Michael Morrison: Thank You Al Jaffee

By Caitrin McCullough

Here's the last installment (this week, anyway!) from Head First JavaScript author Michael Morrison. Enjoy!

One of the highlights of tagging along to the grocery store with my Mom as a kid was getting a new issue of Mad magazine. And probably my favorite thing in Mad magazine was the fold-in that appeared on the inside back cover of most issues. Fast forward a couple of decades and I'm thinking about unusual ways to engage readers in Head First JavaScript. Mad magazine fold-ins popped into my head, and Page Benders were born.

If you haven't seen Head First JavaScript yet, here's a look at one of the Page Benders in it (Chapter 8, page 391). The first image is the unfolded page, while the second image shows the page folded and revealing the answer to the question, both in graphics and text. The intent is to reinforce the key concept of each chapter through a fun and unusual interactive element (click the image to see a larger version).

The original Mad magazine fold-ins were created by Al Jaffee, and have been around since the magazine's start in 1964. What makes Mr. Jaffee's fold-ins so cool is how he cleverly disguises the answer. In fact, astute readers developed an eye for solving the fold-ins without actually folding the page, which prompted Jaffee to create "decoy" artwork that gave the impression of a certain outcome purely to disguise the real thing. It's this guessing game of trying to unravel the image prior to folding the page that still makes Mr Jaffee's fold-ins so much fun—he's still cranking them out to this day, nearly 87 years old.

Page Benders in Head First JavaScript aren't quite as elaborate as Jaffee's fold-ins, but they still serve an important role in providing a quirky and novel perspective on a JavaScript topic. In doing so, Page Benders hopefully serve as one additional tool in the Head First tool chest for making learning not only a bit easier, but also more fun. If you have a strong feeling about Page Benders, post up. Love 'em? Hate 'em? Annoyed that your shiny new copy of Head First JavaScript now has folds all through it? Sorry...blame Al Jaffee!

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