Developed in collaboration with the Morgan Library, the Morgan Book Project is an annual program that offers a model for the integration of book arts into the classroom. The program reflects the Morgan Library and Museum’s commitment to offer its collection of medieval and renaissance manuscripts as an inspiring resource for students.
This project asks students to create their own books from scratch, practicing ancient techniques of book binding and creating their own colors from natural materials like Cochineal, a tiny bug that helps create the color red.
This year, our students visited the Morgan Library and participated in the colors of the world programs in order to view primary sources and draw inspiration from the museum’s collection of texts. There, they were introduced to the materials and processes they would use to make their books.
Students were then led by their 9th grade Ancient World Literature teachers in the writing and creation of their own handmade accordion books in the classroom.
Last year, Alvi Mahtab, Daniela Apanco, and Qilin Guo created books which were entered into the Morgan Library Book Project Competition and won. Their books were displayed at the Morgan Library in the summer of 2023.
The 2024 winners were Ghaydaa Alfatami, Danny Torres, Maria Camacho and Amreen Shabnom. They created their own work of art through words and drawings.
Ghaydaa Alfatimi “Life in Gaza”
“It was really interesting to me because I’ve always loved history and artifacts. So it was just so cool to see all the ways people back in the day made different colors, especially how they used Gum Arabic. It’s like, my mom has been carrying this gum in her bag for years, and we didn’t know we could use it as paint?
Danny Torres “You Are What You Eat”
“I learned that writing a book back then was more challenging since people didn’t have machines to correct any mistakes.It was difficult with aligning the words and if I make them too big or too small,I can’t change them like on computers,however it was a nice experience as you yourself actually doing the work and not a machine doing most of the work for you by pressing buttons”
Maria Camacho:”Topper and Billy’s Big Switch”
“One piece of advice I would give is don’t type too much because you have limited space and I ended up having to shorten parts of it. So keep it short especially since you have a limited space and if you type big, and use the pictures to help you explain the message of your story.
Amreen Shabnom:”The Vanishing Girls”
“I learned that when writing a story, dialogues help a lot when describing a scene.The process of making this changed my understanding on how to tell stories by seeing how the illustrations bring out the story more and make it easier to visualize.”
Congratulations to all the winners and their hard work! To see their work and others, visit their website.
