Cukoo for Klutz
This morning, we spent time building a football kicker from the Lego Crazy Action Contraptions: A Lego Inventions Book
(published by Klutz. If I haven’t mentioned recently how much I love Klutz, let me just say it here. For the record, I am head over heels stoked on Klutz right now. I would go to work for Klutz in a heartbeat.
I remember Klutz from when I was younger. I remember the “how to juggle” books, followed, I think, by a “how to hackie-sack” book. Remember those? They were cool, but the Klutz lineup today is just knock-your-socks off cool. I wish we’d had books like these when I was a kid. Somehow, all of a sudden, we’ve fallen into Klutz world. For the last few months, I’ve been repeatedly hit in the head by books showing how totally cool Klutz books are. The LEGO book, which I got Matthew for Christmas, was the first Klutz book for us – my first as a parent, in other words. It’s fabulous. The creations are totally out of the ordinary, totally cool, and totally work.
Then, I ordered a "lacing" book for Spencer: Amazing Lacing Activity Book, also by Klutz. Very, very cool. As a creative type who has spent a lot of time with a needle of one form or another in my hand, I don’t think you can overestimate the importance of lacing exercises and activities. Lacing cards have always been popular in my house, and this book is like a spiral bound set of uber-cool lacing cards with a little pouch of cool, sparkly, curly, reach-out-and-touch me laces designed to get your kid’s attention. (Warning: Be careful with the corkscrew one. That one can snap at you sort of like an elastic band.)
Next, we stumbled over the hands-down worlds greatest color-by-number book ever, again, by Klutz: Paper Stained Glass: Color-By-Number Art for Your Windows. With transparent openings framed by black, the projects have a stained-glass effect, and the book offers suggestions for different ways to display or “use” many of the projects. (A snake one, for example, has instructions for cutting it and hanging it as a mobile.) Each page can be colored one of two different ways by simply flipping the sheet to one side or the other of the two-page spread. Or, you can come up with your own color-scheme for the page, and do something totally different. It’s a fabulous book, well-executed, comes with a pouch of numbered colored markers, and the drawings themselves are challenging and full of color.
Now, I find myself looking for Klutz. I spent some time oohing and ahhing over the "Twirled Paper" Klutz book the other day. It’s amazing. It will, no doubt, someday end up on my shelf. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you haven’t seen Klutz since the time of the juggle book, it’s definitely time for another look. For your own kids, grandkids, or gifts for friends, the bulging Klutz shelf or results page should be your first stop.
Here are a few other titles (many in the new Chicken Socks line) that caught our attention:
Posted by amyo at May 9, 2006 12:22 AM
