We are learning about the Brontë sisters right now and one of our favorite aspects of their lives are the imaginary worlds they created—complete with handmade books. Very, very small books. I jumped out of my chair when I happen to read, on the internet (but I don't remember where) that many of these books were scanned and are available to print. I printed them immediately. They were a hassle to print, they are enlarged, so you can read them, but to print them at the actual scale they were written (impossibly small) they need to be reduced. I fussed around for a long time wasting paper until I got them close enough. This one is 11 pages, the front and back cover are printed at 12%, the inside pages at 17%. This makes them almost the original size, just about 2" tall. I love the internet! The girls freaked out when I showed it to them. They never thought they would see what one of these books looked like. It's a little piece of magic. This one is by Charlotte, she wrote it as a child, and it's just amazing. I asked the girls if they wanted it printed larger so we could read it easier and they were adamant it be printed the size she wrote it. Here's another article about them. The link to the PDF of this book, and others, is at the end of this article.
We are are skimming Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, (we can revisit these and read them all the way through in a few years) and learning a lot about the lives of Charlotte and Jane. We are really enjoying the book, Always Emily
