Friday, July 14, 2006

I have often thought about putting together a scratch and sniff book for adults, along the lines of the ones I loved as a kid, but with all the senses, sort of like Pat the Bunny. It would be easy to make a dirty scratch and sniff book for adults (Pat the "other cute furry animal", maybe. And of course there's this) but that's not what I have in mind. I'm picturing something beautiful and literary--maybe a book of poetry--where the sensory things on the page really enhance the reading experience. On one page, maybe, you would eat a piece of candy as you read about sugar; on another, you would listen to a track of music that amplified the rhythm of the language (Laura Esquivel sort of did this with The Law of Love--the book comes with a cd, and you listen to particular tracks, mostly arias, on particular pages of the novel. She also brings vision into the mix with many pages of illustration.) Scents both swoony and rank could enhance the text, too, as could patches of velvet, sandpaper, big swaths of color. I don't know whether I will ever actually see this through, but it's fun to think about.

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