I've really been thinking about some of the ramifications of mask wearing, and wondering how to make them a little friendlier for young children. I decided it might soften mask wearing a bit if some of the characters on the front of picture books on the back-to-school shelf were wearing masks. For the most part, it was a pretty easy craft project for a rainy afternoon. All-in-all, it took me about 40 minutes to figure it out and apply masks to the characters on the covers of a handful of books.

Here's what you will need:

• Books
• Tracing paper (I used parchment paper out of the kitchen, but any thin paper will do.)
• A pencil or pen that won't bleed
• Scissors
• Adhesive/removable film. I used Cricut Removable Vinyl.

Here's the process:

1. Choose a book. You will need books where the faces of the characters are large enough on the cover. You need their faces to be unobstructed by their hands or the faces of other characters (unless you want to do a more complicated masking job). Also, the placement of their eyes, nose, and mouth matter. If the nose is almost on the same plane as the eyes, then it becomes hard to draw a mask on the face. I was also intentional about selecting books with slick covers, as it seems that would make it easier to eventually remove the masks.
2. Trace the face. Use tracing paper to trace the face of the character on the cover. I found it helpful to include the ears, eyes, and mouth. I even traced the hair, just because it gave me a better sense of how the final product would look. 
3. Draw the mask. Draw a mask on the tracing of the face. Start from the top of one ear and go to the top of the next. Repeat, drawing a line from the bottom of one ear to the next. On the sides, the mask curves in. You will have to modify this, depending on how the characters are drawn. For example, I put a mask on a bear and a fox, neither of which had ears that easily translated to drawing a mask. 
4. Trim the tracing. Trim down your drawing by cutting widely around the mask. This will involve cutting up the drawing of the face, which is okay, since you are only going to need the mask.
5. Cut the vinyl. Cut a piece of vinyl a little larger than the mask. Put the vinyl behind your drawing. If your vinyl and your tracing paper were both in rolls, you may find it helpful to make sure they are both curved in the same direction, so that they don't fight each other. Also, when I used a light color, such as yellow, I found I had to double the vinyl.
6. Cut out the mask. With the drawing against the vinyl, cut through both to cut out the mask. You will have to make sure that you don't let them wiggle, but keep the same alignment through the whole process.
7. Adhere the mask. Remove the backing from the vinyl. The adhesive vinyl I used was pretty forgiving; I could pull it off and reaffix it as I needed to. There was a bit of trial and error with applying each of the masks.
8. Cut and affix. If you want to cut thin strips of white vinyl to make the elastic for the mask, then that is the last step. I found it easier to remove the backing from the vinyl before cutting these really thin strips.

Here are a few images of the process:
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When I started this project, I just randomly picked titles that seemed to have characters on the cover that would were large enough to apply a mask on their faces. I was not picking books that were necessarily the best books for launching the school year, although some might be viable options. 

While this is not a sophisticated or comprehensive solution to softening mask-wearing, it may prove a conversation starter or at least something to engage students. At the very least, this is a fun way to think about how masks can cover our expressions. You could even pull back the film to reveal the expressions of the characters. This project seems to be fun, whether you are sharing books virtually or in person.

​Perhaps, if you begin school "face-to-face," they should go on your shelf six-feet apart.

Note: After I had completed the project, my children pointed out that the bird on Rocked Writes a Story didn't get masked! I had already put up my materials, at that point. If I were sharing the book with children, I would mask all of the characters on the cover.  

​One of the big challenges with wearing a mask is being heard and understood. This may be particularly problematic for "face-to-face" learning this fall, when children are necessarily very spread out. Reading aloud, for example, to a group that is widely spread throughout the room would have its own challenges without a mask.

​In the video below, I show you how to use a personal voice amplifier while wearing a mask. The microphone is not a perfect solution to the challenges of teaching while wearing a mask, but it seems to offer quite a bit of volume and clarity. I also think it will reduce the fatigue of trying to project your voice through a mask all day, perhaps making this tricky back-to-school a tiny bit easier.