MAMF Military Child Picture Book Project

April is the month of the Military Child and the Museum of the American Military Family (MAMF) will be showcasing books by and for brats throughout the month. As part of our showcase, we want to honor the military child through the creation of picture books. During the month of April, we want to encourage you to make a picture book of your life as a military child, or the life of another military child. Once the book is complete, you can share it with your family and friends. Of course, the museum would love to have a copy and will be proud to preserve and display your story.

My name is Cheryl Avila, and I am the museum’s Storyteller. I have created a picture book on PowerPoint to show you how simple it can be. Click on this link to see the picture book I created to honor my brother, Karl Morton.

https://americanmilitaryfamily.wordpress.com/the-family/

If you would like to create your own picture book, start by collecting photos of the military child. If the images are already digital images, save them on a new folder on your desktop. If the images are not digital, you can take a picture of the photo with your camera and save it that way. If you have the capability to scan the photo, that would be good, too. You need at least twice as many photos as pages in your picture book.

Open a blank presentation on PowerPoint. 

For the cover of your book, include the name of the military child and perhaps a statement about the person. Click on New Slide for the pages of the book.

I used the “Two Content” option for most of the pages. If I only wanted one photo, I used the Title and Content slide.

Use the photo icon on the slide to insert a photo. You can add additional photos on the page by using the Insert tab and selecting Picture. 

I then added a sentence to each page explaining the photos. Since it is a picture book, I tried to keep the sentences simple. I then went to the Design tab and clicked on “Design Ideas.” 

I scrolled through the various design options until I found a design I liked for that page. Save your PowerPoint and it is ready to share. You can print your book or share over email.  It was that easy!

You can now share your picture book by attaching it to an email to your family and friends. You can also print out the book if you prefer a hard copy of your book. If you would like to share your picture book with MAMF, we would love your digital contribution to the museum. If you create your book using PowerPoint, it will need to be converted to a pdf to put on the MAMF website. To convert your ppt to a pdf for the museum, click on the down arrow in the box under the name of your file. A drop-down box will appear and click on PDF (*pdf).

Send your pdf to militaryfamilymuseum@comcast.net. Put “MAMF Military Child Picture Book” in the subject line of your email. Please put your name and contact information in the email. If you prefer printing your story, you can send it by mail to:

Museum of the American Military Family, 546B Road 333 (Historic Route 66 next to Molly’s Bar), Tijeras, NM 87059.

All of us at the museum look forward to seeing what you come up with!

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