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Paperback Easy-To-Make Old-Fashioned Toys Book

ISBN: 0486259587

ISBN13: 9780486259581

Easy-to-Make Old-Fashioned Toys (Dover Craft Books)

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Recommended

Format: Paperback

Condition: Very Good

$5.99
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List Price $12.95
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Book Overview

Phantascopes, periscopes, and pinwheels -- all intriguing novelties that captured the imagination of children in America and Europe several generations ago. Now with this well-illustrated how-to book, young and old alike can easily make any one of these and 35 other popular playthings that date back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or earlier.
In addition to fascinating background information on each toy, historians Eugene and Asterie Provenzo provide easy-to-follow directions and nearly 300 illustrations. Some objects are simple enough for a 6-year-old to make. Others will challenge older children and adults.
You'll be able to turn ordinary soda straws into Pandea Pipes -- an ancient musical toy. Perhaps you'll want to construct one of the earliest-known flying toys, the Helicopter-Parachute. With a flashlight, shoebox, and magnifying glass, you can build the fascinating Magic Lantern -- used by showmen in an earlier era to conjure up ghosts. Or re-create any of these time-honored educational and entertaining playthings: Thaumatrope, Kite-Ferry, Tumbling Acrobat, Marble Maze, Boomerang, Buzz Saw, Floating Ball, Chromatrope Toys, Flip-Book, Balancing Man, Skyhook, Zoetrope, Moving Slides, Tumbler, Revolving Serpent, Microscope, Paper-Wrestlers, Bullroarer, and many more
Toys can be made with inexpensive materials found in most homes and schools: cardboard, string, tape, straws, scissors, hammer, pins, flashlight, etc. Handy and affordable, this volume is a marvelous book of fun projects -- and a delight for anyone interested in toys from the past.

Customer Reviews

1 rating

Very cool!

This book is really cool! It tells how to make a lot of stuff that kids love, out of simple things you have around the house. Many of them just need paper and scissors; patterns are included but you need to trace them. Scanning them and enlarging would work better but it's hard to lay the book flat enough to get a good copy. I hope if it ever gets reprinted they do so in a spiral-bound form! My son's favorite is the helicopter-parachute made from two strips of paper. You can make it in a jiffy and it works quite well.
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