This week Marshmallow shares her thoughts on Akira Yoshizawa: Japan’s Greatest Origami Master, a beautiful book with “Texts, Original Diagrams, and Models” by Akira Yoshizawa, a preface by Kiyo Yoshizawa, and an introduction by Robert J. Lang. Accompanying her in this review is her little friend for the day: Turtle.
Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you like books that teach you how to do stuff, or if you ever wanted to see really cool origami models of all sorts of animals and things, then this might be the book for you.
Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): This book does not tell a story. It teaches the reader how to make the origami pieces in the book, though the origami in this book is not easy. This is not a book for people who don’t know what origami is.
Here is Wikipedia’s definition of origami:
“Origami (折り紙, Japanese pronunciation: [oɾiɡami] or [oɾiꜜɡami], from ori meaning “folding”, and kami meaning “paper” (kami changes to gami due to rendaku)) is the art of paper folding, which is often associated with Japanese culture. In modern usage, the word “origami” is used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin.”
In this book, there is a detailed introduction written by an American origami expert, Robert Lang, where readers can learn about Akira Yoshizawa and his origami work. In the next few pages of the book, there are many pictures of Mr. Yoshizawa and his incredible origami works. Then most of the rest of the book is made up of Yoshizawa’s models of different types of animals and things. For example, there are models for making origami rabbits, sea turtles, small birds, wild geese, angel fish, butterflies, flying carpets, children from Snowland, lighthouses, seesaws, planes, and all sort of other neat things. There are step-by-step instructions and folding directions for each of these.
Marshmallow’s Review: Reading Akiro Yoshizawa’s book, you can learn how to make some pretty complex pieces of origami. If you can’t or don’t want to try to make the origami, then you can just look at the pictures, which are in color and are very impressive. Mr. Yoshizawa’s origami animals and other origami are all very realistic.
If you want to make the origami in the book you need to have origami paper, but there is a way that you can make square origami paper with normal paper. Still, real origami paper might make your origami look prettier.
Some of the pieces of origami in this book require cutting or glue or multiple pieces of paper to finish. And almost all the models are pretty hard to do. I was able to make only a few of them, mostly the simpler ones, but still I enjoyed looking through the more complex ones, too.
I think that this is a very good book for the whole bunny family; it can be read by many types of people. Younger bunnies will enjoy looking at the pictures, and older bunnies might want to try to make some of the origami pieces.
This book might also inspire the reader to go and try to learn more about origami, either about its history, or more about how to make more. (I know Caramel enjoys making samurai hats for example!) I really enjoyed trying to make the origami in this book, even when I couldn’t make it exactly the same as it was in the book.
Marshmallow’s Rating: 100%.
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