Book Review: Marguerite Makes a Book

Bruce Robertson’s Marguerite Makes a Book is truly a living book, in the Charlotte Mason sense of the phrase: a book that tells a story in a compelling fashion, and simultaneously imparts knowledge in a specific field.  Ideally, all the books we teach with would be living books– whole books (rather than textbooks) which teach us about a subject in a literary fashion.

Marguerite, the daughter of a medieval bookmaker, has learned her father’s trade well.  When his glasses break and he is unable to meet the noble woman’s deadline, Marguerite steps in.  Through her story, we learn about illuminating texts.  The story gripped my children, and at the end, they immediately asked if we could illuminate books.

The process of making our own paint was less successful than Marguerite’s.  Of course, I didn’t have access to gold leaf, vermilion, or lapis lazuli.  We tried to make paint with spinach, parsley, turmeric, beets and egg white, but we succeeded only in getting tepid colors that worked as washes, but not as paint.  But we certainly enjoyed the process.