If you love books, or want to give a gift to a book lover, an attractive book plate can come in handy. Or one that has meaning to you, because of the author, illustrator, or character mentioned or shown in the bookplate. There are some nice free printable bookplates online, many of which relate to children’s illustrators or authors, or are actually created by (or for) them.

bookplate by Penny Dale

bookplate by Mick Inkpen

My Home Library, established by children’s author Anne Fine, is a fantastic resource for free quality printable bookplates–bookplates by well-known (and lesser known) children’s illustrators and authors (mainly from the UK), including illustrators Quentin Blake; Polly Dunbar; Aliki; Shirley Hughes; David Melling; Marie Louise-Gay; Jane Hissey; Mick Inkpen; Helen Oxenbury; and children’s authors Debi Gliori; Ian Beck; Raymond Briggs; and many, many more. There are more than 200 free bookplates here. There are large bookplates (for picture books, etc), medium bookplates (for hardcover novels), and small bookplates (for paperback novels). The majority of the bookplates are in black and white, and look like ink drawings, but there are also color plates found here. Some of the more well-known illustrators are only found in the color section. Some bookplates are quite beautiful, some are instantly recognizable as the artist, all are interesting and all from children’s authors or illustrators. What a find!

My Home Library also has a few free printable bookmarks (6 black-and-white and 4 color).

You can find 6 beautiful color printable bookplates at the Bookhive.

There are some lovely bookplates here designed by New Zealand children’s illustrators.

Graham-Cameron Illustration has 10 free printable bookplates in color, created by children’s illustrators.

Children’s author/illustrator Jan Brett has 3 lovely color bookplates that you can print off. She offers them in .pdf format, which means they’re higher quality.

Children’s illustrator Bridget MacKeith has 4 color printable bookplates for you to print.

Children’s author Anne Fine has 4 free printable bookplates on her site.

PizzaByTheSlice has 4 black-and-white printable bookplates, 2 cat related, and one Christmas related.

Paul Jennings offers 4 free color printable bookplates with images from the covers of his books.

Other Book-Related Printables:

Susan Taylor Brown has a beautiful reading door hanger that you can download and print off; teaching guides; and a coloring page.

Random House UK has a lot of free book-related printables. I thought the best of them were: Teenage Advisory Total Trivia Flyers; Eric the Red - Spot the Difference; How to Speak Moo activity sheet. They also have ecards, desktop wallpaper, and some screensavers.

Phoebe Gilman’s site (The Balloon Tree (one of my favorite picture books), Jillian Jiggs) has an activity book where you can print off some black-and-white illustrations of Jillian Jiggs to color, a bookmark to color, and a word search.

For quality, free printable bookmarks, see my posts here and here.