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The History of the Book

For Children

Book, Karen Brookfield. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Part of Eyewitness Books series. Excellent photographs make it a good visual resource to have in the classroom.

"Paper" Through the Ages, Shaaron Cosner. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, 1984.
This easy chapter book introduces children to writing materials of the past--stone, clay, papyrus, wax, parchment, and paper--and the people who used them.

The History of Making Books. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1996.
Well illustrated interactive book with sections on Ancient writing, Asian Ingenuity, Arabic Treasures, Parchment, Illuminated Manuscripts, Paper, Printing, Bookbinding, and more.

Writing and Printing, Steve and Patricia Harrison. London: BBC Educational Publishing, 1991.
Part of the BBC Fact Finders series. This is a concise overview with a double page spread for each topic from cave painting to the way books are printed today.

Scrawl! Writing in Ancient Times, Geography Department. Minneapolis: Runestone Press, a division of Lerner Publications Company, 1994.
This well illustrated and wide ranging guide to the early book includes chapters on the development of writing, writing materials, papyrus, parchment, and paper, the scribes, and the survival of ancient literature.

Writing
Alphabetical Order: How the Alphabet Began, Tiphaine Samoyault. New York: Viking, 1996.
This is a well illustrated guide to the development of the alphabet and the alphabets of the world, including Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, Cyrillic, Indian, and Japanese. as well as sign language, Morse Code, and Braille.

Europe
Bibles and Bestiaries: A Guide to Illuminated Manuscripts, Elizabeth B. Wilson, The Pierpont Morgan Library. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
I love this book. It's clearly written and beautifully illustrated with examples from manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. The book includes a detailed description of the process of making an illuminated manuscript from making the vellum to binding the book and information on the "Best-Selling Books" of the Middle Ages, such as Gospels, Psalters, Herbals, and Books of Hours.

The Duke and the Peasant: Life in the Middle Ages, Sister Wendy Beckett. New York: Prestel, 1997.
This book shows the twelve illustrations for the months of the year from the well- known medieval manuscript, Les Tres Riches Heures which was commissioned and owned by the Duc de Berry. The pictures are commented upon by Sister Wendy Beckett of PBS fame. I found her frequent descriptions of how much fun the working peasants were having in contrast to the miserable nobles who were feasting and lolling about rather strange.

Breaking into Print: Before and After the Invention of the Printing Press, Stephen Krensky. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1996.
Breaking into Print tells of the evolution of the book from the hand-lettered manuscripts of the monasteries through the development of the printing press to today. The main text is supplemented by additional facts on the side margins. It is cleanly laid out and nicely illustrated but I found the transition from block printing to movable type confusing. There is a timeline of the history of printing at the back.

Johann Gutenberg and the Amazing Printing Press, Bruce Koscielniak. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.
This lively picture book presents lots of information about the process of printing and its development by Gutenberg in a friendly humorous way.

Johann Gutenberg: Master of Modern Printing, Michael Pollard. Woodbridge, CT: Blackbirch Press, Inc., 2001.
Readable account of Gutenberg's work as a printer set in the context of his time with looks back in history to printing in ninth century China and forward to the use of computer technology today. Illustrated with period illustrations.

Fine Print: A Story about Johann Gutenberg, Joann Johansen Burch. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, Inc., 1991.
This short chapter book tells how Gutenberg invented movable type. It gives an excellent view of city life in fifteenth-century Germany, as well as information on handwritten books, the making of paper, and the printing process.

Gutenberg, Leonard Everett Fisher. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993.
This picture book gives a little background on printing history, but concentrates on the story of Gutenberg: his experiments with printing and the trials of his business life which included scheming partners and bankruptcies.

Picture Books and Fiction
Anna the Bookbinder, Andrea Cheng, illustrated by Ted Rand. New York: Walker and Company, 2003.
This is a warm and touching story of family love with lots of details about bookbinding. Anna's Papa is a binder with a bindery in his basement where Anna spends much of her time. He does quality work and works hard to compete with big binderies with lots of employees. Anna surprises her father by stitching an important commission when her pregnant mother goes into labor.

Magic in the Margins: A Medieval Tale of Bookmaking, W. Nikola-Lish, illustarted by Bonnie Christensen. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 2007.
Simon, a peasant's son, learns the ways of work in a monastery scriptorium and a valuable lesson in imagination and creativity as he works to earn permission to illustrate the margins of manuscripts.

Marguerite Makes A Book, Bruce Robertson. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999.
This beautifully illustrated picture book tells of Marguerite, a girl in medieval Paris. Her father illuminates books and she helps him finish an important commission of a book of Hours for Lady Isabelle.

The Flame of Peace, Deborah Nourse Lattimore. New York: Harper Trophy, 1987.
A young Aztec boy, Two Flint, braves nine evil demons and brings the magic flame of peace to his people. While this isn't about books, the illustrations in this picture book were inspired by and are in the style of Aztec manuscripts. A nice touch is the page numbers which are written in Aztec as well as Arabic numerals.

The Sailor Who Captured the Sea, Deborah Nourse Lattimore. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
In this picture book about the Book of Kells from Ireland, three brothers leave their trades to become scribes in the belief that the completion of the book will save their people from Viking invaders. The book is out of print but the story can be found in the collection, The Sailor Who Captured the Sea and Other Celtic Tales, published in 2002 by HarperTrophy.

The Man Who Loved Books, Jean Fritz. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1981.
This picture book is the true story of St. Columba who founded the monastery on Iona which produced many books. It is told in Jean Fritz's lively style and simply but beautifully illustrated by Trina Shart Hyman.

Across A Dark and Wild Sea, Don Brown. Brookfield, Ct: Roaring Brook Press, 2002.
Another story about St.Columba also known by his Irish name Columcille.

St. Jerome and the Lion, Margaret Hodges. New York: Orchard Books, 1991.
I chose this picture book because Jerome is the patron saint of librarians. He governed a monastery in Bethlehem by day and translated the Bible into Latin at night. The story itself has nothing to do with books but it is well told and beautifully illustrated by Barry Moser.

The Shipwrecked Sailor: An Egyptian Tale with Hieroglyphs, Tamara Bower. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2000. Based on a story found in an ancient papyrus scroll, this picture book tells of a shipwreck on the island of the soul and a happy homecoming. One line on each page has been translated into hieroglyphs. The illustrations were inspired by papyrus scrolls.

James Printer: A Novel of Rebellion, Paul Samuel Jacobs. New York: Scholastic Press, 1997
This children's novel tells the story of James Printer, a Nipmuc Indian and apprentice to Samuel Green, master printer at Harvard College in 1675. Told in the first person by Samuel Green's eleven year old son Bartholomew, it has lots of details of the printer's world in the midst of a dramatic story of King Philip's War.

Websites
Writing in Ancient Civilizations
Site on Ancient Civilizations with information on writing in the Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome

Leaves of Gold: Treasures of Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections
This is a thorough site, written for kids with a section on how manuscripts are made, a slide show of manuscript pages and descriptions, a glossary of terms, and directions to make your own medieval manuscript.

For Adults

Books
General
The Book Before Printing: Ancient, Medieval And Oriental, David Diringer. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1982.
Originally published in 1953 as The Hand-Produced Book, this reference book is wide in scope, dense with information, and a good resource.

The Book: The Story of Printing and Bookmaking, Douglas C. McMurtrie. New York: Dorset Press, 1971.
This reprint of a 1943 book begins with Primitive Human Records and goes through to Modern Typography. Gutenberg comes along about a quarter of the way through the book, so the biggest focus is on printed books.

The Book on the Bookshelf, Henry Petroski. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
This book is more about the storage and presentation of books than the books themselves but there is lots of fascinating information about the books as well. I found the early chapters from Egyptian scrolls to chained medieval books the most useful.

Writing
The Story of Writing, Andrew Robinson. London: Thames & Hudson, 1995.
This book has three sections: How Writing Works, Extinct Writing: Cuneiform, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Linear B, Mayan Glyphs, Undeciphered Scripts, and Living Writing: The First Alphabet, New Alphabets from Old, Chinese Writing, Japanese Writing. There are lots of illustrations.

The Story of Writing, Donald Jackson. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co, 1981.
This book is on the Roman alphabet was written by a well-known English calligrapher who is Scribe to Her Majesty the Queen. The main focus is on the calligraphic hands from the Dark Ages through the Renaissance. The history is enhanced by his perspective as a working scribe.

A History of Writing, Albertine Gaur. New York: Cross River Press, 1992.
This book has the broadest scope with chapters on The Fertile Crescent, Ancient Mediterranean, Pre-Columbian, Far East, Semitic, Indian and Southeast Asian, Greek and European. It also covers social attitudes towards writing and literacy.

Asia
Writing Materials of the East, Albertine Gaur. London: The British Library Board, 1979.
A slim book focusing on the surface materials used for writing with some nice illustrations of books and writing from India, China, Burma, and Sumatra.

The Story of Chinese Books, Lui Guojun and Zheng Rusi. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1985.
History of Chinese books from oracle bones through slats, scrolls, and accordions to sewn bindings with information on block printing and movable type. A good resource but hard to find. Printed in the People's Republic of China.

Chinese Traditional Bookbinding: A Study of Its Evolution and Techniques, Edward Martinique. Chinese Materials Center, 1983.
A history of Chinese books from slats to scrolls to accordions to sewn bindings. Interesting illustrations. A good resource but hard to find.

Aztec and Maya
The Art of the Maya Scribe, Michael D Coe and Justin Kerr. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1997.
This is a big beautiful art book that is filled with information with chapters on the Maya script, the scribes, the tools and materials, and the books.

The Aztec and Maya Papermakers, Victor Wolfgang von Hagen. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999.
This is a reprint of a 1944 book. The focus is on the importance of amate or bark paper in the Aztec and Maya world and how it was made. The story is told in a narrative style that I didn't expect. There are lots of good stories and interesting tidbits in this book.

The Codex Nuttall: A Picture Manuscript from Ancient Mexico, Zelia Nuttall, ed. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1975.
Facsimile of a Mixtec manuscript

The Codex Borgia: A full Color restoration of the Ancient Mexican Manuscript, Gisele Diaz and Alan Rodgers. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993.
Facsimile of a restoration of a pre-Columbian manuscript from about 1400 in central Mexico.

Europe
A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Christopher De Hamel. London: Phaidon Press, 1986.
This well illustrated and thorough book about illuminated manuscripts from the 7th to the 16th century is organized by the uses of the books: for missionaries, emperors, monks, students, aristocrats, everybody, priests, and collectors.

Scribes and Illuminators, Christopher De Hamel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.
This short book focuses on how the books were made. There are three sections: Paper- and Parchment-Makers, Ink-Makers and Scribes, and Illuminators, Bookbinders, and Booksellers.

The Illuminated Manuscript, Janet Backhouse. Oxford: Phaidon, 1979.
This is a well illustrated and explained survey of the illuminated manuscript from the seventh to the sixteenth century.

Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art, Roger S. Wieck. New York: George Braziller, Inc. in association with The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1997.
This is the catalog to accompany an exhibit called "Medieval Bestseller: The Book of Hours." There is detailed commentary on all the illustrations.

Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life, Roger S. Weick. Baltimore: George Braziller, Inc. in association with The Walters Art Museum, 2001.
Illustrated with manuscripts from the collection of the Walters Art Museum, this book explores the Books of Hours in depth, with a detailed description of the contents, as well as their placement in the social and religious context of the time.

Websites
The Art of Bookbinding
The complete volume of The Art of Bookbinding written by Joseph W. Zaehnsdorf in 1897 is here as well as Bookbinding and the Care of Books: A Handbook for Amateur Bookbinders and Librarians from 1902 and Bookbinding for Beginners from 1914.

The Illustrated Book: A Survey of Genres
Richard Minsky approaches commentary with the same intelligence and individuality he brings to making books. The works are grouped by interesting categories, such as cave paintings as self-publishing. This is a site by someone comfortable with the way the computer allows one to skip around with hyperlinks; it's not a straightforward outline approach.

Bookbinding from the International Dunhuang Project
A history of bookbinding in China illustrated with books found in the Caves of Dunhuang in 1900.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Site to accompany an exhibit of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Beautiful illustrations and informative text.

The Preparation of Palm Leaf Documents
Archived article from the Journal of Indian States History with information on the preparation of palm leaves for writing with drawings of writing implements and photos of pages.

Forerunners of Paper
Descriptions of materials used before paper, clay, bark, papyrus. If you "Continue the Tour" on the bottom of the page, it will lead you from the invention of paper through history to paper in our lives.

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