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What’s Hidden in the Woods by Aina Bestard (@ainab) is a playful, curiosity-creating picture book with a difference.

At first glance, it’s a simple walk through the woods, but as you slow down and look closely, using a set of special lenses which come packaged with the book, all sorts of hidden stories are revealed. Animals and plants magically appear where there were none before. Gentle prompts on each page draw in readers / listeners / viewers to look again and let themselves be surprised and enchanted by the magic.

Bestard’s illustrative technique makes use of the fact that different coloured lenses filter out different colours printed on the page, disguising some, allowing others to suddenly appear clearly. This approach makes for stylish images also when viewed without any lenses; her limited palette, her highly decorative use of patterns and the clarity of her line all add up to fresh and eye-catching illustrations.

The experience of reading the book is also very interesting. It becomes something slower and more deliberate, not a race to the end, but rather an invitation to look, and look and look again. Such close observation is sometimes hard to encourage, but here it comes naturally and is hugely enjoyable. My kids both kept checking that they’d not missed any small detail and were truly fascinated by how something so simple as the lenses changed everything.

We just had to explore the technique used by Bestard ourselves and so we set up a creation station, with lots of different shades of red, yellow, blue and green markers, plus homemade acetate visors in each of the colours. The visors (made from acetate sheets rather than cellophane because acetate is a bit thicker and sturdier) meant that the kids could put them on and draw hands-free (so to say) i.e. without having to hold the magic lenses from the book in one hand.

There was a real frisson of excitement in the air as we saw how our drawings appeared to reveal hidden secrets as we viewed them through different coloured filters. I’ve tried to show how it looked to us by making this short animation:

Whilst making our own magic images we listened to:

Other activities which might work well alongside reading What’s Hidden in the Woods include:

Once you’ve enjoyed What’s Hidden in the Woods I’d recommend you look out for The Great Journey by Agathe Demois (which makes use of the same technique), and also for the books published by PatrickGeorge. The latter make very clever use of coloured acetate but in a completely different way to Bestard.

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

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.

I do love a book full of holes.

Tights with holes? No thank you.

A bike tyre with a hole? What a pain.

But a book with holes? Yes PLEASE!

There are some all-time classic books with holes in them: Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar and the Ahlbergs’ Peepo. More recently there’s the exuberant Peck, Peck, Peck by Lucy Cousins, which I adore. But a new contender to join the ranks of honourably holey hits is It’s an Orange Aardvark! by Michael Hall.

The tale of a small colony of carpenter ants chewing holes in a tree stump, this book covers everything from learning about colours and similes to group dynamics and animal biology. It’s a wonderfully enjoyable read which explores both curiosity and fear. It really packs a great deal within its covers at the same time as being a visual and tactile treat.

A band of formic brothers are creating holes in their stump to look out on the world outside their home. One is enthusiastic to see what lies beyond their threshold. Another is terribly worried about the dangers that lurk beyond their known and safe world. As they make each window their stump is flooded with colour. What could be the cause of this? Is it something to embrace and delight in or could it be a threat?

The naysayer is convinced there is an existential threat to them all in the form of an aardvark waiting to gobble them up. As each different colour floods the stump, this poor ant must come up with increasingly outrageous explanations; could it really be a (blue) pyjama-wearing, (red) ketchup carrying, orange aardvark guiding a group of green geckos?

With a hint of Klassen-style ambiguity in the ending (what really was the source of all the colour?) this book is full of delicious tension, punctured with lots of humour as well as holes which let the colour flood from one page to the next. The bold illustrations appear to be made from collage, mixing watercolour and tissue paper. The torn edges suggesting the tree stump sides give an additional handmade, personal feel to the images, and the use of black and grey pages ensures the colours sing and pulse as they shine through.

The somewhat American language (“Sweet!”, “Neat!”) may niggle some readers elsewhere in the world but this is a small price to pay for such an inventive, enjoyable read. I do hope it will be released as a board book so that it can be fully explored with the fingers, hands and mouths not just of aardvarks but also of the youngest book devourers.

Taking the lead from the concentric rings of colour flooding through each hole as it is created in the tree stump, we used tissue paper circles of various sizes to create suncatchers which explored colour depth. You can buy ready cut shapes of tissue paper, but we used regular sheets and cut out a series of circles of various sizes using plates, bowls and mugs as our templates.

We layered our circles over a sheet of contact paper large enough to then fold back over the concentric circles to enclose them entirely in see-through plastic. An alternative would have been to use laminator sheets, if you have ones which are larger enough for your largest circle.

Once a we had a selection of coloured tissue paper/contact paper circle sandwiches we stuck them on our patio doors and let the light flood through them.

Whilst making our concentric sun catchers we listened to:

Other activities which would go well with reading It’s an Orange Aardvark! include:

What’s your favourite book with holes in it? What’s the most annoying (non book) hole you’ve ever discovered?

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

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.

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.

Indulge me: Have a quick brainstorm about picture books you know for young kids which explore what it feels like to be different?

[Go on! Play the game!]
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Of those you’ve come up with, how many are about emotions rather than physical characteristics?

How many of them feature humans rather than animals?

How many of them have a boy lead character rather than a girl?

[I came up with very few, and even then I needed help from the ever resourceful and generous Letterbox Library. Between us we came up with Oliver by Birgitta Sif, Eliot Jones, Midnight Superhero by Anne Cottringer and Alex T Smith, Weslandia by Paul Fleischman and Kevin Hawkes but that was pretty much it.]

So when Made by Raffi written by Craig Pomranz, illustrated by Margaret Chamberlain (@madgiemadge) appeared in my hands for the first time I sat up and noticed; it’s about a boy who feels he doesn’t quite fit in, for instead of football, his passion is knitting and sewing.

Although he’s a curious and generous kid, he feels sidelined at school. Unlike most of his classmates, he doesn’t like noise and rough play. But thanks to a supportive teacher he discovers a new passion – making his own clothes. When it is time for the school play could this new skill help him gain the respect of his peers? Without giving the game away, the ending is upbeat, but also authentic. This isn’t a sugar-coated story. (For the really interesting background to the story, take a look at this article).

This book deserves to be in every school and read in every family for a whole plethora of reasons. It’s bold, tackling gender issues that many adults might skirt around: I love Pomranz daring to use the word “girly“, and it certainly helped us talk about how being a girl interested in ‘boys’ things’ is often more accepted by society than a boy interested in ‘girls’ things’. It’s big hearted; not just the warm, loving family Raffi is part of, but also his supportive school. It shows all sorts of children playing together, with different skin colours and different physical abilities, as well as different interests. It’s a joyously inclusive book, which tackles big themes gently and playfully.

Margaret Chamberlain’s illustrations are delightful. She uses colour very cleverly to portray moods and to mirror how much more interesting – indeed colourful – the world is for a diverse range of characters; wouldn’t the world be a dull grey place if we all liked only the same things?

A book about loneliness, respect, difference, and learning to trust your instincts even when it means you don’t follow the crowd, Made by Raffi is a vital, delightful and unusual book I urge you to share.

M and J were recently shown how to knit by their Grandma, and reading Made by Raffi offered the ideal opportunity to practice their recently acquired skills. (Here are some Youtube tutorials we found helpful to refresh our memories of what Granny had taught us: Casting on, knit stitch, casting off.

Having a ball of wool with lots of different colours on it was an effective tool in motivating the kids; each child would knit one or two colours and then hand the needles and ball over to the other. It gave them easy targets to aim for, and I’m sure this is partly why they completed a long scarf far more quickly than I was expecting.

Whilst knitting we’ve been listening to:

Other activities which would go well with reading Made by Raffi include:

Other picture /illustrated books which feature knitting include:

If you like the sound of Made by Raffi and are anywhere near Edinburgh in August, don’t miss the chance to meet author Craig Pomranz talking about his book as part of the Edinburgh Book Festival.

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

It’s been a while since I fell in love at first sight, but that’s precisely what happened when I saw the front cover of Red Cat, Blue Cat by debut author/illustrator Jenni Desmond.

The cats’ gorgeously grumpy expressions, the boldness of the image as a whole, the delicate detailing of the birds in flight – it made me catch my breath, nod and smile.

And on turning the pages my sense of excitement and delight only grew. Red Cat, Blue Cat (published later this month in the UK) turns out not only to be beautiful but also witty, original, and jam-packed with joie de vivre; a gentle and humorous exploration of identity, envy and friendship.

Red Cat is fast and bouncy whilst Blue Cat is clever and creative. They share a house but the only other thing they have in common is a secret wish: to be more like the other. Try as they might, all they end up doing is fighting and getting in a big mess. Finally it dawns on them that not only is imitation really the sincerest form of flattery, but happiness also comes more easily if your comfortable with the skin you’re in. A friendship is born based on acceptance and appreciation of difference.

Desmond tells a great story, full of giggles (regular readers of my blog should be delighted to know there are more pants on heads!) as well as having a more thoughtful side. Her illustrations are clean, fresh and eyecatching. Definitely a talent I hope to see much more of in the future.

Inspired by the terraced housing on the title page of Red Cat, Blue Cat we set about creating our own street scene with cats.

We each had a bunch of plain white postcards onto which we drew house fronts. We use origami paper for the roof tiles and added telegraph poles and wires made from barbecue skewers and yarn, and chimney smoke made from toy stuffing fibre.

M added TV aerials made from paper clips and passport photo booth images of us looking out of windows.

I particularly like the bird nesting in the chimney of the house below, and the bicycle in front on the road.

Whilst making our street collage we listened to:

Other activities which would work well alongside Red Cat, Blue Cat include:

So what’s the last book you judged by its cover? Was it one you didn’t read because of the way it looked, or one you bought straight off because the front cover spoke to you?

Way back in 2009, during that very first week I ever blogged about picture books and play, I wrote about Lois Ehlert’s Planting a Rainbow. It may have taken me a couple of years, but finally we got round to planting our own rainbow in honour of Ehlert’s beautiful, vibrant book.

Six months ago we spent a sunny afternoon planting Hope (isn’t that what gardening is really all about?). We went to the garden centre and chose bags of bulbs with flowers in colours as near to the rainbow spread as possible, and which were all meant to bloom around March/April time. Our approach was pragmatic rather than super scientific.

Once home, the girls laid the bulbs out in a rainbow arc..

And then covered them up.

To help keep Hope alive, we marked our rainbow in two ways. The girls used acrylic paints to brighten up stones they’d found whilst planting their bulbs. They also made markers using bamboo sticks and Sharpies (permanent pens).

And now April is here and our rainbow looks like this…

Um…. not quite the rainbow we perhaps had in our minds’ eye when we planted it, but no less beautiful for all that!

Have you ever planted a rainbow? Have you had more success? What tips do you have?

I’m without any internet connection at the moment (this was a scheduled post), so please, if you leave a comment, know that I appreciate it and will reply as soon as I can be online again! I can assure you, you won’t have to wait as long as I have to publish this post (considering I started planning it back last September ).

My blogging goals this year are twofold (1) to play a more active part in the online, book-celebrating community I so value and (2) to work on a more creative diet when it comes to playing and exploring with my kids. To help me with my first goal, I’m taking part in Gathering Books’ Award Winning Book Challenge throughout the course of 2012 (it’s not too late for you to join!), and today I bring you my first offering – a review of Invisible by Katja Kamm – Winner of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for best picture book in 2003.

Invisible is a wordless book about an afternoon spent in a seaside town full of interesting characters. Not only will you smile at the Kamm’s observations about the rich panoply of life, from nuns to peeing dogs, you’ll enjoy the tricks the pictures play on your eye; on each spread something appears invisible because it blends in with the background colour. Only the negative shape left behind gives a clue as to what has become invisible, and so it becomes a game to see if you can work out what that is before you turn the page.

The illusions are clever and witty, and the bright, bold, saturated colours give this book a fresh feel. The game is fun even (or perhaps especially) once you know what’s going on – there’s something delightful about being tricked, about falling for the illusion (in this way it reminded me a little of Tullet’s much acclaimed Press Here).

Image copyright: Katja Kamm

This spunky book might not appeal to everyone. There’s nudity (well, invisible nudity…), buxom punks, as well as an anatomically correct male dog doing what dogs like best to do on the pavement, and I do feel uncomfortable about the scene where the nuns are frightened by something in the (black) night – it turns out to be a black man. But it’s nevertheless a fun, original read that I’d definitely recommend to anyone interested in illustration or design: I thought Invisible was a breath of fresh air and am delighted to have discovered it thanks to Gathering Books’ Award Winning Book Challenge.

Of course the girls (and I) wanted to play at being invisible after reading this super book. Making an entire child (or mum) invisible is a little tricky, but I did show the girls how they could make a stamp or a sticker (appear to be) invisible.

I

In my experience of parenthood so far Eric Carle and the birth of babies go hand in hand.

If a newborn is going to receive a book or two as a welcome-to-the-world gift, it’s a nigh-on certainty that there’ll be stories or illustrations from Carle included. I know when M was born we were sent multiple copies of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and the first book I specifically bought for M, when she was still in utero, was Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?

Next week sees the publication of the first new picture book by Eric Carle since I last had a newborn of my own: four years after Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See? (which co-incidentally was the first book I bought specifically for J), The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse is about to start making its journey into homes, hands and childhoods.

“I am an artist and I paint…” not quite what you might expect.

Although the book follows a pattern that mirrors Brown Bear, Brown Bear and its partner books, with a single boldly coloured animal in instantly recognisable Carle style on each double page spread, there is something of a surprise thrown in. Not one of the animals is the colour they “should” be; there’s a blue horse, a yellow cow and a green lion, for starters.

Children will enjoy the humour in these “mismatches”, but the book also contains a powerful message about creativity, imagination and being encouraged to explore beyond what is expected of you. The artist who paints these “wrongly” coloured animals is described as “a good artist“.

Although I suspect this book will be bought primarily for the preschool crowd because of its simple text (most pages have just 4 words on them), I actually think this is a great picture book for slightly older children, in their first years of schooling. Inspired by the work of the Expressionist painter Franz Marc (the book includes examples of Marc’s paintings and a short biography inside the back cover) it’s a great catalyst for discussing “What IS art?” and how we decide whether we think an artist is any good or not.

Thus my advice would have to be, next time you’re buying a gift for a new baby, choose The Artist who Painted a Blue Horse for the baby’s older sibling and treat the new arrival to Brown Bear, Brown Bear – toge

[With apologies to readers in the Southern Hemisphere...] Are you looking for a little sprinkling of colour and humour to help you get through these last days of winter before spring arrives? If so, Peely Wally, the debut picture book from Kali Stileman may be just the thing you’re looking for.

Photo: bortescristian

Peely Wally is a very happy bird. She has just laid an egg and is proud and thrilled. But in her excitement at the impending arrival of her baby, she bounces so hard on her twig that the egg rolls off and away. The poor egg tumbles down here, over there, only just avoids being eaten and eventually, with the help of all the neighbouring animals, survives the adventure and is returned to a much relieved Mum.

But then the most exciting thing of all happens… the egg cracks, and… well I’m sure you can guess what happens, but it’s nevertheless lovely, heartwarming and fun to reveal.

This simple tale is great fun for the younger crowd. There’s just the right amount of adventure, a suggestion of disaster, a reassuring rescue, and a great deal of love and care. But it’s the vibrant illustrations which will really get the kids coming back for more. Created in collage style, inevitably (and successfully) reminiscent of Eric Carle, they zing with colour and texture.

What’s more, I suspect that many kids won’t just listen to the story, they will actually play with this book: A dotted line across every page indicates the path of the egg and my kids love tracing this with their finger while the slopes and loop-the-loops encourage me to read the text in an even more sing-song fashion than normal.

Although I’d wholeheartedly recommend this book to any young family I bumped into in the bookshop, two tiny question marks hang over the book for me. First, the eponymous title. Personally, I like it – it suggests something fun and unusual. But I do wonder if some might be turned off by it (and perhaps the editors have thought this too – the book is being released outside of the UK under the title “Roly-Poly Egg”). It puts me in mind of another book I enjoy reading with the girls, but which I’ve heard hasn’t been very successful because of its title – The Terrible, Greedy Fossifoo by Charles Fuge.

Second, as this book will be a hit with the youngest of readers, and contains a wonderful lift-the-flaps page at the denouement of the story, it really deserved to be published on much more robust paper or even as a board book. The flaps, such as they are, will soon be torn, for they are thin and flimsy. This is such a shame for instead of letting my kids excitedly unveil what’s behind the flaps, I’m nervous about pages being ripped and this somewhat diminishes the story’s final impact.

However, put aside these two tiny gripes and what you have here is the perfect nonreligious book for Easter, an ideal gift for Mums-to-be and a peppy pick-me-up tonic to banish the winter blues. A treat for the preschool crowd, and a book that’s received a big thumbs up from both my girls. Do look

Today is the start of the UK’s Children’s Book Week, a celebration of reading for pleasure for children of primary school age (5-11) with special events taking place all over the country in schools, libraries and bookshops. 79 years old and going from strength to strength, the theme of this year’s Children’s Book Week is “books from around the world“.

Illustration: Shirin Adl for Children's Book Week 2010

As part of Children’s Book Week a special pack has been created (primarily with teachers in mind, but available to anyone to download) including book lists relating to this year’s theme for different age groups, for example:

For younger children:

For emerging readers

Poetry fro

Today’s Fantastic Fiction for Kids selection comes from Nancy at Bees Knees Reads. Nancy has two girls, aged 4 and 6, and they live in a small town on the coast in northern California.

Three years ago she started blogging about picture books with her sister Kim Baise at Bees Knees Reads and around the same time they developed a start-up press, Bees Knees Books to collaborate with author/illustrators and publish picture books. They released two books in 2009: Maybelle, Bunny of the North by Keith Patterson and A Wonderful Week by Marjolein Varekamp. If all this weren’t enough to keep Nancy busy she also runs a bookstore – Coastside Books! I’m sure Nancy has bad days like the rest of us, but her existence sounds quite idyllic to me

Nancy’s theme this week is “shifting perspectives”. Of selecting these books Nancy wrote “Although two of the stories have characters with disabilities (blind and deaf) the stories are really more about looking at the world (or one’s own experience) from a different viewpoint. And I think the story, I Feel A Foot, which is a retelling of a Sufi fable illustrates that theme perhaps most obviously. One of my favorite sayings is, “Don’t believe everything you think!” And these three books playfully challenge the reader to shift her perspective many times.”

The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin and illustrated by Rosana Faria.

The author and illustrator are from Venezuela and the book was first published in Spanish. It is beautiful in it’s conception and production. The pages are black with embossed illustrations and Braille underneath the lettering so the reader must touch the pages, shifting one’s senses from sight to touch. The narrator is guided by Thomas who is blind and he describes color by how he feels or experiences color. There is a great excerpt and review here. After reading this book together you can ask children to close their eyes and imagine/describe what different colors look like. Is Thomas’ world black or is it rich with color?

The Deaf Mus

3 Comments on Fantastic Fiction for Kids – Shifting Perspectives, last added: 2/18/2010

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Andi said, on 2/17/2010 3:15:00 AM

These sound like great books! As an activity, how about painting or sculpting with your eyes closed (or blindfolded)? It is such a different feeling to create something based on touch and feel alone.

Janelle @ Brimful Curiosities said, on 2/17/2010 7:46:00 AM

My daughter just started learning a little sign language at school. She loves talking with her hands and can say I love you (mom, dad, grandpa, grandma). She really caught on quick!

Nancy said, on 2/17/2010 10:29:00 PM

I’ll have to check out that reissue of The Seeing Stick! And I really like the music suggestions especially Beethoven’s later works, when he lost his hearing. I know this was a challenge. Something I like to do with the kids in the car on the way to school is to ask them to name the different instruments they hear in a piece of music. This gives them the awareness of different ways of hearing the music.

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14. Living in colour

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By: Zoe, on 2/4/2010
Blog: Playing by the book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  Birds, Colours, Polly Dunbar, Add a tag

I don’t know about you, but since Christmas we’ve been seeing a lot of grey. Grey clouds, grey sleet, grey sky, grey rain. I’m beginning to get a bit itchy now for some splashes of colour. Some early crocuses would be nice, or even just some sunshine!

So I’m having to get my colour fix another way, and one source of rainbow delight this last couple of weeks has been Flyaway Katie by Polly Dunbar.

Katie is feeling grey. Finding inspiration from a beautiful picture on her wall of birds with colourful plummage she sets about trying to cheer herself up. First she puts on her most colourful clothes, and although that helps she doesn’t yet feel quite right. So, Katie then paints herself – her face, her arms, her fingers, and whilst the paint is drying magic occurs.

With a fizz and a flutter Katie is ably to fly into the picture on her wall and spends the rest of the day living in colour, making friends with the cheerful, exotic birds around her, having a great deal of fun right up until it is time to return home for her bedtime bath.

Both girls (and me!) love this book. The illustrations are a tonic – Dunbar’s use of colour is most definitely what the doctor ordered for us. Stars and sparkles fizz over the pages and the birds’ feathers come in a riot of colours. Katie’s imagination and can-do attitude, as well as her body language and fashion choices remind me somewhat of Lola (as in Charlie and Lola) – a great little hero to identify with. Although a short read, it carries a great message worth reminding ourselves of sometimes – with a bit of creativity we can do a lot to help cheer ourselves up! No more complaining about the weather and the cold then for me

As soon as we’d read the book for the first time, M and I both wanted to do exactly as Katie had done – find our best, brightest, cheeriest clothes and fly away into a magical place. So the first thing we did was to recreate a picture to hang on our kitchen wall in hommage to Katie’s picture. I cut out bird shapes from card and “feathers” from multi coloured tissue paper and we all sat down as a family to stick, glue, and decorate our birds.

The final result has certainly brightened up our kitchen!

One friend saw this yesterday and commented “Hmm, not a lot of parental involvement there, then!” – but that was missing the point entirely I think – this was a great project that got all four of us sat together around the tabl

5 Comments on Living in colour, last added: 2/5/2010

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Kristine said, on 2/5/2010 4:03:00 AM

I love those wings – they’d make any bird jealous.

Ashley said, on 2/5/2010 4:22:00 AM

That book looks just the ticket for these gloomy grey days, like you I’m so fed up of them.
Wonderful project, I think the bird collage is just fabulous, really cheerful and can imagine how much fun to sit and make.

jama said, on 2/5/2010 6:30:00 AM

This post really cheered me up today! Love the colors, the bird wings project, and now I must see the book!

Ginny Marie said, on 2/5/2010 7:01:00 AM

Those activities are fantastic! I’d love to try them with my daughters!

I haven’t seen that book before. I’m definitely going to find it to read to my girls!

I have a post up for Feed Me Books Friday, too.
I hope you have time to come for a visit!

Sarah N. said, on 2/5/2010 8:18:00 AM

Our days have been very grey! This book looks wonderful and so do the feathers.

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15. Sunday photo // Vasárnapi kép

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By: Irisz Agocs, on 3/1/2009
Blog: artista how to (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  photo, inspiration, colours, technique, Add a tag

© Agócs Írisz

I am not too good at taking photos, but I think it is very important to collect colours, forms, textures and composition ideas with camera. It is like doodling before select one good idea and do the first sketches for a picture.
And also it is nice to make experiments with photos it helps a lot in thinking about pictures.
When you use different picture making systems you will feel your opportunities are endless even using only just one technique.

Nem vagyok túl ügyes fotós, de fontosnak tartom a színek, felületek, minták és kompozíciók fényképezőgéppel való gyűjtését. Kicsit olyan mint amikor az ember csak firkálgat, mielőtt kiválasztva a legjobb ötletet nekiállna előkészíteni egy illusztrációt.
A fotókkal való kísérletezgetés is nagyon jó módszer arra, hogy az ember minél többféle képpen gondolkodjon képekről. Minél több képalkotási módszert próbálgat az ember párhuzamosan, annál inkább érzi, hogy végtelenek a határai akár egyetlen technikán belül is.

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Kesha Bruce said, on 3/2/2009 4:36:00 AM

Great post! I never really thougth about using photographs as a type of "sketchbook", but it makes perfect sense.

ccristiana said, on 3/6/2009 11:41:00 AM

Hi, i was lookin for liquid watercolour techniques and found your blog!
I really love your blog!
keep on posting your techniques and drawings!
I also do some illustrations just for fun (I am an architect).
If you have some hints for painting with "ecoline", it would be helpfull!

irisz said, on 3/6/2009 12:15:00 PM

Dear Ccristiana,

Thanks a lot!
I have some experience using ecoline, I painted some pictures before but the colours has been changed so much after a while. Browns went to pinky oranges...

But I will write a post about it later!

best wishes!!

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16. Soapy Sibling Sunshine: Kid Tea

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By: Just One More Book!!, on 7/17/2007
Blog: Just One More Book Children's Book Podcast (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  review, Podcast, Family, Ages 0-3, Ages 4-8, Picture book, Girl, childrens book, Fun, Boy, Cartoony, Rhyming, Cute, Siblings, Large and simple, colours, bath, days of the week, Elizabeth Ficoelli, Glin Dibley, Kid Tea, Add a tag

Author: Elizabeth Ficocelli
Illustrator: Glin Dibley
Published: Marshall Cavendish (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0761453334 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Rhythmic strings of percussive rhyme and a reliably repetitive refrain give this colourful celebration of the simple joys of summer the begging-to-be-memorized-and-shouted-out feel of a classic skipping song.

Other books mentioned:

• Don’t Laugh at Me

Tags:bath, childrens book, colours, days of the week, Elizabeth Ficoelli, Glin Dibley, Kid Tea, Podcast, reviewbath, childrens book, colours, days of the week, Elizabeth Ficoelli, Glin Dibley, Kid Tea, Podcast, review

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Angela Rudolph said, on 8/16/2007 5:20:00 PM

The captivating quality of “Kid Tea” is that it blends and celebrates the simple everyday adventures of the lives of two children. How better to tell it than with a brilliant and almost Crayola pallette and a simple endearing rhyme.

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17. More Mysteries of the Oracle

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By: Neil Gaiman, on 3/1/2007
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:  snow, audio books, Magic 8 Ball, Mr Alice, colours, Audie Awards, absolute Sandman, pen names, Add a tag

The snow continues. It's been a lazy sort of blizzard, but I shovelled the path half a dozen times this afternoon. Driving was scary, school was cancelled. I took a few photos of the view from the back door but Blogger is being grumpy and won't upload them.

As many of you have seen, the Oracle (at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/8ball/) has mysteriously changed its appearance. The original shamanic and beturbanned wild-haired me will be back every February, and perhaps for special occasions, like my birthday. Other strange things will, I hope, appear in the 8-Ball for the appropriate season (will there be pumpkins in October? Little Interesting Skulls on National Little Interesting Skull Day? Snow at Christmas? Only the webelf knows for sure). (The current 8-Ball pictures a http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/ Lisa Snellings creation.)

Hi Neil,
I just finished listening to the "Fragile Things" audio book. Do you have any further plans for Mr. Smith and Mr. Alice? They're two of the most fun (yeah, I feel guilty for saying that) characters I've run across in a long while. Hope this question hasn't been asked a zillion times before but I'll bet it has.
Thanks,
Brian Ford

I definitely expect to see them again, yes. If I write more of the stories of what happened to Shadow in the UK, Mr Smith will be in the background of that. But there's at least one story with both of them in it, and I really want to write that one as I know what it's about.

I should have mentioned here that FRAGILE THINGS got nominated for an Audie Award (given for audiobooks), as best short fiction collection. Which made me happy, although slightly uncomfortable as the Audiobook I did last year that I was really happy with was Stardust. But Fragile Things has me attempting a number of accents, and it has a much wider range of, er, things in it.

(http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/audio/stardust is the Stardust page, for the curious -- you can hear the first ten minutes or so of the first chapter there. I can't see an audio page for Fragile Things on neilgaiman.com yet, but when one appears I'll mention it here.)

no matter how much, or hard, i shake my computer the oracular message is must really shake it. should i take that as my oracular message at this point?
ellen schinderman

I suppose you could try clicking on the oracular ball and dragging it back and forth very fast instead of picking up your --

No. Scrap that.

Actually I really like the idea of you shaking the computer. Keep it up. Maybe eventually something will happen...


dear neil: my mom & i are real big fans of yours! your blogs is the only one my mom allows me to read but those fangirls looked real scary!!!!!!! and that wasn;t a very nice photo of you sorry but does a girl have to wear only black and not smile to get your attention? i love you really !!!!!!! xxxPat

Thank you, Pat. I just checked with my daughters (both on the same couch I'm on, both on their computers), and Maddy says she wears mostly blues and Holly says she wears mostly greens and browns, and they both smile an awful lot, and they have my attention whenever they want it...

Good Sir,

Let us say that I have a name that while not bad, is not exactly fit to print. It is rather mumbly, and doesn't look quite right no matter how I arrange it.

Though I am fairly certain you don't use a pen name, I was wondering if you know anything about doing so.

Till again,
Whatever Me I May Be

There's nothing wrong with pen names, and there are hundreds of reasons for deciding to use one.

Pick a name you like, avoiding on the way names like Stephen King or Charles Dickens, and put it on your manuscript. Let's say you choose "Gerry Musgrave" (which I think was the name I reviewed movies for Penthouse under, as I already had film review columns in other magazines.) You just type "Gerry Musgrave" on your cover sheet, and then send a cover letter telling the editor the name you want the cheques made out to. It's that easy.

Short and Sweet:
Do you know when the other volumes of Absolute Sandman will be published? I can't find any info on them anywhere.

The next one will be out in October 2007. The third and fourth should I hope both be out in 2008.

0 Comments on More Mysteries of the Oracle as of 3/13/2007 10:09:00 PM

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