Making with Paper
Kathy Ceceri's new book, Paper Inventions, elevates paper as a creative material
This week, I hosted a livestream with Kathy Ceceri, who has a second edition of her book, Paper Inventions. Kathy Ceceri is the author of over a dozen books for kids featuring hands-on STEAM activities, including Making Simple Robots 2nd Edition, Edible Inventions, Musical Inventions, Fabric and Fiber Inventions. Kathy lives in Upstate New York. Find out more at kathyceceri.com.
Kathy and I were joined by Jie Qi, a self-described “paper nerd” and co-founder and CEO of Chibitronics. She lives in St. Petersburg, FL. We were also joined by Angii De La Cruz who is the Lead Instructor at the Thinqubator (the children’s makerspace at the Tech Valley Center of Gravity in Troy, NY.
Kathy showed off some of the projects from her book, which is great for teachers and parents. What Kathy demonstrates are creative techniques for working with paper, which can be seen from both engineering and art perspectives. Jie Qi, who is a mechanical engineer, said that she has always loved working with paper and Chibitronics circuit-stickers came from wanting to make it easier to integrate electronics and paper.
At the end of our conversation, while reminding the audience to buy Kathy’s book, I said that this is one book you’ll want to have in print. A book about making things with paper deserves to be read on paper. It’s a book for making more people “paper nerds.”