but smaller and less sentient), drinking straws and rubber bands. Projects become more involved as the book progresses, and use more complex materials like Little Bits and 3-D printers. Each project walks readers through the design, building and testing a prototype, helpful troubleshooting suggestions, and ways to adapt and expand on the robots.

You know I love my “program in a book”, and this is another one. I could pull together a beginning robotics program, no sweat, with a small budget and some time to play around. My go-to project from this book? The Gliding Vibrobot, which is a tiny robot you can make for $10 or less, with a motor from an old cell phone or electric toothbrush, 1.5 to 3 volt batteries, foam tape, and gumball machine toy capsules. For a public librarian’s budget, this is a dream project! Have a coding program? Work that into the mix with a Chatbot, where you use Scratch to program your sprite to use a script to carry on a conversation with another user.

There are loads of helpful hints and “cheat sheets” to refer to throughout the book, and an index makes for handy, quick reference.

Every Make book that I’ve read so far has included such a broad range of projects, allowing all skill levels and wallets a chance to make something really cool. Making Simple Robots combines a maker guide with an intro to modern robotics that middle schoolers and older will love.

Make: Paper Inventions: Machines that Move, Drawings that Light Up, and Wearables and Structures You Can Cut, Fold, and Roll, by Kathy Ceceri (Sept. 2015, Maker Media, Inc.), $19.99, ISBN: 9781457187520

Recommended for ages 5+ (with some help!)

I love maker spaces in the library. I had a small one at my last library, and I’m psyched to set one up here in my new digs. The kids love having projects to do, and you don’t need a huge area with 3-D printers chugging along to be a maker. Duct tape, construction paper and imagination are a great start. Make Magazine has been a great resource for years, as is their Maker Camp, a virtual summer and holiday “camp” that provides cool projects and a discussion space for anyone who wants in. The Maker Media books are a huge help for anyone – parent, educator, and kid – who needs some ideas on how to stir up some creative juices.

One of the latest books in the series, Make: Paper Inventions is for anyone interested in paper crafting, paper engineering, and paper technology. Offering projects for relative newbies or whose skill level is “mostly thumbs” all the way up to creating paper-based automatons, light-up cards, even a geodesic dome!

Make: Paper Inventions, like every Maker Media book, wants to educate you as well as entertain you, so you’ll find a wealth of information on the nuts and bolts, the science and math, behind paper engineering. You’ll read about paper structures, for instance, and why folded paper can hold greater weights than a plain piece of paper. You’ll also learn why paper will tear rather than stretch if you pull it, but it will bend nicely for a pencil.

There are tons of projects in here for anyone and everyone, in any space. Kids can have a blast making their own paper – their own edible paper, even – with relative ease. Like most maker movements, the Maker Media books are big on reusing, reducing, and recycling, so projects are here for all weights of paper, from rice paper to card stock, and you can use old notebooks, newspapers, or copy paper for many of these projects. There are comprehensive materials lists and step-by-step instructions and photos for every design, and math and science concepts that you can discuss with kids will make teachers happy, and make kids realize that yes, you will use that math outside of math class, and for cool stuff, to boot. An appendix with project templates and an index round out this resource.

I can’t wait to get the kids here at my library paper quilling – it’s one of the easier projects in here that will appeal to my library group’s need for fairly instant gratification. There’s a wealth of Pinterest resources, too, which makes me really happy, because this is likely to be a program I’ll repeat. Paper circuitry looks fantastic, and who knows? Maybe that’s a project for Valentine’s Day – once I get some practice time in.

Check out some of the photos from Make: Paper Inventions, and then add this to your reference library or your crafting library. Get those makerspaces operating!