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I finally had a chance to do some baking with some of our fabulous Moomin Cookie Cutters. As usual, the batch got eaten before I had a chance to ice them, and while these two probably aren’t the finest specimens, but I was lucky to rescue them for the photo.

The characters of course come from this book. Magical, whimsical, philosophical – and universally acknowledged as a great read-aloud – Finn Family Moomintroll is perfect for snuggling up with to read together… I really love this production too – check out these beautiful endpapers and the exquisite drawings by Tove Jansson.

The We Heart Books store also has limited copies of this stunning Moomin picture book – the first published by Tove Jansson.

The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My has recently been re-released by uber-cool Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly. Luxuriously thick pages have beautiful die-cut pictures, tantalisingly revealing a hint of what’s on the next page. This is one of those books that’s so gorgeous that you want to use as a display piece on a shelf or mantlepiece!

||All these treasures are available at the We Heart Books store.||

We are definitely in the midst of the ‘Why?’ phase with Rowan. Seems like it has already been going on for a while and friends tell me that it keeps going for a lot longer again… I know it’s healthy, but sometimes I just like to get through a page of a book at bedtime without five questions about the story and the illustrations.

So last night I could hardly believe it when Rowan sat absolutely absorbed and completely silent as I read him for the first time A Story for Bear by Dennis Haseley and illustrated by Jim La Marche.

The book tells the story of a friendship between a bear and a woman who lives for a time in a woodland cabin. The bear stumbles upon the cabin and sees the woman reading. He is very curious about the square object that she holds, which at times makes her laugh, and at others afraid or pensive. Day by day the bear gathers courage until he is able to lie close to the woman. For the shortening days of summer, and until the leaves change colour, she reads to him. And although the bear can’t understand her words, he feels the emotions conveyed through her voice. Her words make a story: a story for her bear.

I’m not sure which aspect of the story was so captivating for Rowan - it could have been the idea of a wild bear meeting a human for the first time, or perhaps the bear’s perspective, learning about the existence of books and the power of storytelling. Whatever the reason, it was wonderful for me to share a book with him that is very special to me - it was Lou who gave me my copy and I think it is such a beautiful story about the wonders of reading.

I also love Jim La Marche’s illustrations - I reviewed another beautiful book of his, Albert, here. He has such a talent for illustrating light and shadow, and this is done so beautifully again for the woodland scenes in A Story for Bear.

||A Story for Bear is available in the We Heart Books store||

My copy of Katie has lost it’s dust jacket and is falling apart- it has been very well loved.

Written by Richenda and David Martin and published in 1974 it is based on the true story of the authors black and white kitten named Katie.

‘Mr and Mrs Dodds lived in the Australian countryside with their son, Ian. Mr Dodds wrote books and Mrs Dodds taught in the little bush school. In summer the big wide shady veranda of their house was also the schoolroom.’

Ian is given a kitten one day by the post mistress in their small town and he calls her Katie. She is a tabby cat with a white bib and four white socks plus a white tip on the end of her tail. Katie likes to snuggle in warm cosy places and one morning when Mr Dodds is getting ready for a trip to the big city Katie falls asleep in his suitcase.

 And so the story goes; poor Mr Dodds is stuck in the big city with a kitten in his case and a meeting with his editor imminent and meanwhile back at home Ian, his mother and the school children are frantically searching for the cat.

Silly Mr Dodds tries the police station to get some help with the kitten and then he can’t get a hotel room because the town is full ‘…on account of the big cattle sales this week’ In the end, alls well as he leaves the kitten with a friends family, attends his meeting and eventually takes Katie home to the country.

Although this was a cute story I have realised that is the illustrations that really make this picture book special. The story is quite long, and a little strange but it is Noela Young’s gorgeous illustrations of this curious little kitten that I fell in love with ‘when I was little’ and fell in love with again now. Some stories and characters I remember vividly from childhood and I have found that that is also true with illustrations.

This illustration of Katie the kitten asleep in a dolls pram with paws wrapped around a dolls bottle is one that I absolutely remember fondly.

Noela Young also illustrated the classic Muddle-Headed Wombat series of books written by Ruth Park. Katie is now out of print.

Have you seen the latest post on the gorgeous Magnolia Square Little Snippets blog?

It is a review by us of the stunning picture book Madlenka by Peter Sis. If you are looking for a present for an independent and inquisitive little girl aged 4 plus then this book is perfect.

Little Snippets is the new blog by the clever girls from Magnolia Square markets that is devoted to children’s product. The next Magnolia Square Market will be held in Sydney July 2nd to 4th and we will be there selling beautiful books - of course! AND holding storytimes - Yippee.

Hop over to Little Snippets to find out all the details.

Thanks to Fuse #8 today I found this new book illustrated by the amazing Parisian Marc Boutavant that will be released later this year. Absolutely can’t wait for this one. These pics are from the Chronicle Books Blog.

Marc is the author and illustrator of one of the most popular books in our store Around the World With Mouk. His books are the most incredible explosions of colour and character, vibrant, cute, slightly trippy and very, very cool.

Then to my absolute excitement I came across this incredibly delicious blog while searching for the new Boutavant title. It is full of the most gorgeous photo’s of retro and vintage picture books as well as information about the best illustrators in the business. A definite bookmark.

Today Ned and I started swimming lessons again after a rather long absence. Although we have been to the pool as a family and splashed around, Ned was not sure about the water today at all.

This afternoon I dug out a book for us to read together called Swim, Little Wombat, Swim! by one of my favorite illustrators, Charles Fuge. Little Wombat has the most amazing expressions and is such a loveable little character.

In this book Wombat meets Platypus and has a little giggle at him because he looks funny and walks differently. When wombat falls in the stream Platypus rescues him and begins to teach him how to swim.

‘That afternoon, Little Wombat learnt to paddle like a dog…and dive like a frog!

The real centre of the storyline is friendship and accepting others differences but it is also a great book for introducing children to the concept of swimming and being taught to swim. Fuge’s illustrations are so expressive that they clearly show little ones the confidence and joy that Wombat gains from Platypus teaching him swimming skills.

There is a beautiful bind up edition of all the Wombat stories currently available called The Adventures of Little Wombat.

Another gorgeous book about swimming for older children is the picture book The Deep written by arguably Australia’s best storyteller, Tim Winton and beautifully illustrated by Karen Louise. This book is about the ocean rather than a pool. The main character is Alice who despite living by the sea is scared of the ocean, the deep. Her brothers and sisters love the sea but Alice is afraid of what she can’t see beneath the surface. I can really relate to this book as I too am not sure about the sea and have never been quite comfortable in it but just as Alice finds sometimes you can just let yourself relax and discover it’s beauty.

||Swim, Little Wombat, Swim! available online from Amazon||

||The Deep available online from Amazon||

||The Adventures of Little Wombat available online from Amazon||

People who know me well know that I have a soft spot for the moon. Which might have been the first thing that led me to pick up a copy of a new book by Tohby Riddle, Nobody Owns the Moon. That and the distinctly urban look of the cover in beautifully muted shades of colour.

Nobody Owns the Moon opens with an arresting and evocative line: ‘The fox is one of the only wild creatures in the world that can successfully make a life for itself in cities.’ The facing illustration pictures a fox in brown cords and a shirt and jumper sitting in an armchair. Through a window we can see a city streetscape.

What follows is a quirky and whimsical story about life in a big city - told from the perspectives of two characters living somewhat on its perimeter. Clive Prendergast is a fox with a regular job and apartment and he leads his life with a confident, unassuming attitude. His friend Humphrey is a donkey, a sensitive soul, who can’t keep a job for long and doesn’t always have a fixed address. One day, Humphrey finds a special-looking envelope, which gives Clive and Humphrey the entree into a very special night on the town.

The story cleverly and sensitively conveys some thoughts on life in a big city - in a rarely found non-stereotypical way. A city can be beautiful, can be full of constrasts, and a sense of belonging in a city can be contradictory. The text is made up of a series of thought-provoking lines, and alongside the illustrations convey many subtle messages. I love the style of illustration of this book, which is mixed media and collage. On Tohby’s website, you can read about some of the techniques he uses to construct the illustrations.

Locals might recognise Tohby’s style from his regular cartoons in the Saturday Good Weekend magazine (with both The Age and Sydney Morning Herald). He’s also the author of several picture books, including The Great Escape from City Zoo.

And speaking of very urban-styled picture books, the super-stylish blog, Inchmark, is doing a series of posts this week on children’s books on New York. I can’t wait to read her recommendations.

||Nobody Owns the Moon available from Readings||

||The Great Escape from City Zoo available from Amazon||

||Tohby Riddle’s website||

When I was little, we spent lots of long weekends and school holidays at my grandparents’ house in Myrtleford, in country Victoria. They had a big set of shelves in the playroom at the back of their house, containing books dating from my dad’s childhood. I spent many hours reading the books from those shelves. It felt like I was rediscovering them afresh each time we visited.

My very favourite book was called A Big Ball of String, written and illustrated by Marion Holland, and published in 1958 in the Random House Beginner Book hardback range.

It’s sometimes strange to revisit a book you loved as a child because there are certain elements you forget and others that stand out more prominently in your memory than appear on re-reading. My memory of A Big Ball of String is that a boy who is sick and confined to his bed becomes very inventive, and uses a big ball of string to rig up all sorts of contraptions in his bedroom. Even though I have read this book again in recent times, I was still somewhat shocked when I picked it up again today to discover that in fact this sequence does not occur until page 46 of a 64-page book!

The simple yet endearing illustrations use just three colours, and the images are contemporary to the time of publication. I wonder now whether my fascination with this book was related to watching countless Leave it to Beaver repeats on TV at about the same time. There are certainly a few similarities between the both the physical appearance and the escapades of Beaver and those of the protagonist of A Big Ball of String.

“I had a little string. It was no good at all. I went to look for more string to make a string ball.”

And so the boy starts his adventures collecting pieces of string from wherever he can find them to make a BIG ball of string. Then all that remains is to find some good kind of thing to do with the string!

But getting back to page 46, our new friend eventually comes down with a cold, at which point he realises he can use his string to make his day stuck in bed more interesting:

“NOW I know what will be a good thing! I can stay in my bed with my big ball of string! I can play in my bed! I can do ANYTHING!”

And so this resourceful and inventive boy ties string to his darts so he can get them all back again. He rigs up a string and box on a pulley system between his bed and his shelves so that he can get his books. He ties string to his window blind, to his light switch and to his door. He even ties some string to a toy mouse so that he can play with his cat.

Looking back, I reckon it was partly the independence of this boy that held such strong appeal for me: on his own and without the intervention of adults, he strives and succeeds. And throughout all his misadventures he has complete faith that he can achieve ANYTHING. And after a little while, it’s hard for some of his attitude not to rub off on you.

I have just ordered this most beautiful looking book from Amazon, called Come on, Rain!. It is the picture book companion to Karen Hesse’s Newbery Award winning intermediate novel Out of the Dust. The extract and description on Amazon has me writing this with tingles, isn’t it amazing when books do that?

A creeper of hope circles round my bones.
“Come on, rain!” I whisper.

Apart from Karen Hesse’s beautiful poetry this book is illustrated by one of my favorites, Jon J. Muth. Muth’s book Zen Shorts is a New York Times bestseller and was awarded an honor in the 2006 Caldecott Medal. Zen Shorts is infact more than a picture book it is actually a fable, or three. Three children wake up one morning to find a giant panda called Stillwater sitting in their backyard with a red umbrella. Stillwater tells each child a story, a meditation, that are based upon Zen and Taoist tales that have been told for centuries. 

Muth has so cleaverly and softly melded these ancient teachings into a gorgeous modern picture book that he has so beautifully illustrated with the most amazing watercolours that make it absolutely a book of art.

There is a beautiful collectors edition of Zen Shorts available on Amazon too which comes in a slipcase and a plush version of Stillwater too, I’m so tempted!

Zen Ties is the new book and again stars the wise and gentle Stillwater but also introduces his nephew Koo a haiku-speaking panda. What is so lovely about both these picture books is that they are not patronising or forceful, children can take from the stories what they want and it will probably be something different each time.

I also have one of Muth’s other picture books, The Three Questions which is a retelling of Tolstoy’s short story of the same name. All of these books are special so much so that I even handle them differently, I find myself runnning my hand over the page wanting to touch the beauty and the creativity. True love!

One of the things I used to love about working in bookstores was when new boxes arrived from publishers. It was like Christmas every month, the anticipation and the joy of finding out what was inside.

Now I get that feeling when I walk into a bookshop to see what is new on the shelves and also when I’m browsing the internet, checking out other peoples blogs for new and exciting books.

A couple of days a go I came across Suzy Lee on Amazon. The book is Wave and it is wordless.

Suzy Lee is amazing and I must now have Wave on my bookshelf; have a look at her website here to learn more about this very gorgeous artist.

Wordless picture books are of course an art because the whole story must be conveyed convincingly in the illustrations. They are very important in education for prompting children to learn how to interpret stories and also to recognise a beginning, middle and end in story telling. Wordless books are great at home as well; younger children can enjoy explaining what is happening in the illustrations and older children can take it further by imagining alternate endings and additional plot lines. Wordless picture books are rewarding.

weheartbooks top 5 wordless picture books

1. Up and Up (Shirley Hughes)

I love Shirley Hughes and one of my favorite books as a child was Dogger, or David and the Dog as it is known in the USA (I’ll post about that one another time). She is one of the best known children’s author/illustrators in the world. Set out in comic strip style Up and Up consists of black line drawings against a sepia background. The story of a little girl who longs to fly, it is purely magical as you follow her journey: she gets her wish and off she goes up and up. Her personality is infectious and she always makes me smile as she drifts along until she is finally rescued by a man in a hot air balloon. There is so much to look at in this book which makes it a great tool for encouraging children to make up their own stories. It doesn’t even have to be about the main character, you could make up different stories for the others she meets along the way. Ages 3+

2. The Arrival (Shaun Tan)

Well I just think this award winning book is incredible, in fact Shaun Tan is incredible. The Arrival depicts the journey of a man who leaves home for a strange, fantastical land in order to support his family. The hundreds of drawings Tan worked on for this stunning book are partly a reflection of his own father’s journey to Australia and his struggle to fit into an alien culture. More than a book The Arrival is an awe-inspiring artwork; every time I pick it up I find new and amazing elements that I had missed before. Ages 8+

3. The Snowman (Raymond Briggs)

Regarded as a cult classic this picture book tells a story in pictures - 175 frames to be exact - of the one night friendship of a boy and his snowman. The boy lovingly creates the man out of snow and when he looks out of his window that night he discovers the snowman is alive. They take each other on a tour of their worlds, the boy of his house and the snowman of his wintery world. In the morning when the boy wakes up the snowman is gone, he has melted and all that is left are pieces of coal. This book is all about the joy of exploring and discovering new things, it is about new friendships and then the fond memories of those friendships. This book really does give children the opportunity to imagine their own ending to the story. 4+

4. Sunshine and Moonlight (Jan Omerod)

These are favorites of mine from childhood, I can remember borrowing them from the school library numerous times. In the last few years they have been re-published and are just as beautiful as I remember them way back in primary school. Sunshine follows the progression of a little girl’s day as she gets up out of bed and begins her daily routine. My favorite scenes are when she hops into bed with her parents while they read their morning papers; everyone in this house has a routine and they all fit into each other’s. Toddlers can compare their routine in the morning before childcare/preschool with this little girl’s. Jan includes so much detail that this is perfect for beginning discussion with children about their own routines. Sunshine won the Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award in 1982. Moonlight is similar to Sunshine but of course follows the routine on the other end of the day; cleaning teeth, bathtime and bed. Ages 2+

5. Tuesday (David Wiesner)

Reading Tuesday is like watching an M. Night Shyamalan film; it is weird, quirky, funny and enthralling. On this particular Tuesday around 8 in the evening a strange thing begins to happen, suddenly frogs/toads start to invade the town levitating on lily pads and seemingly having a great time. The frogs eventually return to their rightful homes BUT the big surprise is what is going to happen on the following Tuesday? Tuesday won the prestigious Caldecott Medal and Wiesner’s amazing speech is here. I love this quote from that speech

Fortunately, kids know funny when they see it. If, after reading Tuesday one evening before bed, they look out the window and see frogs flying by—well, we should all be so lucky.

Wiesner’s art is incredible and I can guarantee that parents will love this as much as their children. Ages 4+

Although we have used some very classic choices here there is also room for a special mention for the fantastic wordless books by wonderful Australian illustrator Gregory Rogers, The Boy, the Bear, the Baron and the Bard and sequel Midsummer Knight. Ages 6+

Here is a photo of my 20c treasure from Booktown…

Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Story and Pictures by Virginia Lee Burton.

Mike is an American classic first published in 1939. This copy is a little old Picture Puffin from 1977 that originally cost $1.75. The book ended up in the CFA Nothing Over $5 Sale from Coghill’s Creek Primary School, which is stamped inside the cover.

Mike and his steam shovel Mary Anne are out of work when new petrol and electric machines take over their jobs. Then Mike reads about a town called Popperville that needs a new town hall and they set off to dig the hall a cellar. They promise the town that if they don’t dig the cellar in a day they will not ask for payment. The whole town of Popperville turns out to watch and in the end they come up with an ingenious solution to everyone’s problems. This is a wonderful story about modernisation and how sometimes old is better and still has a place in society. Children who love diggers will really appreciate this picture book and will like the illustrations of the dig dig digging. There is a lot of text in this book though so it would be recommended for 4+.

Virginia Lee Burton also wrote The Little House, which she won the Caldecott Medal for in 1943 and Katy and the Big Snow. Each of these books are similar in theme to Mike Mulligan in that with grit and determination in the face of adversity you can succeed. All three have inanimate objects that have feelings and are befriended by people, which is an interesting concept.

As Katie mentioned in her post yesterday, we had a great time at Booktown and certainly plan to make a weekend of it next year. I too like Katie am envious of all the gorgeous things that other bloggers find at secondhand bookshops, thrift shops and estate sales. But I’m pretty happy with my little copy of Mike Mulligan and I wonder how many littlies have held it and enjoyed it before me.