Amy White, Mark H Pulham & Dallin Blankenship, Dressing the Naked Hand: the world’s greatest guide to puppets, puppetry and puppeteering, Exisle, Nov 2015, 184pp., $29.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9781938301131
This is a book and DVD combination for teens and adults. The DVD provides over 2 hours of puppet making and puppetry presentation techniques including a humorous French chef skit demonstrating how to convert stuffed toys into hand puppets with mouths that open and close. The cover states “For immature audiences mostly” and with good reason as it is a bit disturbing watching the scissors go to work on the toy snake and hearing comments like ‘head on a plate’ so this isn’t a book recommended for young children. The layout of the book is well designed with step by step graphic guides to puppet creation and easy to follow written instructions. Even if you are not making a puppet this book is wonderfully entertaining, great to browse and very informative with humorous quips giving the puppets life.
Reviewed by Sharon Smith