My mum just got back from overseas, where she spent some time in the UK. She brought back a great present for Rowan - a toy London bus. Needless to say he loves it. Accompanying the toy was a fantastic book, Naughty Bus by Jan and Jerry Oke.

It is a self-published book, written by the author and photographed by her husband. Judging by the fact the it is sold at the Tate in London it must have been pretty successful. The book is unconventional in many respects, some of which give a hint that it hasn’t gone through a rigourous publishing process, but this kind of adds to its charm.

The author manages to get in the head of a child immersed in imaginative play, you can ‘hear’ the voices of the bus and the adults and other toys he encounters. The world is seen through the eyes of a toy bus, as the photos show the bus driving down a street of toys, wreaking havoc at the breakfast table, and getting into trouble in the garden. (”I don’t think much of the roads around here”, he says as he drives across the lawn.) The typography itself contains visual clues, aimed to aid and boost confidence in early readers.

Somehow the book also manages to incorporate a whole list of messages for children - from not getting to close to the edge of a pond, to saying thank-you and and the necessity of cleaning ones teeth. Gotta love that.

If there’s a book around Ned will find it, he’s a funny boy. This photo was taken at Mothers Group this afternoon, under a tree in the park. It was a gorgeous day for a coffee and a chat with some wonderful mums.

This book is Lachie’s and is by the same publisher (Roger Priddy) as Ned’s My Little Word Book that I bought him from the Coventry Bookstore (reviewed in a previous post). It is called Bright Baby At the Zoo and has touchy feely bits throughout. These books are really worth looking out for because they are of such high quality and they certainly get a thumbs up from little Neddy, very appealing!

Filling my bookshelves was great fun at first. It was a chance to be reunited with old friends, who had been hidden in boxes for so long. I relished the process of re-alphabetising my favourite fiction authors, and finding new ways to categorise my non-fiction subject areas. (Sad, I know…) Rowan saw what mum was doing and thought he’d like to lend a hand… 

So all was going swimmingly… BUT then I got about three-quarters of the way through and realised that ALL MY BOOKS WERE NOT GOING TO FIT!!! The collection for these shelves doesn’t include my board books and picture books (now in the playroom or Rowan’s room), my early/middle readers (now in storage for when Rowan is old enough) or the reference books (in the study).

Brad would die if I suggested we needed more bookshelves, and, truth be told, I don’t think I want any either. I like the feature of this wall of books and I’d like it to be self-contained. So I began the heart-breaking process of sifting through, shelf by shelf, to find some volumes that might be better off at the second-hand bookshop. Books I’d never read, would never find an occasion to lend, and if I was quite honest with myself, would never be read by me… Having completed the first cull, I still have about 60 or so books that don’t fit.  

It’s not such a fun job any more.