Chemistry

A few months ago I decided to have a go at creating a pop-up book. No idea why, the idea just appeared and stuck there. But what should it be about? I spoke to my agent and he advised to keep it simple. The more complicated it is the more it will cost to produce and so no one will consider publishing. I thought about creating my own character like Fungus the Bogeyman, or using the work I've done on developing a cartoon book based on Lewis Carols Jabberwocky poem (more of that in a later post). But nothing seemed to fit the pop-up genre. Then I remembered my old chemistry lessons. Our teacher had placed to one slide a large pile of magnesium for a later experiment we were all going to do. Before that he had a demonstration set up to show what happens when potasium hits water - lots of fizzing and an explosion of blue sparks. It may have been us egging him on, but I think he used a bit too much cesium. A spark flew gracfully through the air to land on the magnesium which exploded into a six-foot flame which licked about the top of the ceiling. It was quickly over, leaving a large hole in the wooden table and a class covered in magnesium oxide. Not surprisingly this moment has stuck firmly in my memory and I realised what a great way to indtroduce chemsitry to the 8-12 age group - explosions! And explosions would look good in pop-up form.

I am currently developing a demo version for my agent to take to the London Book Fair. I've drawn up two reactions: Sodium and Iodine above and Caesium with water to the left. Not being a chemist I found YouTube and brilliant place to find examples of people creating explosions! I've got a month to finish the demo book and then its sitting back and seeing what people with the power to publish think about the idea.