Building a Big Book on Building

This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on September 28, 2006 Sign up now!

by Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 9/28/2006

Kids tired of swatting pesky mosquitoes may soon be itch-free. Due next month is a book that will teach them how to build a “Mosquito Chamber of Doom” out of toothpicks and jelly beans, and will explain how to attract the bothersome insects.

This is one of more than 150 hands-on projects outlined in Steven Caney’s Ultimate Building Book, a 608-page volume packed with more than 2,000 photos and 800 illustrations. The subjects range from understanding the difference between design and style, generating invention ideas, planning a project, evaluating methods of construction and solving problems.

Twelve years in the making, the book is Caney’s latest work aimed at inspiring youngsters to think and act creatively, following his prior books, all published by Workman: Steven Caney’s Toy Book (1970), Steven Caney’s Play Book (1975), Steven Caney’s Kids’ America (1978) and Steven Caney’s Invention Book (1985), which has sold 300,000 copies.

Twelve years in the making, the book is Caney’s latest work aimed at inspiring youngsters to think and act creatively, following his prior books, published by Workman: Steven Caney’s Toy Book (1970), Steven Caney’s Play Book (1975), Steven Caney’s Kids’ America (1978) and Steven Caney’s Invention Book (1985)(which has sold 300,000 copies since its 1985 release).

Caney’s love of inventing and building began at a young age. “As a kid, I was always trying to figure out how to build a fort and other things,” he recalls. “I spent a lot of time in my grandfather’s basement, tinkering with various items. I learned some important skills, including figuring out how to use the materials around me and, most importantly, learning what those materials most wanted to be.”

Steven Caney.

The author attended Rhode Island School of Design, eventually returning to teach there, and became a designer. “As a designer, I became interested in designing for kids,” he explains, “since you get such an honest reaction from them when they interact with materials. They give you an immediate response.”

Caney’s love of designing for children led him, along with Mike Spock, to transform the Boston Children’s Museum into the first “do touch” museum for children in the country. He made the leap into writing soon thereafter, inspired by a request from Spock’s father, pediatrician Benjamin Spock. “He was very busy, and asked me to help him fulfill some of his writing obligations to magazines,” says Caney. “I began writing magazine articles on kids and play. And that’s how I became a writer.”

Caney, who sees his Ultimate Building Book as a “culmination of the works I’ve published previously,” discusses why this book took 12 years. “It mostly had to do with the testing,” he says. “There are some 150 projects in the book, which were selected from 500. Some had great promise but for various reasons didn’t work out. We tested and retested the projects with kids, largely in cooperation with the Detroit public schools. They would lend me classrooms of kids, who would build and evaluate the projects. They gave me lots of ideas.”

As the book evolved, the author further realized what an integral part of children’s growth the process of building is, in that it teaches them to move from concept to finished idea to solving the problem of how to create the object. “When I asked myself how I could use this process as a stepping stone to teach kids other disciplines and life skills, it was like opening Pandora’s box,” he notes. “The book began to grow and went into so many other areas. I was so in love with the process of creating this book that I had to be slapped on the wrist and told to finish up so that we could go to press.”

Running Press’s publisher Jon Anderson refers to the book as a “mammoth undertaking” that involved the work of many individuals. “We had a lot of people researching the photos and illustrations,” he says. “Since there is so much visual material required to show the various structures and construction methods, it was a huge job. Compiling the illustrations and laying out the book took more than a year. Because it is such a complex book and of course because of his expertise, the author chose to oversee the design of the book himself.”

Anderson compares Caney’s tome to David Macaulay’s The Way Things Work in its dual appeal to children and adults. “Its potential goes far beyond the traditional trade market,” he observes. “We are discussing with Lowe’s the possibility of offering the book in its stores and are pursuing coverage in architectural and engineering magazines.”

Author promotion for the book also has a nontraditional twist. After attending the MidwestBooksellers Association trade show in St. Paul this coming weekend, Caney will address children at events at the Minnesota Children’s Museum in St. Paul and at the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry. At the Chicago Children’s Museum, Caney will speak to a group of educators about building and invention.

Though Caney does not have another colossal book project on his drawing board, he envisions future publications that he describes as “subsets” of the building book. “There are so many fascinating subjects that came out of the research for this book that I would love to expand on. I can’t stop creating books—the process is much too exciting.”

And Caney’s fans won’t have to wait quite so long for his next oeuvre, the author promises: “I guarantee it will not be another 12 years before my next book is published.”

« Back | Print