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One event I will be missing this year, being on the wrong side of the Atlantic, is the exhibition of Allen Say’s work to celebrate his 70th birthday, which is currently running at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art – but if you can get to Amherst, Massachusetts before 28 October, I should imagine it would be well worth doing so. Writer, Lois Lowry certainly recommends it…

We love reading Say’s books together. Particular favorites are Under the Cherry Blossom Tree: An Old Japanese Tale, which appeals especially to my younger son’s sense of the absurd; and Kamishibai Man, which has inspired my older son to create his own storyboards. We also read Home of the Brave recently, following the discussions arising from A Place Where Sunflowers Grow. Say’s rich illustrations here and the slightly abstract conveying of the story stretch young children into asking questions… the bedtime storytime can certainly be drawn out beyond the deceptive brevity of the story. As Karen Edmisten says, it is “not a happy book but an excellent one”.

Podcast Just One More Book has reviewed Emma’s Rug and I think they sum up Say’s work as a whole when they say: (more…)

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We have just returned home from a few days in Cornwall, very near Lands End, the south-westernmost tip of England. We took with us a favorite book, The Mousehole Cat. It is based on the story of the fisherman Tom Bawcock who risked his life to bring fish back to the village of Mousehole (pronounced ‘Mowzel’ in Cornish) when the fishing boats had all been trapped in the little harbor by a terrible storm. Antonia Barber’s wonderful retelling introduces Tom’s cat, Mowzer, who accompanies him and sings to the Storm Cat to calm him while Tom fishes. Nicola Bayley’s illustrations are simply gorgeous and the words and pictures together make this a book to be brought out again and again.

My boys were both very excited at the prospect of actually visiting Mousehole. We made an expedition of it by walking there along the coast from neighboring Lamorna and we stopped on the way to reread the story. It was a very fitting setting – and we had the pictures fresh in our mind when we arrived in the village to try and pick out the various landmarks, not to mention a very pretty “Mowser’s Cottage”.

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This website, fronted by renowned British author Anne Fine, provides the most gorgeous range of bookmarks for children to keep their place in their bedtime story, as well as an extensive range of bookplates. They are all designed by well-known book illustrators and it’s just as well you can print then out individually as it would be impossible to have to make a single choice from among them!

One bookplate that immediately appealed to us, though, if I have to state a preference, is Mairi Hedderwick’s as we love her Katie Morag books. Katie is a feisty wee heroine, and enough of a tomboy to appeal to boys too. The illustrations bring the fictional Scottish island of Struay to life and the stories themselves make you laugh aloud, whether it’s Grannie Island using Grannie Mainland’s best shampoo to wash her prize sheep in Katie Morag and the Two Grandmothers; or the Big Boy Cousins being terrified by the ghosts of Castle McColl in The Second Katie Morag Storybook. Struay is based on the real-life Hebridean Isle of Coll: these lovely stories conjure up the very special way of life there, both through the narrative and the illustration, and are richly rewarding when read aloud.

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Two weeks ago today, my children stayed up till well after midnight to take part in a social event which will be earmarked by history as the denouement of a publishing phenomenon: dressed in old university gowns and carrying wands; one wearing an emerald silk shirt and the other bearing a lightening scar and drawn in spectacles, they headed across the road to our local, independent bookshop for a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows launch party. We duly picked up the book and as soon as we got home again, the boys went to bed and I started reading - a rattling good read… but the instances pointed out in the links below did not go unnoticed.

The popularity of the Harry Potter books means that they will become a focal point for many issues pertaining to children’s books, particularly now the series is complete and a critique can encompass the whole body of work. We already have the beginnings of some stimulating discussions. I read with interest Shen Book’s exploration of Harry Potter as a multicultural character, part of their Crossing Cultural Borders series – and also really enjoyed Emily Jiang’s witty reduction of the Deathly Hallows plot to a Haiku summary… if you haven’t read the book yet, don’t click here! There has been some in-depth discussion of J.K. Rowling’s use of cultural stereotyping: it is worth reading what Debbie Reese and Educating Alice have to say, as well as the comments to their posts, which are equally thought-provoking. Also, (more…)

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Here are two books for sharing which take children on a good-night (and good morning) journey all around the world. They both celebrate differences in customs and lifestyles, and emphasise what we all share as members of the human race…

The first, for very young children, is The Nights of the World by Corinne Albaut and illustrated by Amo, which focuses on five children from different parts of the world, who all sleep in different kinds of beds. When the magic sliding window is opened, readers can see what their days are like too, and although their activities may be different, they all laugh and enjoy playing games – then close the shutter again, and they all are quiet and go to sleep!

The second is All in a Day by Mitsumasa Anno in an amazing collaboration with nine other well-known artists from all around the world: (more…)

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I would like to draw your attention to this Family Reading page on The Horn Book’s website – there are lots of ideas and shared experiences to hearten and encourage reading with and to our children. I especially love Martha Parravano’s article “Reading Three Ways“ about reading with her two daughters; and I laughed aloud at the end. It reminded me of a holiday when Son Number One was still toddling. Rapunzel had been the perpetually chosen audio tape on the day’s drive up to the North of Scotland. A few days later:

Daddy: Where’s Mummy?
Son (cackling): The bird has flown, my pretty!

…I wish I’d actually been there to hear it!

Thinking back to that time when books had to be repeated ad infinitum, here’s a list, in no particular order, of only some of our family favorites from the very early years:

All the Hairy Maclary books by Lynley Dodd – in fact, all her books!
Owl Babies by Martin Waddell, ill. Patrick Benson;
Can’t You sleep, Baby Bear? - and the rest of the series, again by Martin Waddell, but ill. Barbara Firth
Each Peach Pear Plum and Peepo! by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
Mrs Armitage and the Big Wave by Quentin Blake
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, ill. Helen Oxenbury
Little Beaver and the Echo by Amy MacDonald, ill. Sarah Fox-Davies
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss
The Gruffalo and all the other books by Julia Donaldson, ill. Axel Scheffler
Mrs Goose’s Baby and Mr Davies and the Baby by Charlotte Voake

When I look at this list I realise that nearly all these books were given to us by friends whose own children had loved them – and we in turn have handed them on to our smaller friends…

So let me just leave you with a something the illustrator Howard Pyle once said:

“The stories of childhood leave an indelible impression, and their author always has a niche in the temple of memory from which the image is never cast out to be thrown on the rubbish heap of things that are outgrown and outlived.”

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It’s hard to believe that it’s summer here in the UK at the moment but the sunflower seed which Son Number One planted a couple of months ago is about 30cm tall and still growing - so we may eventually have a happy ball of sunshine in our garden to counteract the rain, which may also still be falling!

Keeping watch over every millimetre of growth has been a good time to read A Place Where Sunflowers Grow, this year’s winner of the Jane Addams Book Award for Best Picture Book. It is a beautiful and poignant story about one little American girl’s experience of adjusting to being interned during the Second World War because of her Japanese heritage; the character, Mari, is based on author Amy Lee-Tai’s own mother. You can hear Amy reading extracts from the book and talking about it here.

The book is published by the independent, non-profit publishing house Children’s Book Press, whose executive editor, Dana Goldberg, has just been interviewed by Just One More Book. It’s part of their Publishers’ Showcase, a special series of interviews with children’s book publishers – well worth listening to.

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These last couple of weeks there has been some bad flooding in parts of the UK and I was very sad to hear from author and publisher Debjani Chatterjee that her independent Sahitya Press has been badly affected, with the loss of their books stored in a community centre in Sheffield. Our thoughts go out to her and her colleagues.

In an interview with PaperTigers a few months ago, Debjani talked about how certain stories crop up in many different traditions: one of these is the Great Flood. There are many versions of Noah’s Ark, which we enjoy reading - but this week was the first time my boys had come across the story outside its biblical context and they were intrigued. We are reading Atticus the Storyteller’s 100 Greek Myths by Lucy Coats and Anthony Lewis, which we all agree is a “superb retelling of the Greek myths for younger children” and “a really lovely book for all the family to share” (Books for Keeps). Like in The Barefoot Book of Knights I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the stories are brought together by a narrator: here it’s Atticus, who is on his way (more…)

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On BBC Radio 4’s Open Book this week, Britain’s new Prime Minister Gordon Brown flagged up Julia Donaldson’s The Snail and the Whale as his top children’s book – and his choice was certainly greeted with approval from the small listeners in the back of my car yesterday. Gordon Brown extolled “the quality of children’s books now and the sheer brilliance of the writing” and talked about his experience as a Dad: “I read bedtime stories but sometimes early morning stories as well, as any parent knows; but I love reading to both my children. One is only ten months and he’s just starting to get a bit interested in what’s there.” Fantastic!

There has been a fair bit of research in recent years into the benefits of Dads reading aloud to their kids – (more…)

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I have just received this lovely e-card from Barefoot Books , which I would like to share with you all – it’s based on their recently-published Whole World, which not only celebrates the world we live in but reminds us that we need to look after it - something that Barefoot Books are really focussing on with their new “Go Barefoot, Go Global” emphasis on environmental issues.

As well as family favourites like The Emperor who Hated Yellow, The Gigantic Turnip and The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac, we love Barefoot Books’ anthologies of stories from around the world. Son Number One has taken The Barefoot Book of Knights out of the library on a regular basis over the last three years. I like its format of the traditional tales being woven into the story of a young steward who is learning to be a knight, although it does sometimes mean reading time goes on for much longer than you intended!

Generally, however, these anthologies are great for (more…)

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We’re stretching our definition of multicultural just this once to include the imaginary worlds that offer so much creative solace to young children in difficult straits. In Julia Glass’ 2006 novel The Whole World Over, Greenie and Alan are parents of a precocious 4-year-old, George. Set in 2001 as the couple weather a serious marital crisis, the story moves from New York City and Maine to a ranch outside Santa Fe, and back, and throughout, the estranged parents each read to George. Wherever he is, the ritual of choosing from among his treasured favorite books (often subtly appropriate for his immediate situation) gives him security and stability.

Glass even folds a review of Owl at Home into her novel. Greenie is reading to George:
He leaned against her for all five tales, which related the neurotically foolish mishaps of a character who was a literalist yet also a romantic. In Greenie’s favorite, Owl made himself a pot of tear-water tea by thinking up, laboriously, as many sad things as he could: chairs with broken legs, forgotten songs, clocks that had stopped, mornings that no one witnessed because everyone was sleeping. More than sad, they were invisible, neglected, or simply lost to memory.

What better book for a little boy whose mother has just driven across the country from Santa Fe to reconcile with her husband in the intense confusion following 9-11?

Other books read to George in the novel include the Dr. Seuss books and (more…)

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For the last three years, our six-year-old has regaled us with stories about his Dragon House, a mythical universe where anything and everything does happen. The only consistent factor has been that it is only inhabited by dragons and him. Therefore, as you can imagine, dragons figure large in our reading and it is a great theme for discovering stories from far away. This week we’ve pulled out Monkey and the Water Dragon, as Son Number One’s school topic at the moment is water… This retelling of an excerpt from the epic journey of Monkey, Pigsy and Tripitaka is written and illustrated by Joanna Troughton, and is one of Puffin’s “Folk Tales of the World” series (I think it’s time these were all pulled together and reprinted as an anthology - hint, hint!). The dragon is actually a baddy who turns out to be a “golden fish” with delusions of grandeur - but that doesn’t seem to bother my two. The dragon roars and the pictures leap from the page. That’s what matters!

Then there are stories like The Day the Dragon Danced, which make my children long to join in a Chinese New Year procession; but we still haven’t read Mei Ming and the Dragon’s Daughter or The Dragon’s Pearl, which are both recommended by Andrea Ross in her Personal View for PaperTigers… (more…)

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There’s been quite a bit about illustrated children’s books in the British press recently: first, back in April, I noticed this article from The Daily Telegraph about how research has shown that “very young children learn faster from picture books that contain colour photographs than from books with colour drawings” Aaaargh! Thank goodness it goes on to point out some of what’s special about artists’ illustrations. Then I noticed that Achockablog have highlighted another article from the Glasgow Herald in which Debi Gliori bemoans the currently perceived status of picture books. That made me really sad as Debi has been a firm favorite in our household since Baby Number One would only eat if Hello, Baby Bear was being read to him – every splodge of mush on a buzzy bee or a hooty owl belies the notion that he was too small to understand what the drawings meant…

Debi’s words have made me think about the role of illustration and how much good illustrations are inseparable from their story. The other day we were again reading Ed Young’s Beyond the Great Mountains, tracing the parallels between the pictures and the characters, reading the words over and over. It was a deeply satisfying read in the way only poetry can be – and a very calm way to end the day… which is quite amazing really, as we had also been doing mental gymnastics talking about how it all fitted together.

So how about you? What special picture books are you reading with your child at the moment? Do send in your comments and let us know.

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