The cover caught my eye and I picked this up without looking thinking it would be something fun to do with the grandkids.
Nope. They're still kind of young for what Dan Reeder sets forth here. In fact, some of the photographs of the monsters Reeder makes might scare them. Still pretty young.
But Dan Reeder is absolutely brilliant, not only in envisioning these wonderful monsters, but in showing people like you and me how to make them.
He makes it all seem simple: not easy necessarily, but simple with loads of easy to follow instructions.
And one of the coolest things, as Dan points out, is that when you make monsters, no one is going to tell you that the horn is in the wrong place or it doesn't look exactly like your sister, which I suppose could be a good thing.
Reeder writes clearly, explains precisely what he is doing and what materials you need and the book is profusely illustrated with photos taken by Dan's wife.
Dan also has a delightful sense of humor and you'll have more than a couple of chuckles as you read this book.
Overall, a great book whether you intend to build monsters or not.
Jerry
This was a great book. There are lots of pictures to follow the tutorials and the author has contact info if you get stuck. I made the monster and the dragon head project so far. I have never papier-mached before and I think both my projects turned out pretty good! Be warned, the projects were time consuming and I had my dining room a mess for about a week on each project. VERY MESSY! When I first started the papier-mache part, I thought - ick! When I began to do the glue part - triple ick! The glue wants to dry on your hands like in kindergarten but you still have tons of dipping to do. You have to stop every so often to get the layers of dried glue off and start again. My only negative is there was a few of his things pictured that I would have liked to tried but were not in the tutorials, maybe next book. Great book for teens or kids with some patience! By the time I finished my first project, my little ones did not want to put that kind of time into it.
This book is great.Lots of helpful tips.Dan Reeder has a fun sense of humor to make this book easy to read.
Excellent book. Author is brilliantly creative and funny. Everything is explained in sufficient detail.
What a wonderful book. Even if you have no intention of creating in paper-mache, I would recommend this book for it's wit and charm. Dan is clearly a man who has no interest in growing up and who delights in sharing his messy fun with others. His philosphy that making monsters is a great way to start for kids, because no one can say "you did it wrong", also reflects his undertanding of children and his great heart.
From a practical standpoint, this book also is full of information and techniques outside the normal field of knowledge about paper-mache, in other words he shares a lot of really cool tricks to making wonderful monsters.
So you will have fun from the moment you open the book until you put the finishing touches our your creation.
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