Tutorial for Making a Betsy-Tacy Activity Book

This year for Christmas, I made my nine-year-old sister a Betsy-Tacy activity book. Since this blog is for all things Betsy-Tacy (and Tib!), I thought it might be fun to share a tutorial of how I made it. I was thinking about linking to a PDF of the book, but I want to protect the copyright of these images. The good news is that you can make your own! As long as you don't sell it or start mass-producing them, I'm pretty sure that it still respects the copyright (correct me if I am wrong).

First, I scanned a bunch of images from the books. They needed a little post-scanning editing work but it was easy enough that even I could do it. I cropped and rotated the images and then used the BW Threshold setting in Photoscape (or you could use Photoshop, or most other photo editing programs. It's a very basic setting) to make sure there was a clear contrast; I didn't want them to be grayscale. (I hope that explanation makes sense. I'm not very computer savvy and I was able to figure it out. But it's easier to show than explain.)

I then arranged the images in a Word document, shrinking the margins to fit them in better. I made the pictures as big as I could without running into the margins. I also made simple cover. I actually opened two windows in Word--one for vertical and one for horizontal, as I wanted both layouts in the book.

Next, print the pages and arrange them in order (I put the pictures from the first book first, etc.). Most of the pictures I used were from the first four books (Lois Lenski's drawings), because I think those would be better for coloring. However, I did include some of Vera Neville's illustrations, because I thought my sister might like coloring some of the dresses and hairstyles in those.

I just noticed recently that the paper here is called the Free Press (the name
of the real Mankato newspaper) instead of The Deep Valley Sun, which it is
known as in all subsequent books.

It would have been fun to add quotes and titles to each page but I decided to
keep it simple.

I divided the two sections with some great activity pages I found on the Betsy-Tacy Society website. They also have a few coloring pages that you can download and print (in case you don't want to scan your own). In my book, I included the word search, the personality quiz, and the crossword puzzle. You can find links to downloads for all of those pages (and more!) here. (There is some really fun stuff on the site: ideas for a Betsy-Tacy book club, games, a page for how to have a birthday like Betsy, make your own journal, etc.)

Kudos to the people who made these. What a great idea!!!

The finished book is 30 pages.

My sister has only read the first four books, but I thought she would enjoy
coloring some of the later illustrations, too.

I used a binding machine to put all of the pages together, but you could just hole punch them and put it in a small three-ring binder, or even a folder. If you would like to bind it but don't have access to a machine, you may wish to check at your office supply store (like Staples or Office Depot) to see if they do binding. Many of them do.

This picture shows the plastic overlay on the cover.

This is the back cover, also with plastic. Under the patterned paper is a piece
of cardboard.

To protect the covers I put a sheet of plastic on both ends. I also placed a piece of cardboard on the back to reinforce it. Over the cardboard I put a sheet of patterned paper to make it look a little prettier (my mom's idea).

Tada! The finished book!

This was a really simple and easy thing to make (although it might sound complicated), and I think my sister will really enjoy it. She loves to color!

While I was making this I couldn't help but think how fun a real published activity book like this would be (with a lot more pages, obviously). I know for the American Girl franchise they have several of this type of activity book (my sister has a few and really enjoys them). There are a lot of possibilities--period games, recipes, and pastimes that young kids could do...but also things like word searches, quizzes, and maybe even stickers, punch outs, etc. I think it would be really fun, and a great way to enrich the reading experience for young fans. Hmm... In the meantime, however, you can make this activity book!