What Are Those Kids Doing?

August 16, 2010

No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. These teenagers are actually cutting up library books!

It’s just a fact of life in the library that some books become so damaged or outdated that they cannot stay on our shelves. We sell what we can, but some books have just simply reached the end of their lives. These intrepid teens have found a way to recycle those used, stained, battered, and worn books: turn them into art.

This picture was taken at the Lone Jack Branch’s Creative Writing for Teens class, and these girls are actually making found poetry. Found poetry is when you take someone else’s words and rearrange them to make your own poem or story. You can do this by cutting out words and gluing them on a piece of paper (sort of like a ransom note in an old mystery novel) or by simply blacking out all the words on a page that don’t "fit" your poem. Either way, you are taking something old and making it into something new.

Of course, this is not a project to try with the books you check out from the library or from any books on your own shelf that you want to keep. But, if you have some old books lying around—maybe moldy, maybe water-damaged, maybe so old that their information is outdated—cut ‘em up! You never know what poetry you may find.