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Button Girl and How to Draw Aircraft by Rob Court

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Button Girl
by Mikyla Bruder
Chronicle Books, 2005. 60 pgs. Juvenile nonfiction.

A girl "fun" book and a boy "fun" book - all in one review! These two books are new at our library and would appeal to girls, age 9 through teens, and boys, 7 through 12. Let's look at the girls' book first . . .

Button Girl has more than 20 button projects, none of which are costly or require sewing machine skills. A few call for needle & thread stitching, the rest use a glue gun or craft glue. All of the projects are accompanied by a photograph of the finished product. Some examples are: Button Bobbies (decorated bobby pins) Simplest Button Barrette, Crazy Coasters, Nifty Napkins Rings, and many more. I made several Button Bobbies for my daughter who goes to Timpview High, using orange and blue, of course, and they were a big hit among her friends!

How to Draw Aircraft
by Rob Court
Child's World, 2007. Unpaged. Juvenile nonfiction.

How to Draw Aircraft by Rob Court is an easy, step-by-step, wordless instruction book. The author gives the name of the aircraft, seaplane, biplane, blimp, Harrier jet, etc., then shows in 4 steps how to draw it. The last drawing of each aircraft is colored. The 4 steps for each aircraft are all on one full page spread, so there's no page turning to see what you just drew or what you'll need to draw next. It's easy to follow and a nicely laid out book. My 8 year old son spent about an hour drawing different planes and was quite pleased with himself when done.

I recommend both of these books for any crafty girl and/or artistic boy.
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