09.14.2011
Spot It and Spot It Again
Where's Waldo-style books (published as Where's Wally? here in the UK) are fabulous for keeping kids quiet and entertained, and I can't be the only one who thinks so, because there's a proliferation of that kind of thing on the market at the moment.
But what if you're a design-loving parent who winces slightly at some of those brash pages? Step up Delphine Chedru, whose Spot It book has been so successful that it's spawned a sequel, Spot It Again.
The drawings are beautiful; there are clues and flaps to open, bright colours - basically a lot for a young one and their parent to enjoy. Both volumes can currently be bought together at the price of $17.64 on Amazon.
Posted by Myf
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books/media
Tags: activity books
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08.31.2011
Clean Plate Club cookbook
Lively illustrations and an all-pervasive feeling of joy - surely that's going to get any kid fired up about cooking good food. I was excited to see that the Clean Plate Club cookbook is illustrated by artists from the Lilla Rogers agency, which always guarantees sterling work.
Recipes have been submitted by children, and the proceeds will go towards the No Kid Hungry campaign. The book, bound in a laminated calendar-style format, retails at Land of Nod for $19.95. Shipping is gratis.
Posted by Myf
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Tags: books cooking illustration
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08.19.2011
Everyone Dreams of Peace colouring book
It is not often that we feature the back cover rather than the front of a book - but check it out, it's cute: "When you feel mean, you can draw your way to nice..."
If only we adults also had access to something like the Everyone Dreams of Peace colouring book, too. The world would surely be a better place.
Posted by Myf
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Tags: coloring books confidence
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05.18.2011
City Walks With Kids guide books
Anyone who's tried a city holiday with kids will know that mainstream guidebooks just don't cut it. What they want to tell you about are the must-see sights, the ones you might have to queue hours to see. If you're lucky there might be two pages devoted to kids' attractions.
What I've always thought I could do with, however, is a list of playgrounds, nappy changing facilities, and museums where kids are allowed to touch. Restaurants with high chairs wouldn't go amiss either. Swimming pools, libraries, and so on.
It hadn't occurred to me that it might be equally useful to have a child's perspective on the adult stuff. Imagine a kindly uncle, native of Paris, New York or London, taking you for a stroll and pointing out the gargoyles on a famous church, or knowing how to lead you direct to the most interesting paintings for kids in an art gallery. That is what the City Walks With Kids series try to do.
Not a book, but a fold out map and a set of cards with 50 child-friendly walks through the city, these pepper every route with interesting sights. I hope they also mention those nappy-changing places too.
Posted by Myf
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Tags: books guide books holidays maps
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04. 3.2011
Lewis Carroll invented snark long before the internet had even been thought of
Tate publishing have just brought out a new edition of The Hunting of the Snark. This is a poetic piece by Lewis Carroll, best remembered for Alice in Wonderland. Like much of his work, it seems to make perfect sense, if you don't listen too carefully. So far, so Gruffalo, right?
Lewis was a writer of 'nonsense', however, and famously peppered his works with made-up words and concepts. This creates very fertile ground for the child such as mine, prone to drifting off and then returning to earth with a hearty, "What does it mean?".
I don't know about your kid, but sitting through a film with mine these days requires more than a modicum of patience. "Why are they doing that?" "What did he just say?" and - in a moment that blows open the fact that she hasn't understood one bit of the plot since five minutes in, "who's that?" - the questions come so thick and fast that what was conceived as a fun family outing fast becomes torture for the adults in the group.
Really, the Snark is more for older children or adults - indeed, looking at the Wikipedia entry on the work, I see that there is some discussion as to whether it was even intended for kids.
Why then am I featuring it on Babygadget? Well, for the same reason that Tate brought it out: to highlight the marvellous illustrations by Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins (I photographed the book on my Moomin teatowel - it seemed fitting). She illustrated the work in 1959, and the pictures have remained unavailable for the past 50 years.
This small volume features eight full-page images and several small text-punctuating ones, and they all show the same joyous pattern, line and character of Jansson's Moomin pictures. In all truth, it is probably this apsect that your kid is going to get most mileage out of, until they are of an age to really enjoy language, to take it apart and reassemble it. This book's staying on my shelf for another three or four years. If your kids are older, go ahead - enjoy!
Posted by Myf
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Tags: books illustration poetry
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03.25.2011
Noisy Neighbours by Ruth Green
I wrote about Ruth Green in 2008, having seen her work at many art shows around our shared home town of Brighton.
So I was delighted to see that she's produced a children's picture book - and one which contains her favourite motifs of trees, squirrels and birds. It's all executed in Green's usual joyous style, too.
At just £6.99 for a hardback, this could well become a bedtime favourite. Your kids will love its cheery characters, while you can appreciate the clever use of colour blocks, surface design and cutaways (all of which the Tate website seems, somehow, to avoid in its photographs - but see Print and Pattern for a gorgeous close-up preview).
Posted by Myf
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Tags: books illustration Tate
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03.25.2011
Made to Play
My daughter is six years old now, and a terrible one for sneaking bits and bobs out of the recycling tub. If there's been ten minutes' silence in the house, I know I'll find her making something, generally by sticking together old cereal boxes and pieces of string.
So, while I sometimes feel I shouldn't encourage her (one by-product being that her room fills up with these impenetrable objets), well, sometimes I feel I should.
Like, if that's what she enjoys, why not help her become better at it through practice? And who knows, she could end up as a prop-maker or an animator or some other job that basically requires you to have been packratting around all through your junior years.
Step forward Joel Henriques. Joel has been writing an incredible blog for a couple of years, in which he makes stuff. Good stuff. Out of bits and bobs, just like my daughter does - only he has a few techniques up his sleeve. And let me tell you, this is a man who is not afraid to break open the sewing machine.
All the best blogs eventually get a book deal. Isn't that supposed to be the dream of all we bloggers? But here's one I could never be bitter about... indeed, it's on the wishlist. Available later in the year, but you can pre-order it now. And meanwhile, I'm going to get my daughter and go make a Blow fish toy, because that looks like FUN.
Posted by Myf
Category:
books/media
Tags: books crafts making paper
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03.11.2011
Tate children's books
One of the delights in visiting the Tate Modern gallery in London is its bookshop, especially for those with kids (or who just love children's book illustration).
Imagine a series of tabletops and shelves, filled with the very best of both modern and classic picture books: it doesn't matter what you pick up, because every single book has been chosen for its excellence in design.
Here you'll find all the Babygadget favourites, from Miffy to Charley Harper, plus the full range of books published by the gallery itself. More fool me, I hadn't realised they have their own imprint - have done since 1911, in fact.
With this, their aim is to surprise and delight you with the best in contemporary design and illustration.
Above, a spread from just one of their inventive books, When I was Born. See their whole range here.
This was the latest in my list of highlights from the Tate gallery: read the rest here.
Posted by Myf
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Tags: books Tate
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02.15.2011
How do you explain the really tricky stuff? With picture books.
Whether you find it all rather disgusting, or whether you find the whole subject hilarious, at some point all parents need to explain some of our bodies' baser functions to our children.
If you're in the more uptight camp, the books I've rounded up in this post are here to help you. It seems that the Japanese have identified a real market for this sort of basic picturebook, explaining how and why we go to the toilet, break wind, and several other phenomena you wouldn't want mentioned at the dinner table.
I have no doubt that many are bought for novelty value, especially in translation. They do make a great gift for new parents, in a 'welcome to the world of messy diapers' sort of way. The 'My Body Science' series, in particular, seems to hit a very good balance between humour and information.
Of course, king of the genre is Everyone Poops (2001), which we've mentioned many times before. It's by Taro Gomi, who has also produced many delightful preschool board books and colouring books for the older child.
I am guessing that it was the popularity of this title that began the trend, and opened up the gates for them all to be imported to us in the west.
Difficult, distasteful, or just plain disgusting topics that are always on a young child's mind are also covered in The Gas We Pass (Shinta Cho), The Holes In Your Nose, Breasts, and All About Scabs (all three by Genichiro Yagyu).
Opinions on Amazon seem divided, with official book reviewing organs generally dismissing them as crass and borderline offensive, while seemingly-genuine parents regularly report how the books have become their kids' favourites, or have helped them deal with real-life issues such as a pea up the nostril, potty training and suppressing fart jokes.
As adults, we have mainly lost our sense of wonder and learned to quieten any curiosity we may still have about our bodily functions. Once we start to think about it though, it's easy to see how, to a young child, these subjects could be fascinating or even frightening. At least we have a range of no-nonsense books to rely on, should we need to.
Do you have any of these books? Let us know how you've found them, in a comment.
Posted by Myf
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Tags: bodies books educational humor offbeat
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11. 4.2010
Other Goose
It's far too early to be thinking about Christmas, even if the shops would have us believe otherwise. Around this time of year, with the high street imploring me to start spending, I become very "bah humbug" and start remembering all the tedious things about the holiday season.
So it's good to have a reminder, in the form of a new anarchic book from the desk of J Otto Seibold, of one of the good things about Christmas. In our house, that means a family viewing of the charming film Olive, the Other Reindeer, also from studio Seibold.
If that forms one of the happier parts of your holiday season too, Other Goose might be a book you'll be slipping under the tree. It looks like the humour that pervades Olive is fully intact within its re-imaginings of all the best-known nursery rhymes. See, for example, Jack and Jill:
Jack and Jill
and a pickle named Bill
strolled atop a mountain
... and if you want to know what happened to the children and their piquant friend, you'll just have to buy the book*. It's worth it, believe me.
*Or take a peek at Seibold's recent preview on Huffington post.
Posted by Myf
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Tags: books illustration nursery rhymes
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