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Our best selling picture book from our affiliate store is one of our all-time favorite books: Dear Zoo, by Rod Campbell!

When possible, give the gift of books for birthdays, baby showers, or any other celebration that requires a present—books are special and therefore worthy of special occasions.

It only takes a couple of beautiful autumn days and the holiday season suddenly feel so much closer. Readers are not wasting time getting into the holiday spirit: this month, our best selling picture book from our affiliate store is the delightful rendition of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker, illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

What drove you to start creating children's books? A revolt! When I had my first child, children’s books looked like some stupid marketing thing.

"...individual readers can make the experience more child-centered by engaging kids in a dialogue."

This month, our best selling picture book from our affiliate store is the uber entertaining Press Here, by Herve Tullet.

This month, our best selling picture book from our affiliate store is the entertaining If You Happen to have a Dinosaur, written by Linda Bailey and illustrated by Colin Jack.

This month, our best selling picture book from our affiliate store is the gorgeously illustrated Gaston, written by Kelly DiPucchio and pictures by Christian Robinson.

Exciting news: This month our best selling picture book from our affiliate store is a non-fiction book. Hooray for our smart and engaged readers!

When Hervé Tullet‘s Press Here came out in 2011, reviewer Lolly Robinson wrote that its ingenious interactivity “gives the iPad a licking.” Following a similar no-screen-needed interactive model is this lovely pair of books:

   

Here are a few brand-new arrivals with Press Here–like directions to tap, shake, rub, and blow on the pages:

The post Everybody wants to be Press Here appeared first on The Horn Book.

This month our best selling picture book from our affiliate store remains the same. It's the gorgeously illustrated Sleep Like a Tiger, written by Mary Lougue and pictures by Pamela Zagarenski.

This month our best selling picture book from our affiliate store is the gorgeously illustrated Sleep Like a Tiger, written by Mary Lougue and pictures by Pamela Zagarenski.

Simple, bold illustrations with fun formats that beg to be touched by little hands.

This month our best selling picture book from our affiliate store continues to be the lively board book Peek-a-Zoo!, by Nina Laden.

This month our best selling picture book from our affiliate store is the lively board book Peek-a-Zoo!, by Nina Laden.

Reader's Digest's What I Like About Me is our best selling picture book from our affiliate store this month. As per usual, we've shared our hand selected titles of the most popular picture books from the nationwide best selling picture books.

We think it's so fun that one of our all-time favorite Christmas books is our best selling picture book from our affiliate store this month—we just love Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's Stick Man. As per usual, we've shared our hand selected titles of the most popular picture books from the nationwide best selling picture books, as listed by The New York Times.

Hervé Tullet is known for his prodigious versatility, from directing ad campaigns to designing fabric for Hermès. But his real love is working with children, for whom he has published dozens of books, including Press Here.

The colder months in the Northern Hemisphere are upon us and it's reflected in this list of best selling picture books. As per usual, we've shared our hand selected titles of the most popular picture books.

It’s been a while since I did a big fat Rillabooks post. The books are piling up! Literally and figuratively. When I want to blog about a book, I leave it out after we’ve read it. This means:

1) There are stacks of books on every flat surface of this house; and

2) We keep reading those books over and over, because they’re out where we can see them.

Which is fine, because I wouldn’t have had the urge to blog about the book in the first place if it weren’t in some way delightful.

Another thing that’s happening a lot lately is that Huck collects favorite picture books to read in his bed at night. I could probably skip writing about them and just post a picture of his headboard every morning. No stronger recommendation for a children’s book than being made part of a five-year-old’s hoard, is there?

But here, I’ll do a proper post. Kortney, consider this my thank-you note for that lovely write-up the other day.

NEW:

Mix It Up by Hervé Tullet. Here’s a book that beckons a child in and invites him to touch and “mix” blobs of color on the page. Drag some red into the yellow blob, and when you turn the page, naturally you’ve got orange. What interested me is how completely Huck entered into the conceit, touching and swirling those painted spots on the page just as if he were playing an iPad game. “Like this?”—tentatively at first, touching the dot as instructed, and then turning the page and crowing in glee at the change. He engaged just as thoroughly as if it were an app, red + yellow magically turning to orange under his finger. This thrills me, I have to say—the willingness to enter into a game of make-believe with a book when so much in his world trains him to expect animations for every cause-and-effect. The book is full of fun, with dots of color skittering across the page as if alive. Gorgeously designed, too: big bold colors against clean white space. We also enjoyed Tullet’s Press Here which similarly invites interaction. At five, Huck seems to be exactly the right age for these books. We’ve read Mix It Up together several times but most often he carts it away to his bed to enjoy solo.

(You’ll want your watercolors handy after you read this book. Or do as we did and whip up a quick batch of play dough: 2 cups flour, 3/4 cup salt, 1 cup water [add slowly; you may not need all of it]. Knead until it isn’t sticky. I go sparingly on the water and leave a lot of loose flour in the mixing bowl for the kids to rub their hands in before I start handing out lumps of dough. Then, for each lump, a drop of food coloring. They love working it in, watching it marble its way through the blank dough. After the colors are well mixed, I like to add a tiny drop of lavender or cinnamon oil, or a bit of vanilla extract. The smells make them so happy! “I’m probably going to play with this for one or three hours,” Huck informed me when I got him set up the other day—after I’d remembered such a cheap and easy cure for listlessness existed in the world. Why do I forget about this for months at a time? A batch will last in the fridge for about a week. Rilla can measure and mix it by herself. Very handy when, say, an older sister is wrangling with Algebra 2 and needs mom’s attention for a while.)

OLD:

Borreguita and the Coyote by Verna Aardema, illustrations by Petra Mathers—over and over and over again! Beloved by Rilla too (and all her older siblings before her). Utterly satisfying rendition of a Mexican folk tale in which a clever little sheep outwits, repeatedly, with comic effect, a coyote intent on eating her for dinner. Might I recommend reading this one while lying down so that all of you can stick your legs in the air when you get to the part about Borreguita “holding up” the mountain.

Creepy Castle by John S. Goodall. Out of print but if you can track one down you’re in luck. All six of my kids have loved this book to pieces. No! Not to pieces, fortunately! It’s got flaps inside, each spread flipping to become a new picture. An almost wordless book, which means the kids and I get to narrate the adventure as the two hero mice make their way through a seemingly deserted castle. There’s a sister fellow hiding in the bushes; he locks them in a scary room with a dragon guarding the stairs, but they climb out the window and splash into the moat. My littles especially like the moment when the villain gets his comeuppance at the end. I can’t count how many dozens of times I have read this little book. They never seem to get tired of it.

Another book back in circulation these days is Dinosaur Vs. Bedtime. (Sniffle: two-year-old Huck in that post.)

Meanwhile, I’m making my way through the leeeeennnngggggthy list of Cybils YA nominees and will have some to recommend in a post coming soonish.

My 3-year-old daughter is currently an Hervé Tullet fan, but not in the sense you might think.  It’s not Press Here that strikes her fancy (though she enjoys it well enough) but his board books with Phaidon.  Who knew?  Now there’s an exhibit up over in Brooklyn I need to take her to.

Herve Tullet is a picture book hero! His best selling picture book Press Here (Chronicle Books, 2011) has been joined on the best selling picture book list by his incredibly fun Mix it Up!

Here are some awesome books for your "Little Humans." As usual, we've picked five kids books that we feel represent some of the best new kids stories

(image via here.)

by Hervé Tullet (Chronicle Books, 2014)

First of all. Welcome to the new Design of the Picture Book! I’m super excited to feature this particular book as the first spot in my face-lifted blog–its heart and soul of art and play is exactly what I think these new digs represent.

Do you see? The logo! The colors! The Book Party? THE BOOK PARTY?!! (If you are in a reader, click over and see all the goodies. And for the love, please join the Book Party. I mean really.)

Super huge thanks to Sara Jensen for, well, everything. (#taken)

It’s here. This highly anticipated follow up to the smash hit Press Here is muddled-up fun and completely magical.

Remember those rolls of endless butcher paper and squishing your fingers into as many paint puddles as possible? That’s what this book is. It’s a lesson in color mixing wrapped up in a hefty dose of play.

Slam the book together so the yellow and blue make green. Shake it on its side and watch purple drips racing off the page. What happens when you add some white? Or black? Or stick your hand right in the middle of the mess?

It’s a color theory primer and an invitation to get dirty. And isn’t that the best kind of creating?

I’m a grownup. I get the gig here. And still I looked at my palm when I flipped the last page of this book, sure it would be dripping with paint.

Welcome back to childhood. It’s good here.

Want to win a children’s painting studio worth $500? Check out the details here, and tweet away using #MixItUpBook!

P.S – If you need more Hervé Tullet (and the answer is probably yes, yes you do) check out this other experiential art book for tiny, creative minds.

I received this book from the publisher (right back atcha, #chroniclecrush!), but opinions are all mine.

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.