I made my son a book safe when he was about 10. With an Exacto knife, I cut out the middle of the pages from a used hardcover book. It wasn't long before I realized it wasn't a one-sitting project, and that it would take days. The more pages I cut through, the harder it was to keep them still and straight. So after cutting an inch or so, I applied glue to the inner sides, and waited for it to dry before cutting some more. (You can glue the outside of the pages, but then it really does look like a book that's been made into a safe, therefore rendering it not at all "safe.") I think I got about three quarters of the way done when I declared it finished. That was my first experience in altering a book, other than the occasional comments written into the margins, highlighted passages - and most likely childhood crayon scribbles in some adult's book.

Let me just say they've come a long way in the altering of books since the idea of book safes. At the Central Library's "Altered Book Workshop" on Tuesday, May 20, a teacher at the Visual Studies Workshop showed about a dozen of us some of the many ways books can be altered to become art. Some took text from books and arranged it into an object. Some folded pages to become accordion-esque. The most creative one to me was the carving away of all the text, leaving just the pictures, which created a 3-D rendering of the book.

Each table got its own scissors and glue stick, and there were three other tables topped with every imaginable crafty item - buttons, bows, bindings, etc. We each took a discarded book and began to create. Physical crafts aren't my strong point, but I did manage to cut all the picture pages out of an animal book, sew it together with twine, and then re-bind it with the original book spine. Hey, I altered it. And art is in the opinion of the beholder.

Next up: Bob Dylan Birthday Party