This book smells like the 1970s: it’s an inexpensive paper and an inexpensive hard binding designed for school libraries. Or maybe that’s just how they did it in Great Britain in those days. I dunno. It’s got a bit of a musty odor that it shares when you read it.
As the title says, it’s a a book about how to take a couple of sticks, some paper, plastic, and/or other material, and string to make a kite. Like most craft books, it starts out with basic techniques and moves to specific projects of different types of flat kites (box kites are not included). Also, note that the book does not include directions for embedding glass in your kite strings, so no fighting kites, either, children.
But it’s something interesting to consider as a project to work on with one’s children. You could go to the drug store and buy a wing-style plastic kite for two dollars, but if you really want to make an impression in their future memories, you can take a couple dowels (or better yet, tree branches) and do the same thing.
Maybe I’ll do that one of these days.
At any rate, this book is only 28 pages, so it’s not a grand tome on the history of kites through the ages (which is what it would have been if it had to be padded to an adult craft book). It’s just sticks, papers, designs, and some instructions on flying a kite. A simple pleasure, or so I remember.
Books mentioned in this review:
