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September has already arrived and yesterday was M’s first day back at school, starting a new year. With plenty of planning on my mind I thought today would be a good time to share a round-up of 2012 Calendars featuring art by children’s book illustrators.

The one calendar I’m definitely buying this year is that produced by Carousel magazine, a quarterly publication in the UK dedicated to children’s books.

The calendar includes work by thirteen brilliant illustrators: Helga Bansch, Raymond Briggs, Nick Butterworth, Polly Dunbar, Rebecca Elliott, Sarah Garson, Emily Gravett, Pat Hutchins, Mick Inkpen, Catherine Rayner, Pam Smy, Helen Ward and Brian Wildsmith. It costs £6.95 plus £2.50 postage & packing and all proceeds go to the charity CCAA -Kids with Arthritis. To order a copy fill out the form here.

Other kidlit calendars I’ve come across for next year include ones for The Little Prince, Arthur Rackham, Beatrix Potter, the Flower Fairies, Miffy, and Edward Gorey.

3 Comments on 2012 Calendars featuring art by children’s book illustrators, last added: 9/5/2011

After my review of the glorious Otto the Book Bear, you’ll know where I stand on threatened library closures. If you have similar feelings about how valuable your local library is, how libraries as a whole are something to be valued and cherished, you may like to sign this petition in support of public libraries.

Click to be taken to the petition

In other news… if you’re a fan of book blogs you might like to know about Book Blogger Appreciation Week (BBAW). I’m not a huge fan of the title, but last year I did take part in BBAW and it was a fantastic way of finding new book blogs. Two blogs that I’ve come to really enjoy over the last year are ones I read for the first time as part of BBAW: Iris on Books and Presenting Lenore.

It’s now time to nominate your favourite book blogs for this year’s BBAW. You’ve only got until August 13th to nominate and you can nominate in as many or as few categories as you like once you’ve registered.

You can register (and then nominate) here: http://bookbloggerappreciationweek.com/2011/07/book-blogger-appreciation-week-2011-registration-is-now-open/

You can read about the different categories open for nominations here: http://bookbloggerappreciationweek.com/2011/07/the-2011-bbaw-awards-categories/

The list looks daunting but you don’t have to nominate in all categories – in fact you could nominate in just one category

You don’t have to be a book blogger to nominate (though you do need either a google account or twitter account to register). If you are a book blogger you cannot nominate yourself in any category.

I’ve already submitted my nominations, I hope you submit yours too!

Today I’ve a bumper set of free activity sheets for you from children’s book authors and illustrators. Whether creating pop-up cards, designing posters for your home book corner or imagining what colour skin dinosaurs had is your thing, today there’s something for everyone.

Robert Sabuda is a preeminent children’s pop-up book creator, a paper engineer extraodrinaire. He has created pop up versions of many children’s classics, including Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Robert Sabuda’s webpage has a dedicated subsection packed with pop-up designs you can print and create yourself, including animals, celebrations and a whole series of Star Wars designs! For each pop-up design there’s a template to download and print, followed by detailed photo tutorials taking you through the process step by step.

Screenshot from Robert Sabuda's website (click to be taken there)

Robert Sabuda has collaborated on a dinosaur pop up book, but there are no free dino templates on his website. If dinos are your thing, then head over to Paul Stickland’s website. Paul Stickland has written a series of fantastic dinosaur books for the youngest of listeners, Ten Terrible Dinosaurs being one of our personal favourites. He’s also interested in paper engineering.

There are many dino colouring-in sheets to download on Paul Stickland’s site (right clicking to view image brings up full size image which can then be printed).

Elizabeth O. Dulemba has illustrated over 10 books, and one of the nicest things about her website is that every Tuesday she publishes free colouring pages for anyone and everyone to enjoy. She’s created a veritable treasure trove of colouring-in sheets, arranged by topic to include school and

Last week we were on holiday in a county where 9 libraries have had their funding withdrawn. If volunteers can’t be found (putting aside the whole issue of whether volunteers running libraries is a good thing) the libraries, more than a quarter of all the libraries in the county in question, will shut their doors for a final time within a year.

The message this sends out to me is “We, the powers that be, don’t care about imagination, exploration, understanding. We don’t care about community.”

Image: Phil Bradley

And yet, without imagination, exploration, understanding and community what sort of life would we lead? Would it be the sort of life we want to lead?

A great deal of what I document here on the blog is about how books spark our family’s imagination, encourage us to explore and help us to understand the world around us. The blog is important to me as it helps create, bring together and nurture a community that I’m delighted to be a part of.

And whilst many of the books I review here are ones I’ve bought or been sent, it’s the library that is the backbone of so much that I do with the kids. It’s the library I turn to for books on crafty projects, it’s the library I turn to for books recommended by readers of this blog, it’s the library I turn to to find older books by authors who are new discoveries to us, it’s the library I turn to for browsing which sparks ideas, thoughts and eventual adventures which end up here on the blog.

It’s the library that I hope you first turn to when you read a review here of a book you think sounds wonderful.

So when I read Otto the Book Bear, the latest book by Katie Cleminson, I hugged it! It’s a book about the magic of libraries and the life book characters can lead. It’s about the joy of being read (and as a writer, if only of a blog, I definitely appreciate this), and it’s beautiful, tender and full of optimism.

Otto is a book bear with a special secret. Although he is “at his happiest when children read his book“, when no-one is looking he can escape the pages of his books and come to life. This ex-folio exploration is lots of fun until the day his book is packed up and taken away before Otto can return to the safety of his pages.

He searches and searches for a new home but without success. Just as he is on the verge of giving up, Otto sees “a place that looked full of light and hope“. Given my preamble above I’m sure you can guess what sort of building this might be; yes – a building full of books, imagination and friendship – a library.

Otto is thrilled with his new home, and the friends he makes from other books but best of all, “now Otto had lots of readers – and that made him the happiest book bear of all.”

If you read my review

Illustration by Hungarian artist Emy Róna

Having watched Eleanor’s secret (which, don’t forget you can win a copy of here) I got to thinking about other films which are about reading, the power of stories and/or storybook characters coming to life. With the help of friends on Twitter I came up with this list:

I haven’t watched all of these so can’t vouch for their quality. Several are not suitable for kids, but I’ve included them here for the grown-ups amongst us to explore! If you’ve seen any of them, do leave me a comment so I and others can find out more

As well as feature length films, I came across a whole slew of animations from the 1930s and 1940s which feature book characters which come to life. It seems to have been quite a popular theme in the inter-war years! Here’s my list of animated shorts, just bear in mind you might wish to view these without kids first to check whether you’re happy for your kids to see them – some of them contain racist characterizations.

In a little departure from the norm, today I’m not reviewing a book, but rather a film, Eleanor’s Secret, directed by Dominique Monfery.

The reason why I’ve wanted to share Eleanor’s Secret with you is because it is a celebration of the joy of reading and a tribute to the power and magic of stories.

Seven year old Nat cannot yet read and is terribly disappointed when he discovers he has inherited his Aunt’s library. Although he adored having stories read to him by his Aunt, when Nat himself opens a book he almost drowns in a jumble of letters. Understandably Nat wants nothing to do with what makes him feel so uncomfortable.

Only after his parents sell the collection to a dealer who has realised the library is packed with first editions does Nat learn that he has an important responsibility. He must save all the characters in the stories read to him by Aunt Eleanor from disappearing forever by reading aloud a magic inscription. If the spell is not read by midday, all his storybook favourites will be lost for eternity, and children the world over will only ever be read true tales.

Eleanor's Secret - Aunt Eleanor's house

Alice in Wonderland, the Match Girl, Peter Pan, Rapunzel, Mowgli and many other colourful characters climb out of their books and beg Nat to help them before it is too late. Only the wicked fairy, Carabosse from Sleeping Beauty, throws a spanner in the works. She refuses to believe that Nat is the true inheritor of the library – after all he cannot read. In a puff of magic she shrinks him and in doing so makes his race against time to return the books to the library, and to learn to read, even more difficult.

I was instantly entranced by the story in this film – swept up in its passion for developing a love of reading, for wearing its heart on its sleeve. “Mankind can never live without dreams” says Aunt Eleanor, whilst the inscription Nat must read before the clock strikes 12 is “Just because it’s a story doesn’t mean it’s not real“.

The look of the film is utterly gorgeous. The colours and textures at times reminded me of Shaun Tan’s illustrations whilst the library and magical characters made me happily remember How to Live Forever by Colin Thompson. It was only after I’d seen the film did I discover that its art work is based on drawings by French illustrator Rebecca Dautremer whose The Secret Lives of Princesses has been well received in the English speaking world.

As well as being a pleasure to look at, the characterization is great. I think the animation of what Nat feels when he’s presented with a text he can’t read is acutely, brilliantly imaginatively observed. The tricky, teasing but ultimately supportive and loving relationship between Nat and his older sister is also very believable.

At the start of this month I published a list 50+ brilliant picture books with contributions from several illustrators I’m fortunate to have “met” (at least online). The list was intended to be an source of ideas and inspiration.

One interesting aspect for me of that list was how many of the books chosen were published 30, 40 or even 50 years ago. This observation made me want to look for the best picture books of recent years – to find some inspiration amongst the newest, brightest picture books available.

To help me in this quest I turned to this year’s winners of the Booktrust New Best Illustrators Award. These illustrators “represent the best rising talent in the field of illustration today, [they] demonstrate remarkable creative flair, artistic skill and boundless imagination in their work“, so who better to ask for some suggestions as to the best, fresh picture books?

So now, as the month draws to a close I offer you another springboard into a selection of amazing picture books. I hope the list will whet your appetite, stoke your imagination and make you hungry to visit the library. Here’s what our award winning illustrators chose and why they chose it…

Kevin Waldron

I love the invention of Serge Bloch. Well delivered message.