3D printing is having a giant breakthrough, as the first-ever children’s book about 3D printing has been written and released. The book was made in order to give young children a chance to get involved with this new way of producing objects.
The book is called LEO the Maker Prince and it tells the story of Carla and her robot LEO. LEO is a walking, talking robot who has the unique ability to print out anything Carla draws. As he takes Carla by the hand in a walk through New York’s Brooklyn they discover other robots with different specialities. There is a robot who can make metallic prints, as well as the so-called Sinclair-10 who can print out objects from a lot of different designs and a lot of different robots with hypermodern names such as AL1C3-D, IRIS-7 and NiXie.
It sounds somehow illogical: a story about such a modern technique as 3D printing is told in book form. However, there is a very modern element about this 3D printing book. All the objects in the book are printable on a 3D printer. This means children can print out their own figurines using a free download.
Just like the main character in the book, the writer is called Carla – surname: Diana. She has written this book with the purpose of teaching young children about the possibilities of 3D printing. Children are the future’s generation and therefore Diana wants to teach them about tomorrow’s mainstream techniques. “This book serves to illustrate the potential of 3D printing to bring new objects into our lives, as well as its potential to enable people to become makers,” she says. “By putting these ideas into the hands of children, we can help jumpstart our ambassadors for the future.”
If you would like to know more about this project and about the vision of the writer, then here’s a video in which she’s been interviewed by Dale Dougherty from Make: