The book has instructions written solely in hiragana (one of the two scripts used in Japanese writing) so kids can follow along as well as four difficulty levels for those who feel up for a challenge.

You might be familiar with the art of origami from reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes in elementary school, or from folding our own clumsy frogs and cranes and flowers as kids.

The art of origami folds into some quirky, comic and melancholy matters of the heart in Rajiv Joseph's "Animals Out of Paper" at SF Playhouse. The West Coast premiere, which opened Saturday, sags ...