Holes book with Joe pop-up

 

 

Our neighbor Joe across the street continues the sympathetic remodeling of his Colonial-era house, which has had several owners in the past decade. After he read that treasures could be unearthed in early-American outhouse pits, he located a depression in the grass behind his house and started digging. We razzed him while he added to the growing pile of what looked like dirt. Sure enough, he discovered broken china, the pattern identical to that of the china in Thomas Jefferson’s kitchen at Monticello (apparently the dishes were purchased at the Wal-Mart of its time). He also found antique pharmacy bottles etched by soil acid into sea-glass translucency. I took photos one day and then had an idea. I bought the Louis Sachar young-adult novel “Holes” at Wonder Book and brought it home to do some book art. Joe let me take a rubbing from one of the bottles, fortunately without asking why. I carved three interior holes—one for Joe, one for a bottle, and one for a magnet—and lined them with brown Japanese paper. After mounting the photos of Joe onto both sides of a foamcore piece, I backed it with a strip of that springy, tough plastic that makes packages so hard to open. The cover stays closed due to the magnets sunk into the cover and second interior page, but when the book is opened—Joe pops up. I gave it to him as his housewarming gift.