|
In order to become a book, the story has to be printed. And when the pictures are in colour, it's even more complicated. Imagine! You slide the drawing into a machine that turns very quickly and filters the colours. It's a bit like a special sieve that only lets through one colour at a time: yellow, red (which is called magenta) and blue (which is called cyan). When printing, the colour black also gets filtered. The machine copies each colour individually on a transparent film. That's called colour separation. Then, when you place these films on top of each other, you get a pleasing mix of colours.
Take a good look at Ginette Anfousse's drawing of the schoolteacher.
Can you find all the places in this drawing where there is yellow, either pure yellow or mixed yellow? The yellow is hiding behind another colour and you can't see it! Do a little exercise: put some red on some yellow, or some blue on some yellow…
|
ACTIVITY-GAME
You can make believe that you are a printer by playing with these three colours. You can mix them yourself by putting in a little less of one colour or a little more of another…
Only three colours for making all the colours. That's better than a rainbow, isn't it?
|
When the colours are all chosen, you move on to the film stage. It's a bit like photographing the text and the drawings. Then they print the drawings of the pages and the words on a big sheet of paper.
|
The order of the pages is a bit complicated, but the printers know how to fold the sheets so that they make a book with pages that follow correctly. Then they cover the sheets with a cardboard cover and staple or bind the book. Finally, they cut the edges of the books to make the pages even.
That's how you can find several identical copies of School on the shelves in the libraries and bookstores. But they had to go through all the stages that you just read about to get there. That's like following a path that started with a drawing by Ginette Anfousse, then the idea for the story, the characters… remember?
Can you now tell someone how this book was made? |
|
