Too much noise...

When I was in elementary school, I patiently waited for the Scholastic Book Order Forms to come out every year.  I would pour over the pages and finally decide on one book to buy.  Back then, the books only cost 25 cents, but money was tight.  I'm pretty sure Mom squeezed the quarters for our books out of her budget and I willingly did extra chores to earn the money to buy my books.

One of my favorite books that I bought is Too Much Noise by Ann McGovern.  The story is about an old man, Peter, who lives in a little house.  He goes to the village wise man complaining about all the noise in his little house - his creaking bed, squeaking floor, whistling tea kettle, leaves swishing on the roof.  Each day that Peter comes to complain about the noise, the wise man tells him to get another animal.  Finally, Peter comes to the wise man with the cow, donkey, sheep, hen, dog and cat and complains that the wise man's advice is making things worse.  The wise man tells him to let all the animals go.  Peter follows his instructions and goes back home where he realizes his new perspective on noise helps him understand that he really had nothing to complain about in the first place.  What a great story this is to teach children (and adults) about perspective!  It's a good book for teaching animal noises and I love the illustrations, as well.

This thin little paperback book is around 45 years old and sometime last year it mysteriously lost its cover.  Sadly, I put the book away so it would be out of reach and hopefully survive another generation. 

I found it in my To Do basket in my craft room this spring and left it sitting on the table so I could figure out how to preserve it and be able to read it to my grands.  Then, one day, it hit me - a small photo album would be perfect.

I went to Hobby Lobby and purchased this 8x8 photo album with one set of extra pages, removed the white cardstock in each protector sleeve so both sides of each page could be seen, then carefully took the book apart.  I used my trimmer to cut each page to the correct size and placed the pages in the protectors.  Now, my grands can enjoy this book any time they wish to read it.