Hard to Find Books for Puppet Building
|
|
Rod Puppets & Table-Top Puppets by Hansjürgen Fettig
Finally back in print and available through Ray DaSilva's Puppetry Book Store, this book is a wealth of information for designing and building rod puppets. A must have that's worth whatever postage you have to pay to get it. |
|
Puppets,
Methods and Materials
Cedric Flower and Alan Fortney's outstanding reference book shows
how to build all kinds of puppets, and goes into great detail about
materials you can use. Highly recommended.
|
|
Puppets: Get Started in a New Craft With Easy-To-Follow Projects for Beginners
The best book I've ever seen for novice puppet builders. Really. Yes, it's a craft book. Yes, it's geared for kids and people who teach crafts to kids. But it shows you how to build hand puppets, shadow puppets, how to sculpt, how to use papier mache, how to build armatures, how to make a mold, how to make a marionette. If you've never built puppets before and want to try it, this is simply a terrific place to start. Sadly, it's out of print, but you should be able to find a copy at one of the used book stores on the web (see above) |
|
Introduction to Puppets and Puppet-Making
Published in 1992, David Currell 's intro to puppet-making is a
great place to start, with full color, step-by-step explanations
on building shadow puppets, simple hand puppets, a simple moving
mouth puppet out of carved foam, rod puppets, and marionettes. Currell
also describes simple stages, scenery, lighting and sound. I highly
recommend this book for beginners, and especially for beginning
marionette builders. It shows a simple marionette, standard
stringing, airplane controls and a more sophisticated standard marionette
once you've built the simple one.
|
|
The Muppets Make Puppets
A great introduction to found object puppet building. While its
intended age range is children, any budding puppet builder will
be able to get great ideas and inspirations from it. I frequently
suggest this book to anyone just starting out who wants to play
around a bit with puppet building. Great fun!
|
Hard to Find Production and Performance Books
|
|
Manual of Hand Puppet Manipulation
Lettie Connell Schubert crams more good advice into 18 pages than other books have in 180. This well written book covers hand puppet and moving mouth manipulation and is available from the Puppeteers of America book store.
|
|
Puppet Theatre in Performance by Nancy H. Cole
Nancy Cole's book is one of the best books every printed on how to perform with puppets.
|
|
Plays for Young Puppeteers: 25 Puppet Plays for Easy Performance
The latest Lewis Mahlmann and David Cadwalader Jones book. More
than just adaptations of classic fairy tales, this book explains
simply and clearly how to start performing good puppet theater.
|
|
Folk Tale Plays for Puppets: 13 Royalty-Free Plays for Hand Puppets, Rod Puppets, or Marionettes
Adaptations of classic fairy tales, with solid advice on performing. Standard "texts" for any students of puppetry and much sought after books.
|
 |
|
Hard to Find Books
that Inspire the Imagination
|
 |
No Strings Attached by Matt Bacon
The inside story of Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Check your Border's books, since these were going for $5 apiece a few months ago in the dump bins. Great pictures, especially if you're interested in animatronics or would just like to know how they do all those cool creatures. |
 |
The Making of the Dark Crystal by Christopher Finch
A book about the first project by the Jim Henson Creature Shop, this not only has pictures of the finished puppets but pictures of them in progress. It shows many details, background characters, puppets not used in the film and original artwork by conceptual designer Brian Froud. |
 |
The Art of the Puppet by Bil Baird
The reference book about puppetry through the ages, a must for any puppeteer's library. Beautiful pictures. |
