Rebekka is an artist and illustrator from Nashville, Tennessee. She writes a beautiful blog and does the most amazing commission work, including stunning house portraits.

Rebekka is just so talented and we feel so very privileged to have been able to work with her.

As a little treat for this our first post back here is a little interview we have done with Rebekka …

What were your favourite books when you where little?

My two favorite books when I was very tiny were “Oh Captain Kitty” by Godfrey Lynn and “The Fire Cat” Esther Averill. Haha…do you sense a theme developing here? I also loved (and still love) all of the Elsa Beskow books…The Sun Egg, Around the Year, Children of the Forest…my grandmother was Swedish, and I felt such a connection to her through Elsa’s stories.

Do you have some favourite contemporary illustrators for children?

Oh my, yes. Jen Corace’s work is so breathtakingly beautiful, in such a  quiet, special way. And Pamela Dalton’s papercuts (especially the ones she did for “Brother Sun, Sister Moon“) are just mesmerizing. And I love Carson Ellis…gosh, who doesn’t?

Would you like to author/illustrate a book? What  would it be about?

It’s only my lifelong dream! Right now I’m working with Artisan Books on a really exciting book  project (I can’t give details yet), but it’s not a children’s book. I would absolutely love to author and illustrate a children’s book of some sort. There are lots of ideas bumbling around inside my head right now and I’m hoping to put together a proposal for one of them sometime this year!

We absolutely cannot wait to see a book illustrated by Rebekka!

Created as books for children that were to be low cost and high quality so as to make literature accessible to children of poorer parts of the US. Random House US have a great website devoted to Little Golden Books where you can find some great printables and activities as well as more history of the series.

SO you all know how much Katie and I LOVE Golden Books! We have written about our love on the blog numerous times – you can find the collection of our Golden Book posts here.

Now the wonderful Jackie from My Little Bookcase has issued a challenge to the blog world. She wants ideas on how to up cycle Golden Books that have seen better days and she invited us to take part.

We have been collecting very old and bedraggled Golden Books for a while now so we have a fair collection…

This is just a little pile!

Most of them have pages like this….

Scribble!

Or look like this….

Very grotty!

So we have been having fun using them as bunting. The first lot of bunting I made was for Ned’s 3rd birthday in his favourite colour – yellow.

Then I started to make some that we sold and also used as display at Magnolia Square...

I think I have a soft spot for the  Christmas bunting because it just looks so Christmasy!! There’s nothing better than displaying your love of books around the house – they are my favourite accessory.

We have also been using our collection to make gift tags for our online store orders. This has been really fun, because even in the tattiest book you can find the most divine illustrations to use on a parcel…

Such a beautiful new print in the Petit Collage range by Lorena Siminovich. He is called Story Bear and he is a print on Maple veneer. Petit Collage will ship Internationally.

Lorena also illustrates the ‘In My‘ series of board books.

We are thrilled to be ‘popping up’ with Magnolia Square in a new location – The Centre in Ivanhoe, which looks amazing.

The theme of the event is COLOUR and so we have chosen lots of beautiful, colourful books to take along.

All our favourite people will be attending, we have been saving up for weeks so we can splurge! Pop over to the Magnolia Square website for a full list of all the gorgeous retailers.

You can also join Magnolia Square on Facebook for all the latest.

We hope to see lots of you there, for what promises to be a spectacular shopping experience.

The print is also available on a tote bag…

Wouldn’t that be the perfect library bag?

The Little Fox creates dreamy and whimsical artworks many of which are book related. Including this gorgeous painting of The Owl and The Pussycat...

Drool over The Little Fox Etsy store here and read The Little Fox blog here.

Someone’s Been Sitting In My Chair

Library Day

SMALL WONDERLAND from KEITARO SUGIHARA on Vimeo.

And Keitaro’s website here.

Pop over to the My Poppet blog to see Katie’s review of this gorgeous book and to find out more about the author and illustrator Johnna Wright.

And today we made our own caterpillar from half an egg carton following this wonderful tutorial.

He was really easy but fun and as you can see both the caterpillar and Ned found the fruit very tempting….

Although not the best photo’s, I just had to capture this moment. When Ned saw that his little sister was on my bed he made a dash for his bookshelf to choose some stories to read to her. He realised that he had a captive audience in Tess but boy did she love it.

Around the same time I took these photo’s I had also read an incredible article on The Guardian website by Sarah Franklin about reading aloud to her blind grandfather. The article is emotional and really made me think again about the joy that reading aloud can bring to both children and adults. Often reading aloud to children can become just part of a routine, just a way to get them to bed at night.  But when you are really in the moment there is nothing nicer than sharing a story with the ones you love and that was what Ned was doing when he went to find some of his favourite books to read to his new little sister.

It was delightful to see Tess at just three months watching her brother adoringly as just listening to his voice reading the Max and Ruby story was bliss to her. I was so proud to hear him reading to her as his dad or I would, using tone and expression, playing up the entertaining storyline. He has found the joy in reading aloud and also appreciates that listening to a story read aloud is enjoyable and comforting.

There are two amazing books written about reading aloud – Reading Magic by Mem Fox and The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. Both these books are excellent resources for encouraging children to read themselves as well as how to get the most joy out of reading aloud to them.

On reading to adults, there is a gorgeous collection that was released last year called A Little, Aloud, compiled by Angela Macmillan. The book has a blog here , it truly is very special.