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Can you imagine a world without colour, where all you see is black, white or the shades of grey in between? As a self-confessed colour junkie such a world would sap my energies and leave my life (perhaps ironically), somewhat blue.

Thus when two new books came to my attention both titled ‘The Colour Thief’ I was very intrigued; not only did they look like their subject matter would appeal to me, it was funny and surprising to see two books, from different authors/illustrators/publishers with the same title.

In The Colour Thief by Gabriel Alborozo an alien looks longingly across space to planet earth, full of colours and brightness. He believes such a beautiful place must be full of joy, and so sets off to bring some of that happiness back to his home planet.

With just a few magic words the alien is able to suck up first all the reds, then the blues and the greens and before long planet earth is looking very grey and sad. But what of the alien? Can he really be happy when he sees the glumness he has caused?

Alborozo’s story about kindness, desire and what makes us joyous and content is full of appeal. There are lots of themes which can be explored; from the beauty around us which we might take for granted (requiring an outsider to alert us to us), to whether or not we can be happy if we’ve caused others distress, this book could be used to open up lots of discussion.

Click to see larger image

Although the alien’s actions could be frightening, this is mitigated by his cute appearance, just one of the book’s charms. I also think kids will love the apparent omnipotence of the alien: He wants something, and at his command he gets it, just like that, and this identification with the alien makes the story more interesting and unusual. The artwork is fun and energetic, seemingly filled with rainbow coloured confetti. I can easily imagine a wonderful animation of this story.

The Colour Thief by Andrew Fusek Peters and Polly Peters, illustrated by Karin Littlewood is a very different sort of story. It draws on the authors’ own experience of parental depression, exploring from a child’s perspective what it can feel like to watch a parent withdraw as they suffer from this illness.

Father and son lead a comforting life “full of colour”, but when depression clouds the father’s mind he withdraws, and all the colours around the family seem to disappear. The child worries that he might somehow be the cause of this loss, but he is repeatedly reassured it is not his fault and gradually, with patience and love, colours start to seep back into the father’s life and he returns to his family.

Mental health is difficult to talk about when you’re 40, let alone when you are four, but this lyrical and moving book provides a thoughtful, gentle, and unsentimental way into introducing (and if desired, discussing) depression. If you were looking for “when a book might help” to reassure a child in a specific situation, I would wholeheartedly recommend this; it is honest, compassionate and soothing.

However, I definitely wouldn’t keep this book ONLY for those times when you find a child in a similar circumstances to those described in the book. It is far too lovely to be kept out of more general circulation. For a start, the language is very special; it’s perhaps no surprise when you discover that one of the author’s has more than 70 poetry books to his name. If you were looking for meaningful, tender use of figurative language, for example in a literacy lesson, this book provides some fabulous, examples.

Click to see larger image.

And then there are the illustrations. Karin Littlewood has long been one of my favourite illustrators for her use of colour, her graceful compositions, her quiet kindness in her images. And in The Colour Thief there are many examples of all these qualities. I particularly like her use of perspective first to embody the claustrophobia and fear one can feel with depression, with bare tree branches leaning in onto the page, or street lamps lowering overhead, and then finally the open, sky-facing view as parent and child reunite as they walk together again when colour returns.

Particularly inspired by the imagery in Alborozo’s The Colour Thief we made a trip to a DIY store to pick up a load of paint chips.

Wow. My kids went crazy in the paint section: Who knew paint chips could be just so much fun? They spent over an hour collecting to their hearts’ desire. A surprising, free and fun afternoon!

Once home we snipped up the paint chips to separate each colour. The colour names caused lots of merriment, and sparked lots of equally outlandish ideas for new colour names, such as Beetlejuice red, Patio grey, Spiderweb silver and Prawn Cocktail Pink.

We talked about shades and intensity of colours, and sorted our chips into three piles: Strong, bright colours, off-white colours, and middling colours. I then put a long strip of contact paper on the kitchen table, sticky side up, and the kids started making a mosaic with the chips, starting with the brightest colours in the middle, fading to the palest around the edge.

Apart for the soothing puzzle-like quality of this activity, the kids have loved using the end result as a computer keyboard, pressing the colours they want things to change to. I also think it makes for a rather lovely bit of art, now up in their bedroom.

Whilst making our colour mosaic we listened to:

Other activities which might go well with either version of ‘The Colour Thief’ include:

If you know someone suffering from depression these charities may be of help:

Disclosure: I received free review copies of both books reviewed today from their respective publishers.

Some other books I have since found with the same title but by different authors/illustrators/publishers include:

‘The Snowy Day’ by Ezra Jack Keats, and ‘The Snowy Day’ by Anna Milbourne and Elena Temporin

‘Bubble and Squeak’ by Louise Bonnett-Rampersaud and Susan Banta, and ‘Bubble and Squeak’ by James Mayhew and Clara Vulliamy

‘My Dad’ by Anthony Browne, ‘My Dad’ by Steve Smallman and Sean Julian, and ‘My Dad’ by Chae Strathie and Jacqueline East

My thanks to @josiecreates, @FBreslinDavda and @illustratedword for alerting me to some of these titles.

I don’t know about you, but in our family, 99% of bedtime reading involves fiction.

Non fiction, or information books, rarely get chosen to share a cosy cuddle just before the kids go to sleep. But Tiny: The Invisible World of Microbes by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Emily Sutton has recently helped us break the mould.

You want to share an amazing journey with your kids? You want stunning illustrations to enjoy pouring over together? You want to finish the book with a sigh of satisfaction, a sense of coming full circle and feeling that your world and understanding of it just got a little bit richer? Well, Tiny has been doing all of that for us, and more.

An exploration of life so small you need a microscope to see it, Davies and Sutton take a few clever hooks, and quickly reel you in. Through a perfect fusion of words and images they explain the scale and scope of microscopic life, not only powerfully, but also with real beauty. Judicious use of mind boggling facts (for example, how many microbes you might find in a teaspoon of soil) leave lots of space for awe, wonder and curiosity, without ever overloading a young reader/listener.

Click to be taken to a photo of the same microbe illustrated here by Emily Sutton so you can see how beautifully she has picked up the details.

Davies has composed a beautiful “story” in the sense that there is a beginning, middle and end, with a dramatic turn at one point (what bad microbes can do to you) and a reassuring, rewarding ending where different strands come together. Sutton’s detailed, earthy-toned illustrations are clever and sprinkled with humour. She can pull of both minutia and epic vistas with equal skill.

A glorious introduction to the variety of microbes, and the impact they have on our lives, this stunning book is not only a delight to read and look at, it will leave parents and children asking each other more questions, and wanting to further explore the unseen world around them.

To “see” microbes at work we decided to give making compost in a bottle a try. Here’s the recipe we followed:

‘Ingredients’

Method
1. Cut around the bottle neck to form a flip top lid (the bottle neck alone will not be large enough to pour the ingredients into the bottle)
2. Layer the ingredients in a repeating pattern until you reach the flip top lid level. The pattern we followed was soil, fruit/vegetable scraps, soil, newspaper, soil, grass clippings, soil, fruit vegetable scraps etc. Each layer was 3-5 cm deep.
3. Moisten the contents of the bottle with a little bit of water.
4. Tape the top of the bottle closed.
5. Mark the top of the compost on the side of the bottle.

6. Place your mini composters in a sunny spot.
7. Once a week observe any changes eg in the level or appearance of compost. Depending on local conditions in 3-6 weeks you’ll see a marked change in the contents of the bottle.

After 5 weeks we decided to open up our bottles, the level of compost having dropped by about 10 cm.

The newspaper was nowhere to be seen, many of the vegetable scraps had disappeared (only the larger chunks of carrot were still visible), and whilst the grass was still visible, it had clearly changed.

I tried to convince my girls that what they had just observed was a magic trick: leftover kitchen and garden waste along with our daily newspaper went in, and out came (something well on its way to being) nutrient-rich fertilizer..

I have to admit, this magic trick didn’t have the instant wow factor of some magic tricks they’ve seen in their life times, but the potion making aspect of the original layering of ingredients, and the clearly changed form of the bottle contents did pique their curiosity.

We didn’t have music on whilst making our compost, but here are some fun songs that go well with a book all about microbes:

If I were based in a school doing this compost activity, I’d definitely look into making this Compost Musical with my class.

Other activities which would go well with reading Tiny: The Invisible World of Microbes include:

What non fiction books have you shared recently with your kids?

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from the publishers.

Every Monday is a celebration of all things non-fiction in the online children’s book world. If you’d like to read more reviews of children’s non-fiction books, do take a look at the dedicated children’s non-fiction blog: http://nonfictionmonday.wordpress.com/

School is back in full swing now, and I’ve returned to my storytelling sessions at J’s school on a Friday afternoon, where I get to read stories and play and craft in what is termed “Golden Time”. It’s a brilliant way to round off the week (definitely much better than the Triple Latin I once had), and it means I’m always on the lookout for picture books which not only lend themselves to creative play, but which also work exceptionally well as class read-alouds.

Big! by Tim Hopgood struck me as one such book the moment I first read it. And given that it is all about growing up, and thinking about being bigger, it was a natural choice for the start of the school year, where all the children have moved up a class and are enjoying being that much “bigger” than they were last year.

What does it mean to be big? And when, exactly, do you become big? Such existential questions are really quite important in young kids’ lives: When will they be big enough to play on your phone? When will they be big enough to have a new bike? When will they be big enough to stay up as late as their older brother or sister? Certainly, J – being the youngest in our home – asks these sorts of questions very often indeed, and finds it very frustrating that she is not yet as big as she would like to be.

And so it was no surprise that she lapped up Hopgood’s observant and giggle-inducing take on being big. Being big partly depends on what you compare it with. Compare yourself to a piece of popcorn and you’re massive! And compare your big sister with a bear, and even she will appear to be tiny

Image: Tim Hopgood. Used with permission.

Hopgood effectively cobines lots of bold blocks of solid colour (there are no white pages anywhere) with visual texture, and draws his questioning boy with such apparent simplicity that it could have been drawn by a child (think Charlie and Lola, and you’ll have the right sort of idea); all this adds further appeal for young readers and listeners. Use of a variety of font sizes lends the book to very expressive reading-aloud – great for groups, but also for young children reading this to themselves.

Full of reassurance about one of life’s BIGGEST questions, Tim Hopgood has created another hit I can warmly recommend.

To go along with reading Big! all the kids in my group at school got to make their own growth chart, using paper measuring tapes stuck onto long lengths of fax paper (used for its convenient width). We talked about tall things which we might draw onto our charts (giraffes, beanstalks, blocks of flats and so on) and then the kids had free rein to decorate their charts how they saw fit. Here are my girls creating their own charts at home:

At school there were two other activities kids could choose to take part in; building the tallest tower they could out of a variety of building blocks, and measuring each other with popcorn (mirroring a suggestion in Hopgood’s book).

I taped a large sheet on the floor of the classroom and kids worked in pairs, whilst one lay down and the other lined up popcorn to see how many pieces of popcorn high they were. This was an incredibly popular activity (especially when I lay down and the kids got to measure me), and was worth every bit of the rather large amount of mess it made!

Whilst making our growth charts at home we listened to:

Other activities which would work well alongside reading Big! include:

Do you have a favourite book about growing up?

If you’d like to make growth charts with your class at school, I do have some spare paper tapes (150cm long, marked in both inches and cm); I’d be happy to post them to you (anywhere in the world), with the proviso that they’re for group use (I don’t want to post fewer than 20 in a go, because they are very difficult to pack!). Let me know, and the first 3 people to contact me will get the tapes!

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Big! from the author.