ABC's of Origami

This is a beautiful book. It is better for kids who have already done some folding because the instructions are a bit less straightforward than in other books. If you are starting an origami book collection, this is a must-have.

What first attracted me to this book, despite owning several origami books, was that this one has several patterns which make human forms... animals are so much more common, but my daughter wanted to make some little origami dolls, and humans are hard to find in beginner-level origami books. Ah, this is SO MUCH MORE than just another beginner-level origami book! It is an alphabet book, and each page has a pattern for a figure whose English name begins with that letter. The figure's name is given in English, French and then Japanese, and at the bottom it is written in Japanese characters, too! Many children are enraptured with curiosity about other languages, codes, characters from other alphabets, and this book fuels that fire with succcint doses, one letter at a time. My daughter got so excited about the translations on each page that she immediately started memorizing those, even before she got around to trying out the origami! And about the origami... as we have found, there are origami directions, and then there are... well, frustrating paths of deception that never lead you to the intended figure. And every parent knows how badly kids want to be able to do things like this without grownup help, which makes poor directions a real tragedy. Happily, these origami directions are really easy to work with. They are step-by-step, but simple. No labyrinthian trails of confusion to track here! No serpentine arrows leading you to valleys and mountains of terminology with optical-illusion illustrations. I've come across enough frustrating origami instructions to insist on checking an origami book out of the library and trying it out before I will buy one. After I checked this one out, renewed it, returned it, found it checked out to someone else and unavailable, I knew it was time to buy a copy! 26 letters in the alphabet, so that's how many patterns you get. 55 pages. Each odd-numbered page shows a letter with its translations and a lovely illustration which serves as the backdrop for a photo of the actual finished origami figure (it's brilliant and inspiring!). The facing (even-numbered) pages show the very clear folding instructions, none of which exceed one page. So it isn't a long book, and it isn't cluttered. But it is a masterpiece of form and function, a litttle bit of language, a little bit of art, a little collection of nice origami projects (some quite unique), a most unusual ABC book (if you collect ABC books, you have to add this one to your collection!), and definitely one of those precious little books that you want to own, not just borrow!