April is International Guitar Month, and I wanted to share some resources in case you have a guitar-obsessed child in your life. The cardboard guitars pictured above were made three years ago and have been used almost daily since by my own guitar-obsessed 6-year-old. They’ve been to the repair shop many times, but they’ve held up pretty well.
If you’d like to make guitars like these, you’ll need a $13 guitar wall calendar, some kind of stiff backing (we had some foam board around, but any thick cardboard will do), and a paint stir stick or jumbo chopstick for the reverse side to keep the neck from bending. First you glue the guitar of your choice from the calendar to your board, cut the whole thing out with an X-Acto knife (this is a grown-up job), and then you can tape the stick to the reverse side. Now you’re done, unless you want to poke a hole in your cardboard guitar to hook it up to a cardboard amp.
At the library, we were planning to make our own functional rubber band guitars next week. Check out this activity if you’d like to try it at home!
And here are a few terrific children’s biographies of famous guitarists:
Django: The World’s Greatest Jazz Guitarist by Bonnie Christensen
Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar by Keith Richards
Guitar Genius: How Les Paul Engineered the Solid-Body Electric Guitar and Rocked the World by Kim Tomsic
Joni: The Lyrical Life of Joni Mitchell by Selina Alko
When Angels Sing: The Story of Rock Legend Carlos Santana by Michael Mahin
For the youngest guitar enthusiasts, the fictional Violet’s Music by Angela Johnson should hit the spot.
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