How to use this Page

Is it possible that When You Were Small was published a decade ago? Sometimes it feels like it was just last week. Sometimes it feels like it was a century ago.

In the time since the book was published some very lovely things have happened. It has won a few prizes and gone a few places. It still makes me happy to think of the time the Mexican Ministry of Education printed 60,000 copies to give away to primary students. There have been two more Henry books since that first one and I've got a site that rounds up reviews and such if anyone's interested.

Part of the success of this book (and its fellows) is due to the brilliant book designer, Robin Mitchell Cranfield. Along with Dimiter Savoff, publisher of Simply Read Books, she came up with such a beautiful, stripped-down, timeless aesthetic for the book. I couldn't love it any more than I do.

photo: Summer Hall/Appyreading

My great hope is to go on making books with Julie Morstad. There are many, many reasons for this but the best one, for me, is that we find the same things funny. And in that vein, is this wonderful photo I came across on Instagram a little while ago. It was posted by Summer Hall of Appyreading and she's given me permission to share it here.

Pride and Prejudice is 200 years old and looking better than ever thanks to a beautiful new board book edition.

I may have mentioned once or twice how much I love the new Cozy Classics series created by Holman and Jack Wang (and published by Simply Read Books).

The Wang brothers are making it their business to introduce the toddler set to the classics of literature through simple 12 word elucidations of the tales accompanied by beautiful needle-felted illustrations.

To give you a sense of how well this works, here's a two page spread from their recently released Pride & Prejudice.

The books are garnering lots of love and I look forward to seeing the shelf of Cozy Classics grow as editions of Les Misérables and War and Peace will soon be available.

The Swing
By Robert Louis Stevenson
Illustrated By Julie Morstad
Simply Read Books
$8.95
ISBN: 978-1897476482
Ages 0-3
On shelves August 15th

There comes a moment in a new parent’s life when they realize that they have become their own parents. It’s different for everyone. For some folks it won’t happen until they’re berating their teenagers, conjuring up terms and threats from their own youth that they swore they’d never use. For others, it happens at practically the moment after conception. And for me, it happened when I read my one-year-old daughter Julie Morstad’s simply irresistible adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic poem The Swing. As I read the book aloud I realized that I had heard this poem myself as a child. I could even recall the images that accompanied it, filled with sickly sweet children with cheeks so large they’d make the Campbell Soup kids seem wan in comparison. And when later I heard my own mother recite this poem I was amazed to discover that my reading, which I’d done several time for my own daughter, contained the exact same cadences and turns of phrase as my mother’s rendition. The difference for my daughter will be the fact that while the art accompanying my The Swing was tepid, the images that appear in Julie Morstad’s gorgeous little board book are utterly lovely creations. For all those parents desperate to introduce their toddlers to poetry, or just folks who want to read their kids something beautiful for once, here is the answer to your prayers.

“How do you like to go up in a swing / Up in the air so blue?” I should think you’d like it very much if you were one of the children in Julie Morstad’s clever little book. Adapting Robert Louis Stevenson’s words, Ms. Morstad fills her pages with kids on their way up, their way down, and everywhere in-between. They glide under cherry blossoms, observe the even rows of plants and vegetables, and swing like superheroes on their bellies. The result is a haunting but thoroughly enjoyable update to a poem that feels as fresh and fun as it was the day it was first published in the late 1800s.

Etsy has been a simultaneous boon and problem for the children’s picture book world. On the one hand, there is no better place for editors to find up and coming artists. Never before has a public forum of this scope yielded such rich artistic talent. On the other hand, there is a kind of Etsy “look” that typifies the people found there. It’s what allows reviewers like myself to view certain kinds of children’s books and sniff “Etsy” when we want to put them down. Now at a first glance Morstad’s work on The Swing might strike you as falling in the Etsy vein. An unfair assumption since as far as I can tell Ms. Morstad sells her art herself and not through Etsy. More to the point, this book is better than that. Granted I wouldn’t mind taking some of the images found in the book and framing them on my wall (particularly that cover image with the black background and white haired girl swinging through a field of vibrant blossoms). But there’s a quality to Ms. Morstad’s art that feels more than merely trendy. There’s a lot of beauty here, and it

Cozy Classics is a new board book series that presents well-loved stories to children aged 0+. Every classic in the series will be condensed to 12 baby-friendly words, and each word will appear alongside a photograph of needle felted objects.

0 Comments on Cozy Classics Board Books as of 1/1/1900