A quiet book is just that – quiet. No rustling pages. No noisy sounds at all.
Quiet books are usually made from such material as felt. All kinds of themes can be adapted into a quiet book.
For this one, I chose fruit and vegetables. Being vegans, plant-based foods are the mainstay of our diet and I wanted to make sure that my newest grandchild and great-grandchild were given that knowledge early on.
I knew the parents of these babies thought this was important too so I spent several weeks making just two of these books.
First I made large and small letters of the alphabet. Using various colours of felt, I cut out the letters.
Then I searched online for pictures of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds that would correspond to each letter. These pictures were photocopied in colour and each sheet was placed into a plastic sheet protector.
I then closely sewed around each picture and cut as near to the seam as I could and placed each picture with the corresponding letters.
My local material store had fruit and vegetable cloth. I chose two kinds – one for the outside of the cover and one for the inside. I used a large piece of felt for the interfacing.
I made the cover 8×12 inches with a velcro tab to hold the pages together. The pages were slightly smaller. The first book I used an upholstery needle to sew it together with phentex yarn.
With the second book, I made holes down the centre and used a brightly coloured shoe lace and wove it through the holes.
With a glue gun, I started gluing the letters, pictures, and names for each onto the “pages”.
This is the list of foods I used followed by some pictures to give you an idea of what the cover and the pages looked like:
Apple, Banana, Carrots, Dandelion greens, Eggplant, Figs, Garlic, Hazelnuts, Indian corn, Jicama, Kiwi fruit, Lettuce, Melons, Nuts, Oranges, Pumpkin, Quince fruit, Raspberries, Sprouts, Tomato, Ugli fruit, Vanilla beans, Walnuts, Ximenia fruit, Yams, Zucchini
Fruit and Vegetable Book cover
Fruit and Vegetable Book inside cover and first page
Fruit and Vegetable Book sample pages
X was an interesting letter to try and find a food for. I only found one.
Good luck to the parents in finding this particular food should the child ask! I’ve never seen it or tried it but I understand that it is related to the olive family.
There are other themes I have in mind for more quiet books.
