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There’s a land far away where imaginary friends come into being and wait to be imagined by a real child. But what if a real child never imagines you? Might you remain stuck, forever in limbo?

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat (@dsantat) follows one imaginary friend as he decided to take action into his own hands venturing bravely forth to seek a real friend to play with (and to name him). The real world is a strange place, with muted colours and tired people failing to see joy or find fun around them. But then our still un-named imaginary friend recognises a flash of colour in the rush-hour crowd – an old imaginary friend from the land of their birth, and follows the creature. Will this lead him to a real friend? And just how do you make friends when you’ve not had a friend before and don’t know where to start?

Santat’s tale about our desire to find friendship, the difficulties we can encounter along the way, and the joy and joint adventuring it can bring is full of charm and hope. It’s gentle, optimistic and beautiful. It also happens to be award-winning, and not just any old award: Almost exactly a year ago, The Adventures of Beekle won the most prestigious picture book award in the US – the Randolph Caldecott Medal.

UK publishers, Andersen Press, are now bringing this gorgeous book to the UK market. Yes, it’s true that those of us with UK/Eire addresses can get hold of just about any US book thanks to online ordering, but many brilliant US-published children’s books never make it main stream here (i.e into schools, into public libraries, into highstreet bookshops) because they aren’t published by “local” publishers and are therefore not straightforward for organisations to order (or even to find out about). I find this especially frustrating with graphic novels and children’s non-fiction, genres in which I think the US is a world leader.

Why do some books make it across the Atlantic when others don’t? To my eye there is a decidedly American flavour to the illustrations in The Adventures of Beekle, something to do with the slightly soft focus, polished animation feel to the imagery. Differences in illustration fashion clearly aren’t necessarily a problem. And yet if we look at which Caldecott winners have made it to the UK, we see that it’s surprisingly few; of the past 20 winners, I think only 5 have been picked up by UK publishing houses.

As it happens, the 2016 Caldecott Medal winner us being announced TODAY (January 11). Will it be a book that makes it across to the UK?

[I do encourage you to follow the announcements of all the ALA Youth Media Awards, of which the Caldecott is just one. If you’re on Twitter, you might use #ALAyma to find out about the winners. You can also watch the announcements as they are streamed live http://ala.unikron.com/2016/]

Either which way, The Adventures of Beekle is a delightful, heart-warming story about friendship, courage and reaching out. I’m really pleased that thanks to its UK publishers it will now find its way into many more homes, schools and libraries on this side of the pond.

Especially taken by the illustration below of a tree full of leaves / stars, we were inspired to set up a piece of guerilla public art in the name of Beekle and everyone who could do with a bit of good cheer:

Using air-drying clay, some cookie cutters and letter stamps we created a whole host of starry leaves to hang in a tree by our favourite playground. We stamped each tree with a friendly, encouraging message, hoping to raise a smile amongst those who come across the starry leaves.

Once dry…

…we threaded them with string…

…visited our favourite playground…

…and hung up our good wishes to all.

We’re hoping visitors to the playground will find the stars and take one they like home, spreading Beekle good wishes around the local community!

Whilst making starry leaves we listened to:

Other activities which might work well alongside reading The Adventures of Beekle include:

If you liked this post you might like this related post:

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

Friends are fun to play with. Friends keep you company. Friends comfort you. All this Emily knows.

She also knows a simple balloon can be your friend.

Emily’s Balloon by Komako Sakai is the gentlest of observations about how nothing more than a plain balloon and a little bit of imagination can be the cause great happiness.

Emily receives a balloon and takes it home to play with. Soon she’s sharing everything with her balloon and takes it outside to play house with. One gust of wind, however, and it is stuck in a nearby tree. What will Emily do now? What will console her?

The innocence and lucidity of this story gives it charm that is utterly captivating. It celebrates a sense of wonder that we sometimes lose as we grow older, but which we’re only too happy to be reminded of. Emily’s natural openness, her ability to imagine and indeed truly see her balloon as a friend – to show such a easy leap of faith – will warm all but the coldest of hearts.

Sakai’s illustrations have a quiet magic about them, capturing Emily’s body language like poetry; in a way that seems so right, so simple and yet still startling in its accuracy. Minimal use of colour and lots of wide open white space create a sense of meditative timelessness. All in all a peaceful, lyrical picture book with the hallmarks of a classic.

Not all playing by the book needs to be complicated. Recently all we did to celebrate a book was eat some cheesecake. (Tough life!). This time, all that was needed was a yellow helium filled balloon to play with after school.

We batted it about, we took it outside, we played “chicken” letting it float away and then catching it before it flew out of grasp!

We tied a spoon to the string and found the “balance point” – using blutack we added and removed tiny weights until the balloon with the spoon floated mysteriously in mid-air, neither touching the ground, nor flying up to the ceiling.

This turned into a science lesson the next day when we saw how how the helium appeared to become less effective at lifting the balloon (this is actually due to helium leaking out of the balloon, through the relatively porous latex) and we had to reduce the weight of the spoon to re-find the balance point.

Whilst playing with our balloon we listened to:

Other activities which might work well alongside reading Emily’s Balloon include:

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher. Whilst this book has been translated from Japanese, there is no information available regarding the translator.

Emily’s Balloon
Komako Sakai
Chronicle Books
£5.99 • Paperback •

I believe any book can fuel the imagination when it arrives in the right hands at the right time, but there are also some which explicitly explore how we nurture creativity and create space for inspiration and following our dreams. The Wonder by Faye Hanson and The Imaginary by A.F. Harrold and Emily Gravett are two such books which I’ve read recently and which have left me brimming with delight, hope and happiness and which have sparked hours of inspired play in my children.

The Wonder by Faye Hanson is a sumptuous début picture book about a young boy whose head if full of daydreams which transform the humdrum world around him. Time and again adults tell him to get his head out of the clouds and come back to reality, but this is barely possible for a child who finds wonder, curiosity and delight wherever he looks. Finally in art class he’s able to let loose his imagination onto a blank sheet of paper delighting his teacher and filling his parents with pride.

The child in this story sees ordinary objects but has the imagination to turn them into astonishing stories, breathtaking ideas, and worlds full of adventures waiting to happen. I know I want to foster this ability in my own children (and in myself!); the world becomes more beautiful, richer, and simply more enjoyable when we are able to imagine more than the grey, wet and humdrum daily life that all too often catches us up. This utterly delightful book is an enthusiastic encouragement to let more imagination in to our lives.

Click to view a larger version (it’s really worth it!) of this interior spread from The Wonder by Faye Hanson

Hanson’s illustrations are dense, saturated, and rich. Careful use of colour lights up the boy’s dreams in his otherwise sepia coloured life. Limited palettes add to the intensity of these pictures; it’s interesting that their vitality doesn’t come from a rainbow range of paints, but rather from focussing on layer of layer of just a few colours, packed with exquisite detail. There’s a luminosity about the illustrations; some look like they’ve got gold foil or a built-in glow and yet there are no novelty printing techniques here.

All in all, an exquisite book that will tell anyone you share it with that you value their dreams and want to nurture their ingenuity, inventiveness and individuality.

Now let me play devil’s advocate: Is there sometimes a line to be walked between feeding a child’s imagination and yet enabling them to recognise the difference between real life and day dreams? In The Wonder, there are plenty of adults pointing out the apparent problems/risks of day dreaming a great deal. On the other hand, in The Imaginary, a mother fully enters into her daughter’s imaginary world, not only acknowledging an imaginary best friend, but actively supporting this belief by setting places at meal times, packing extra bags, even accepting accidents must be the result of this friend and not the child herself.

Amanda believes that only she can see her imaginary friend Rudger. But all this changes one day when a mysterious Mr Bunting appears on the doorstep, apparently doing innocent door-to-door market research. But all is not as it seems for it turns out that Mr Bunting has no imagination of his own and can only survive by eating other people’s imaginary friends. He’s sniffed Rudger out and now he’s going to get him, whatever it takes.

Click to see larger illustration by Emily Gravett, from The Imaginary by A. F. Harrold

If you’ve ever wondered where imaginary friends come from, and what happens to them when their children grow up and stop day-dreaming this is a book for you. If you love a good villain, adventures which include libraries and narrow escapes you’ll enjoy this too. If you’re a fan of elegant and attractive books you’ll want to feel this between your hands. The illustrations by Emily Gravett are terrific (in every sense) and incredibly atmospheric, magically adding beauty and tension to a story which I thought couldn’t be bettered.

Intelligent, clever, thoughtful, and packed with seeds of love and inspiration The Imaginary is perhaps my favourite middle grade/young fiction book of the year. If you want a fuller flavour of this gem before hurrying to get it into your hands, head and heart, there’s a full teacher’s guide to The Imaginary available on the Bloomsbury website and you can watch a video of Emily Gravett working on her illustrations here.

One of the ways my girls have been inspired in their playing since sharing these books became clear when they told me they wanted to make a star-making machine to go with the one features in The Wonder (see the illustration above).

M first wrote out some recipes for stars:

I provided a little food for thought…

…and a selection of machine parts.

Several hours later the star machine was coming together

Next up a selection of star ingredients were sourced:

The machine was fed…

Can you see the pulses of one star in the making?!

And out popped these stars (here’s a tutorial) at the end of the star making process:

Here’s one just for you:

Whilst making our machine we listened to:

Other activities which could work well alongside reading The Wonder and The Imaginary include:

How do you foster your kids’ imagination? And your own?

Disclosure: I was sent free review copies of both books in today’s post.

Illustrator Sam Usher burst onto the scene two years ago with with a riot of colour and pattern in Can You See Sassoon?, which was shortlisted for the Red House Children’s Book Award 2013. When your first book gets flagged up as a potential prize winner, there is some expectation and anticipation when it comes to future publications.

More than two years after Can You See Sassoon? was published, Usher is back, and like all good things, it has been worth the wait.

Snow by Sam Usher celebrates that wonderfully exciting feeling in the pit of your stomach when you open your eyes in the morning, draw back the curtains and… your world has been transformed by a deep blanket of snow. The potential for play, the white world waiting to be explored, the possibility to really make your own mark….ahh! Just how quickly can you get out there to delight in at all?

A young boy zooms through getting ready, frustrated by the time it takes his Grandfather to join him. Will it be worth the wait for other kids are already out there leaving footprints everywhere?

A whole lot of snowballs and a little bit of childhood magic later, Grandpa and child agree “some things are definitely worth waiting for“. With Snow, I couldn’t agree more.

Usher’s illustrations are full of life and energy; there’s a comfortable looseness about them, and I cannot help but draw comparisons (in the best possible way) with Quentin Blake. Perhaps it is because the Grandfather in this story physically reminds me of Blake, with his bald pate and avuncular manner. But it’s also in the noses, the wonky fingers, the hand gestures and I love this stylistic echo. Indeed I get a real kick from these potentially vulnerable pen lines that speak to me of a real person, drawing a line that connects creator, story, reader and listener together.

With another contender for my favourite page turn of the year, showing how an almost plain white page can produce both gasps and a burst of warm delight, Snow is a wintry classic that will bring much delight and joy, however long you have to wait for it.

Alas weather in our part of the world has been unseasonally warm so I don’t hold out much hope of snow any time this year. Ever the optimist, I instead made some snow to play with in the warmth of our kitchen.

Snow dough is a moldable yet friable substance akin to commercially available ‘moon sand’, made out of corn flour (corn starch) and oil. We mixed about one part sunflower oil to four parts corn flour, and just for good measure added in a few drops of peppermint essential oil so that our snow dough smelt like Christmas candy.

I smoothed out the snow dough to recreate that blissful untouched vista of snow, and brought out a load of playmobil people and plastic animals (matching those in the book where possible). A small pot of glitter, for pinching and casting over the scene to add a little extra sparkle completed the invitation to play.

Lots of tracks in the snow were made, and because the snow dough is moldable, caches of snowballs and even an igloo were also prepared.

The snow dough has a wonderful crunch to it when you mold it – satisfyingly just like real snow!

Cake and hot chocolate completed our afternoon playing in the “snow”.

Whilst playing in the snow we listened to:

Other activities which could work well alongside reading Snow include:

I know at least one of my readers has already got snow this November (Hello Donna!), but has anyone else had the chance to play in snow yet this year? Or are you heading into Summer?

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Snow from the publisher.

Spend any time on Playing by the book and you’ll soon realise that bringing books to life is something I’m passionate about; taking their wonder and bringing it out of the pages and into our lives. And so, when I recently heard about the work Australian librarian Tracie Mauro was doing in Parkes Library I was keen to hear more; Tracie is a big believer in enabling kids to have enormous fun with activities inspired by what they find between the pages of the books they read as you’ll read in our conversation below:-

Zoe: Can you tell me a little bit about your job and the joys it brings?

Tracie Mauro: My stodgy title is Parkes Branch Librarian. Parkes is a regional town in the central west of New South Wales, Australia. Annually, we celebrate Elvis, ABBA and comics, and we dress up as zombies when required.

What gives me the most joy? Providing the “unexpected”, creating wonder-based activities for kids and families that will spark a conversation round the dinner table and imaginative play in the back yard. If people in town are talking about how wonderful and different the library service is, and the kids resources are being used to their full potential, then I’m over the moon.

Zoe: Can you briefly describe 2 or 3 events you’ve done in the library that others might see as slightly out of the ordinary?

Tracie Mauro: I always thought cooking was the best kids literacy activity until we played hairdressers. The Big Bouffant written by Kate Hosford and illustrated by Holly Clifton-Brown (2001), is the story of Annabelle, a little girl sick of always wearing ponytails and braids.

We read the story to kids and parents then set them loose to play in the “Our Town Hair & Beauty Salon” (perfectly shaped around one of our mobile display units.) Mums, dads, grandparents, siblings and library staff had their locks brushed, combed, rolled and water sprayed. Assorted magazines filled the “waiting” room. Everyone talked, listened and looked at themselves in the mirrors. By the end of the 4 week program, one 3-year-old had all the fine motor skills and language perfected.”You know Sandie, you should keep this style,” he advised, inserting the rollers into our library officer’s hair. “This one really suits you.”

Polly and the frog, a story by Matt Finch, also received the Parkes Library special treatment. In order to save their froggy friend, Polly and the knights have to squelch through a muddy marsh so we filled our branch transfer tubs with instant chocolate pudding and jelly. At first we told them it was imported bog but when one little bright spark licked between his toes, our rue was up. Typically, one of the little girls wanted our recipe – but not to cook it, I’m pleased to report. She just wanted to go home and play the game again with her family.

Zoe: What’s so important about doing activities which bring books alive outside of their pages?

Tracie Mauro: Bringing books to life is a core business of our library. We love to provide sensory play that goes hand in hand with the story and it’s the immersive experience, I believe, that sparks curiosity and leads to self directed learning – and lots and lots of talking, speaking, listening and of course, reading! And borrowing! These days my clever staff say that they read children’s books differently now. It’s like they’ve developed a director’s eye visualizing an extension of the words using smell, touch and taste. Working out how to plug all those things into an activity to get the most out of the story is the fun part. We like to get the most from our library resources. It’s a way of working leanly but producing mega value.

Zoe: How can families approach bringing books to life at home?

Tracie Mauro: Cheaply! Considering the story and using one’s imagination to extend what’s on the pages doesn’t cost much. It just takes commitment to the game. When other libraries hear about the children’s services that we provide they moan about not having enough funds to pay for sophisticated resources. Most of the time we don’t have to buy anything, we just use what we’ve got in storage. A dragon’s eye that’s really a plastic egg can hold magical qualities if that’s what you want them to believe. When I accidentally dropped one into the Polly and the frog story before it was due, I adlibbed about the Bad Luck Curse and what would happen if it was touched. As the story progressed and the knight’s bottom was burnt by the fiery menace the kids cited the Bad Luck Curse and pointed the finger at the poor sod who’d accidentally trodden on it. But, like all happy endings, justice is sweet in the land of wonder-based play and our bad luck merchant received an extra slice of party cake. Nice.

Zoe: Nice indeed, Tracie. I love what I’m hearing from you but it leads me to another question – about how one changes a library (or even home) culture to allow such activities to take place. Whilst you mention fears about cost as one area that holds others back from replicating what you do, I can imagine another is perceived mess and possible damage to stock. How did you / your library embrace the mess that often comes with creativity?

Tracie Mauro: For library staff who haven’t quite “made the change” from traditional library services, duties and routines, then my approach to kid’s services, reading and play can be quite confronting.

Really, there is nothing that I do that causes permanent harm to the space where I’m working. It’s all cleanable. Honestly, I’ve never heard anyone walk into a library and say oh, what lovely clean carpet, you are doing a good job keeping that in lovely condition. They usually walk in and comment on how wonderful it is to see the kids in the library or that they didn’t know that you could do that in a library!!! That’s the sort of talk that you want spreading around town. It’s worth more than the new sign you pay for, or the 5000 pamphlets that get printed. Word of mouth is a wonderful thing in our business.

I can’t ever remember damaging any stock in my activities. When I talk to library staff or parents when/ if they are concerned about children’s items being returned “damaged” I remind them that this actually happens very rarely. Not never, but rarely. To me, it’s just part of the collateral damage of providing good, busy children’s services. If I have to replace a book or a comic because it’s been well used then I’ve achieved the best outcome possible. We’ve both seen how little kids read. It’s a tactile experience. The books get read on the floor, pages fingered, turned over and turned back again. Sometimes with gusto. They might read it under the table to the dog, or to a bed full of teddies.

I had to laugh the other week. One of our nanas that brings her granddaughter to storytime dragged me aside to have a quiet word. “I have a complaint. I’m sick to death of that library officer of yours. When Alex (the granddaughter) and I go home from storytime all she wants to do is play library. Over and over, I hear the same songs, the same stories. And I’m not allowed to call her Alex anymore. I have to call her Sandie.”

Winning awards is great, but that’s when I know that I’m on the right track. My question to librarians these days is not what they think will happen to their service if they do this, but what will happen if they don’t. Nurturing the love of books and reading is central to what we do. It’s just that these days we need to come up with more engaging ways to do so.

Zoe: It’s been inspiring hearing about your work Tracie; I and hope many other libraries will adopt and adapt your ideas. Thank you for taking time to chat today with me.

Even before I had finished reading Bubble Trouble by Tom Percival to the kids I knew this was a book we were going to have LOTS of fun with.

Have you ever had great fun playing with a friend but discovered things have got out of control when you try to out-do each other? That what was a shared and enjoyable activity became something competitive and a little threatening?

Bubble Trouble explores exactly this scenario, with two best friends who like nothing more than blowing bubbles together. In their desire to blow the biggest bubble, they become very inventive but some skulduggery also sneaks in. Will their friendship survive their determination to outplay each other?

Percival’s lovely book thoughtfully and playfully explores the up- and downsides of competition and the value of teamwork. It also acknowledges that we don’t always learn from our mistakes straight away, something I haven’t seen often acknowledged in picture books. The “big issues” are hidden carefully in lots of delightfulness; the illustrations are soft and sweet, and there are lots and lots of flaps to play with. Percival has worked wonders with capturing that magic sheen of bubbles without resorting to foil or silver but rather just clever use of pastels and white.

A good-natured and honest exploration of some of the trials and tribulations of friendship, Bubble Trouble offers lots of room for discussion and a great excuse to play.

So yes, having shared Bubble Trouble lots of playing with bubbles was called for. We thought we’d try something different and so I taught the girls how to breath out bubbles, big and beautiful bubbles. Who wants to breath fire when you can breathe out bubbles?

We used this recipe to make our bubble mixture:

Once the bubble mixture was all stirred together, we left it for 24 hours. Everything I’ve read says that this stage is really important (though we haven’t checked what difference it makes ourselves).

To breathe out bubbles here’s what you need to do:

1. Dip your hands into a bowl of tap water.
2. Dip your hands into your bowl of bubble mixture. (The corn flour will probably have settled at the bottom of your mixture. This didn’t seem to be a problem)
3. Rub your palms together smoothly and slowly a couple of times.
4. Open out your hands to form a rough circle: Your fingertips and wrists/bottom of thumbs will remain touching each other, and you should see a film of bubble mixture form between your two hands.
5. Gently blow through the opening between your two hands…..
6. Gasp at your bubble blowing abilities!

You can also use this mixture to blow bubbles through a circle made using just your first finger and thumb (first make a fist, then slowly open out your finger/thumb before blowing), and also to make ENORMOUS bubbles using a home made bubble wand.

For the homemade bubble wand you’ll need two lengths of dowelling. Screw an eye screw into each end and then put a large loop of string between the two eyes. It’s helpful to add a small weight such as a threaded button or a washer onto on side of your string loop.

Dip your string into your bubble mixture (all the way, up to the start of the wooden rods), lift gently out and move the rods apart. You’ll see a film appear between the strings and then if you wave them from one side to the other you’ll create amazing bubble tunnels.

There’s nothing like a good bubble!

Whilst mixing up our bubble juice we listened to:

Other activities which you could pair with Bubble Trouble include:

What are your favourite books which feature bubbles?

Disclosure: We received a free review copy of Bubble Trouble from the publisher.

One of the best days of our school summer holiday this year was spent taking things apart and weaving other things together.

Two friends of mine are the driving force behind setting up an alternative, creative play space in my home town, and I was honoured to be a part of the team involved in testing a prototype of their PLAYLAB. The longer term project is all about taking play seriously, providing a wide range of fun opportunities to grow and develop, through engineering, digital, drama, art, and tinkering-based activities, and for one day during the summer we took over an empty shop in the local mall and turned it into a hive full of transformers and loom bandits.

Photo: Stuart Parker

We had a range of old machines to take apart with hand tools, to explore, rebuild and repurpose and a sweetie shop array of loom bands for weaving and creating.

Image: Joyjit Sarker

Image: Stuart Parker

There were also books! Books on the theory of play and practical books to inspire kids and families. One of my roles was setting up this mini tinkering/play-themed library and today I thought I’d share some of them with you. Whilst these aren’t kids’ books per se, they are definitely family books – books to share and inspire kids and their grown ups to be creative.

Cool Tools: A Catalog of possibilities by Kevin Kelly is a bizarre but ultimately enticing and fascinating curation of reviews of stuff that enable you to do, create, and explore your world.

At first I baulked at a book that essentially seemed to be a collection of themed adverts covering everything from shoes to spirituality, Velcro to vagabonding, joinery to geology; each reviews has a product photo, details of where to buy the product and the typical price of the item, followed by a review of the “tool” at hand.

But as I browsed this book (although its size and format – larger than A4 and printed on thin glossy paper – make it slightly unwieldy, this is a great book for dipping in and out of) I got sucked in and ideas for all sorts of play and creativity started flowing.

And that’s what this book sis really all about: Showing you some interesting, practical tools (both physical and digital) to enable you to see possibilities where perhaps you saw none before. It’s sparked lots of “what if?” conversations in our family, and amazed us with the range of innovative ideas out there.

On the back cover of Cool Tools it states “This book was made with the young in mind. Give a copy to a kid you know.” M (at 9) has loved this books though some families may wish to know in advance that there is a small section on ‘Psychedelics’ including marijuana, and e-cigarettes. Given the format of this book, the page concerned can easily be removed and its presence should certainly not be a barrier to you opening this book up and exploring all the possibilities it offers you.

The Art of Tinkering by Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich has one of the best front covers I’ve ever seen. It embodies what the book is about int he most perfect way possible: It is printed with conductive ink, allowing you to play/tinker/hack the book before you’ve even opened it.

Where Cool Tools was about products to foster doing/playing/tinkering, The Art of Tinkering is about showcasing a wide range of artists mixing technology and art, taking apart and repurposing one thing to make something exciting and new. After each artist is introduced there’s a section on “how you can tinker” in a way similar to the artist in question. Some of the suggestions need rather more equipment than just a screwdriver, glue or paint, but the ideas are innovative and inspirational, ranging from time lapse art to playdoh circuits, animating stuffed toys to sculpting in cardboard, building your own stroboscope to making clothes out of unusual materials. Whilst the book doesn’t include step by step tutorials, it is packed with practical information, presented beautifully. Nearly every page turn has resulted in “Mum, can we try that?!”

Tinkerlab by Rachelle Doorley is a compendium of “55 playful experiments that encourage tinkering, curiosity and creative thinking”, born out of the US blog with the same name, Tinkerlab. Written specifically with the 0-6 year old crowd in mind, the projects in this book are simpler and easier to set up than in some of the other books mentioned here today, and many fall into the messy play category; you might not think of them as tinkering (for example collage painting and drawing games), and yet they do all involve experimenting, exploring, testing and playing, and in that sense they could be described as ‘tinkering’. “Design”, “Build”, “Concoct” and “Discover” form the main themes of each chapter packed with clear, recipe-like guidance for the themed activities. The book is beautifully produced with a coffee table book feel and the activities are contextualised with brief essays by various play and education professionals. It’s written very much with parents in mind; Doorley is keen to encourage us all at home to make space for mess and exploration, and this book helps make it feel possible, manageable and enjoyable.

Make: is a quarterly magazine made up of a mixture of opinion pieces, detailed tutorials and artist/project biographies and write-ups. I’d gift this mind-boggling magazine to teens (or adults) who love the idea of playing and creating with technology. The projects are aimed at those who embrace electronics and gadgets and range from the practical (eg a DIY blood pressure monitor or sleep timer) to the purely whimsical, (eg moving, fire breathing sculptures or coffee shop construction toys).

Even though most of the projects in Make: are too complex for the stage me and my girls are at, we’ve oohed and ahhed our way through several issues of Make: and will be looking out for new issues.

If tinkering/hacking is something that interests you, do look out for this year’s series of Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institution. “Sparks will fly: How to hack your home” is the title for this year’s series of lectures aimed at curious kids and their families and in them Professor Danielle George will be exploring how the spark of your imagination and some twenty first century tinkering can change the world. They will be shown on BBC4 over the Christmas period, and in January 2015 on the Ri’s (free) science video channel: www.richannel.org.

When M was about 9 months old she was sat in a bath and became transfixed by the steady trickle of water coming from the tap. Time and time again she tried to grab the stream of water and was utterly puzzled: Why wasn’t it possible to hold onto the solid-appearing rod of glinting water? I had a moment of delight and clarity as I watched M explore this ‘illusion’. As an adult I of course know a liquid cannot be held onto like a solid can, but when and how had I learned this? Here were M learning it right in front of my eyes and it felt like a moment of brilliant revelation, an instant when one of the secrets of how the world works was revealed.

Hervé Tullet‘s Mix it Up! allows us all to experience the same thrill of discovery, the buzz that comes from a lightbulb moment; it takes us back to the very bare bones of colour theory and shows us magic at our own fingertips. That mixing yellow and blue should give us a total different colour… well that’s pretty cool if you think about it.

Listeners and readers are invited into a wide open, imaginative space where their physical interaction with the book (tipping it, tapping it, slamming it shut) has the power to transform the pages. On one level we know it is an illusion, but the way the book addresses us directly and apparently responds to our commands instils a thrilling sense of both powerfulness and playfulness.

This books shows paint as your friend and as such is a fabulous doorway into the world of art.

This book makes scientists of its readers and listeners, asking the to predict what is going to happen and then making it so.

Mix it Up!‘s simplicity is deceptive and will be enjoyed by older children and playful adults, even if they’ve long since learned all they technically need to know about primary and secondary colours. A worthy follow-up to Press Here, this unadorned, uncomplicated book will cast a spell over you and allow you to see again some of the wonder around you.

Inspired by the page in Tullet’s book which shows a hand amongst paint-covered fingerprints we draw around our hands and cut out hand templates. These we temporarily stuck to a sheet of card (using masking tape).

Next we went wild with finger painting, starting with three bowls of primary colours (soaked into sponges so that the paint stuck to our fingers more evenly)…

…before mixing the primary colours to make secondary colours.

When the paper was full of prints I then carefully removed the hand templates to leave white shadows.

We used the now-covered-in-fingerprints hand templates to stick on a second sheet of white paper, creating an “opposite” image to the hand shadows.

Both are now up on the walls in the girls’ room. I think they make very effective pieces of art but perhaps more importantly, the process was hugely enjoyable.

Whilst we painted we listened to:

Other activities which would go well with reading Mix it Up! include:

What do you take for granted but have recently see with new eyes?

Disclosure: A free review copy of Mix it Up! was sent to me by the publishers.

In this day and age where there are fewer and fewer independent bookshops, some of the most exciting bricks-and-mortar places for discovering new children’s books are the shops in museums and art galleries.

Whilst they may not carry a huge range of stock, they often have quirky, unusual books which would never make it to the surface on the shelves in a highstreet chain bookshop. Two recent publications by Princeton Architectural Press are prime examples of the sort of books I mean: Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso, both by Patricia Geis, are part of a stylish, new and playful Meet the Artist! series which I really like.

Alexander Calder contains a simple biography of the artist’s life and then focuses on several of Calder’s recurrent or particularly important themes or pieces. We learn about his love of making toys, his circus, wire sculptures, mobiles/stabiles and what my kids instantly recognised as what they call “junk modelling”, but which is here referred to as sculpture out of “found objects”. So far, so fairly normal for a non-fiction book about an artist.

But this book is not like your average artist biography because it is full of surprises. There is pop-up bunting, a length of metal chain to play with, press out card toy reproductions, flaps, string and cut-outs. This book is about really engaging with Calder’s art, not just looking at it, but doing it, and viewing it from all angles.

To describe this as a “novelty” book would be unfair, as that label often carries the connotations of cheap gimmickry. Here the physicality of the book engages the reader in a way that I think gives valuable insight into the artist: this book is playful and unconventional, just as Calder was.

The Pablo Picasso volume is equally design conscious, with short pieces of text and white expanses left around the crisp reproductions of Picasso’s art so that they really stand out. The pop-ups are not quite as successful in this volume; sculpture, inherently 3-D, is simply more exciting when it pops up off the page than a reproduction of a flat painting, even with clever use of stands and frames.

Whilst these books might not be favoured in public libraries, with all their moving and loose parts being unlikely to stand up to masses of (quite rightly) active reading, I love how they are a stepping stone to encouraging self-expression (“If a famous artist can sculpt with clothes pegs, then I can try that too!”) and through that, self confidence. Non-Fiction book aren’t just about learning facts!

Alexander Calder‘s Circus is one of his most famous pieces of art and so my girls decided to create their own version. First up M made some bunting out of paint chips. She folded them in half, and then cut out a triangle that she folded over a length of string and held in place with a glue dot.

For our circus artists we downloaded, printed and coloured this great circus set from Made by Joel and made further unusual attractions out of corks and jewellery wire (in the spirit of Calder’s wire sculptures and found objects sculptures).

Watch out for our terrifying circus lions!

Whilst making our circus and then playing with it we listened to:

Other activities you might be inspired to get up to having read the Alexander Calder Meet the Artist! book include:

A third book in the Meet the Artist! series is planned for the Autumn of 2014: Henri Matisse will be the subject of the new volume and I’m certainly looking forward to it.

Disclosure: I received free review copies of both Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso from the publishers.

A plague of locusts…
A pride of lions…
A flock of sheep…

But what do you call a collection of books about collective nouns?

A brilliance?
A giggle?
A talent?

When it comes to the set published by PatrickGeorge, all of the above could apply.

A filth of starlings, A drove of bullocks, A crackle of crickets and A shiver of sharks each take a themed set of collective nouns, illustrate them in witty and bold ways, a provide a paragraph of information about each animal in question. Part non-fiction book, part English-language/literacy book, part science book, part word-play book, each of these volumes is inventive and engaging.

Whether you are reading about a run of salmon, where an optical illusion allows the illustration to look both like a salmon’s head and a running shoe, or a culture of bacteria, where the contents of a petri dish looks like Mona Lisa, each page plays with our understanding of language and the way we look at objects.

A quiver of cobras

The modern, bright illustrations are crisp, cool and clever. The text is informative and playful. Perfect for any kid who enjoys puns or animals, these bold books are fun for all.

With these books in mind the girls and I made our own volume of collective nouns:

We all enjoyed playing with language and sitting down simply drawing together.

Now, I’m delighted to say I have one set of all 4 books on collective nouns to give away to a lucky reader.

Good luck!

…something beginning with B… or even BB… Yep, a Brilliant Book!

I Spy with my little eye… by Edward Gibbs takes the well known, eponymous game and transforms it into the most beautiful of books. Every other page the reader is invited to guess what “I can spy with my little eye”, through a cut-out circle that gives us a glimpse of the following illustration. Each guess is based not on what a word begins with, but rather its colour, accompanied by a short hint, for example “I spy with my little eye… something that is white. The North Pole is my home.”

Gibbs’ illustration are sumptuous. Large scale, filling each page to the brim with a bright burst of colour, his animals are majestic and rather awe inspiring. The sense of anticipation created by the peep-holes only adds to the excitement and enjoyment of these wonderful pictures, which at times remind me a little of Catherine Rayner‘s work.

A super book for learning colours, for interaction, both between reader/listener and the book, and between the adult playing the game with the child listening, I’d really love to see I Spy with my little eye… available as a board book – I think the vibrant colours, the holes, the playfulness and the short text all add up to make this a book perfect for sharing with the very youngest of children.

Inspired by this post from the Artful Parent following a suggestion from MaryAnn Kohl, I prepared some pieces of card with a variety of holes cut out to see how the children would respond. How would having holes in their drawing surface influence what they drew?

Very quickly the game became drawing a frame of some sort to go round our faces:

This made me think of What’s Wrong with My Hair? by Satoshi Kitamura, a fun book by an illustrator I particularly like, and also The Book with a Hole by 3 Comments on I spy with my little eye…, last added: 7/23/2012