Book of Hours (2021) was a COVID collaborative project between Julie Chen and Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder; you’ll want to read the colophon (on the inside of the case) for details. It is a “blow book,” which is “a historical structure originally designed as a magic trick which allows the book presenter to show completely different visual sequences of pages within the same book” (from the inside of the case). These liner notes to the book also tell you how to manipulate the book to see all of the twelve distinct sequences, six in the “Ante Meridiem” sequence and six in “Post Meridiem.” You are encouraged to mess around (carefully) with the book to view all twelve of the visual sequences in the book. Amy Pirkle is a book artist and professor at the University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa (and has, incidentally, taught for UGA’s Cortona program in the past). She specializes in flip books and other kinds of manipulatable books, published through Perkolator Press. A Solemn Request is a book of a different form; it is a tunnel book, a series of stacked leaves through which one peers, as into a cave (rather than, sometimes in addition, to turning pages as we normally do). Tunnel books provide depth and dimensionality that flat pages normally can’t provide, as well as a sense of spatial progression or even discovery as one moves deeper into the tunnel book. Solemn Request is also a book of a different vibe. Pirkle’s website has a bubbly aesthetic, but Solemn Request was created when her twin sister was diagnosed with cancer and she began undergoing cancer screening and MRIs herself. You can read her brief artist’s statement on the inside cover of the book. Andi Arnovitz is an artist who works across media (not only artist’s books). A Mother's Early Morning Prayer reprints a poem by by the late twentieth century Israeli poet Hava Pinhas Cohen; half of the printings of this book render the poem in English, and half in the Hebrew in which Cohen wrote. It is in the form of a Victorian carousel book, a book bound in an accordion or concertina format with “windows” in each of its openings (not unlike the tunnel book). When it’s fully open, its front and back covers mate to create a flower-like “carousel” shape. References Andi Arnovitz. n.d. https://andiarnovitz.com/ “Dive Into Tunnel Books.” University of Florida Libraries: Rare Books, n.d. https://rarebooks.uflib.ufl.edu/research-teaching/tunnel-books/ (with video directions for making your own tunnel book) Green, Heather. Carousel Book. Book Arts – Course Hub. Herberger Institute School of Art, Arizona State University, n.d. https://www.green-coursehub.com/carousel-book.html (with directions for making your own carousel book) Perkolator Press, n.d. https://www.perkolatorpressflipbooks.com/
