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Pierre the Maze Detective: The Search for the Stolen Maze Stone written by Chihiro Maruyama, illustrated by by Hiro Kamigaki and IC4Design and translated by Emma Sakamiya and Elizabeth Jenner is quite something.

The Maze Stone, which has the power to turn the whole of Opera City into a maze, has been stolen, and you – dear reader – are needed to help track down the culprit and restore this magical object.

Why should you take up this challenge?

Because en route…

If you’ve a child poorly in bed, or it’s just a rainy day calling out for a duvet on the sofa, Pierre the Maze Detective is a rich and rewarding rabbit hole ready for anyone who loves losing themselves in an adventure of almost unimaginable detail and scale.

This stop-motion video showing how one of the double page spreads was planned out gives you a good impression of the labyrinthine, meticulous nature of the illustrations:

A picture book for older children (and their grown-ups) who love a challenge or who are inspired by the imaginative possibilities of vast landscapes and settings, Pierre the Maze Detective helpfully comes with a key to all the mazes, and also a page of extra delights to go back and look for – all printed in the style of a vintage newspaper.

Playful, precise, interactive and highly imaginative, this incredibly well produced book (with its lovely paper and large size) is original and eye-opening. As I said, it’s quite something!

Pierre the Maze Detective owes something, I believe, to the work of another Japanese picture book creator: Mitsumasa Anno. Anno created a whole series of detailed wordless picture books where a tiny character wends his way through different landscapes, and although his books weren’t mazes as such, they share with Pierre the sense of journeying, immense details, and rich stories being told away from the most direct path to the final destination.

Having enjoyed the mazes, the details and the adventures in Pierre the Maze Detective we decided it was time to make our own mazes. Using the basic design principles outlined here, we decided to build our maze out of lego and turn it into a marble run.

We all really enjoyed making each other different mazes to try out. The lego made it really easy to create new mazes and kept the kids happily occupied for a good couple of hours – longer than I had anticipated!

Whilst creating our mazes we listened (rather eclectically) to:

Other maze activities which might work well alongside reading Pierre the Maze Detective include:

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher.

Today's vintage children's book is Anno's Alphabet by Mitsumasa Anno. This unique ABC book is a visual treat full of interesting details with trompe l'oeil paintings and visual puns. Anno's Alphabet was an ALA Notable Children's Book and received the 1975 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. In 1984 Anno was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration. 

A couple of weeks ago Sally wrote a Books at Bedtime post about Mitsumasa Anno‘s Animals, which sent me back to my collection of his books. Among them, I have another book with a very similar title: The Animals – a book of selected poems by Michio Mado, who is perhaps Japan’s best know poet for children. The poems here have been translated by the Empress Michiko of Japan, and are beautifully presented on gold pages, Japanese on the left, English on the right, with a frieze of animals created my Anno running along the bottom.

Each poem breathes from its double-page spread, and gives the reader thinking space. The book was published by Margaret K. McElderry, who died recently – and it is a testimony to the wonderful work she did in unerringly bringing beautiful picture books into being.

My copy of The Animals was once a library book and one of its previous young readers felt passionately enough about one of the poems to draw around its title on the Contents page very carefully with a felt tip pen. So that is the poem I will share with you today.

Butterflies

Butterflies close their wings
When they go to sleep.
They are so small,
In nobody’s way.
Yet they fold themselves
In half
Modestly…

And this lovely one, “A Dog Walks”, about trying to work out how a dog moves its legs when its walking:

How about tying
On each leg a bell,
Each with a different sound?

ChiRin
KoRon
KaRan
PoRon

Then shallI know?

I wonder?

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Sara Lewis Holmes at Read Write Believe – head on over.

After a busy day of presentations on Day 2, Day 3 of the Bologna Book Fair was spent meeting people and absorbing the different books on offer.

First up was a lovely chat with poet Jorge Luján, whom we’d caught up with on the Tuesday evening… He shared his brand new book with us and I will share some photos with you when I work out how to get them off the camera (as opposed to a storage disc)… but in the meantime, enjoy this gorgeous poster for the exhibition of Isol’s illustrations from his recently published Pantuflas de perrito which is on-going until 25th April, if you happen to be in Bologna…

Other highlights included:

The presentation of the International Youth Library’s newly announced 2010 White Ravens Catalogue:

I had a great discussion with Janet Evans from Liverpool Hope University, UK, who is currently spending some time with the Library in Munich

while…

next door at the IBBY stand, Corinne and Aline had a good chat with Sylvia Vardell, editor of IBBY magazine Bookbird and host of the wonderful Poetry for Children blog (Don’t miss out on her current game of Poetry Tag for National Poetry Month in the US).

.

Meeting Danilla Marii, an Australian writer based in Rome, who had come to the Fair to seek out a publisher for her beautiful and vibrant book The Rainbow Tree – it was a real privilege to be able to see the original draft that includes some intricate collage work. We lo