Usborne KNOWHOW Omnibus Volume One

Welcome back! Today, we’re diving back into a compilation that defined childhood creativity for so many of us: the Usborne KNOWHOW Omnibus Volume One. This beast contains six amazing books, and it’s one we’ve been looking forward to. If you’ve seen our previous videos on the Usborne KNOWHOW series, you know what a goldmine these are. Let's not waste any time.

We start with arguably the most-used book in my own collection: The KnowHow Book of Paper Fun. Who else spent hours tearing, folding, and gluing? The results? Well, they never looked quite as crisp or wonderful as the photos in the book. My paper planes were lopsided, my paper chains were a bit of a mess, and the folding projects... let’s just say they had character. But that’s the magic of it, isn't it? The sheer excitement of doing it, and seeing a surprisingly funny, maybe even charmingly pathetic, result at the end was more than gratifying. It taught you that the process was the reward.

Next up, the volume responsible for making the biggest mess in my house: The KnowHow Book of Print and Paint. I used this one quite a bit, too! We’re talking potato printing, stamping, simple screen-printing techniques... basically, anything that involved dipping something in brightly colored paint and slamming it onto a piece of paper. You were a real artist for the afternoon, even if your hands, the table, and somehow the dog ended up covered in poster paint. Absolute chaos, but so much fun.

Then we move to The KnowHow Book of Flying Models. The hope, the ambition! We were building masterpieces: gliders, paper helicopters, and elaborate flying toys. In reality? Many didn't stay in the air for very long. They were beautiful, though! They had that aspirational Usborne look—clean lines and bright colors. They might have plummeted to the ground within seconds, but for those few glorious moments they were airborne, you felt like an aeronautical engineer.

Our fourth book is The KnowHow Book of Puppets. This one was gorgeous. The designs were very pretty, but I have to admit, I didn’t use it much. My puppet experience was mostly limited to the cloth creations we made in school, and the projects in this book seemed to need a lot more adult help, time, and specific materials than I had access to. Still, it was a wonderful read. It planted the seed of what you could make, even if you never actually made it.

And that feeling of aspiration carries right through to our final two books for this video: The KnowHow Book of Action Toys, followed by The KnowHow Book of Action Games.

Similar to the puppet book, I loved reading these. The toys and games they outlined—the mechanical contraptions, the complex board games—seemed so intricate and cool. But as a kid, they felt like monumentally difficult projects to tackle solo. I always thought, "Maybe with a little help, I could build that incredible marble run." These were the books that showed you the potential of making and designing.

And that brings us to the end of the first half of this massive compilation! From the simple chaos of paper and paint to the challenging ambition of action toys, Volume One has already given us a huge dose of creative nostalgia.

But don’t worry, that’s only half the story. The Usborne KNOWHOW Omnibus Volume One actually contains six books, so you know what that means...

...join me next time for Part Two, where we’ll explore the remaining three books and finish off the KNOWHOW Omnibus Volume One! You won’t want to miss it. Thanks for watching, and let me know in the comments which one of these was your favorite!