Continuing our chapter reading adventures from my last post, my mum helped Rowan make a map of the Faraway Tree to accompany our reading of the story…

The post has created a visual reminder of the story, and Rowan regularly asks me to ‘read’ the story on the poster.

Our next chapter book has been Fantastic Mr Fox – we read this lovely edition with full colour illustrations by Quentin Blake. So much fun and adored by Rowan. Now we just have to draw the map of Mr Fox’s tunnels beneath the Boggis, Bunce and Bean farms…

Over our summer holidays I have started reading novels to Rowan. There are mixed feelings for me… I’m sad that we no longer have a pile of picture books to consume every night – but excited about all the possibilities of old favourites and new authors we can share together. (And I can’t wait for the day – a while away yet – when we can start Harry Potter!) We will still of course read picture books together – hopefully for a long time yet – but they no longer have such a status of centrality in Rowan’s life…

At 4 and a half, Rowan seems more than ready to sit and absorb the story. We started with a wizzbanger – The BFG of course. It was a hit, and Rowan uses lots of Roald Dahl’s wacky words in every-day speech now. We grow snozzcumbers in our vegie patch and occassionally Rowan will wake up and tell us he has had a phizzwizard. The role of reader was shared around between Rowan’s dad, his aunty and me, all of whom hold The BFG very close to our hearts…

Next up was The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton. The photo above is of Rowan’s grandmother reading this book to Rowan. She told me that when she was growing up, she read Enid Blyton’s books to her youngest sister, who loved it so much that one day she and a neighbour jumped in their pedal car and set off to find the Enchanted Wood.

We are reading my childhood copy which now has browning pages and a splitting spine. But aren’t these illustrations divine…

One of the books that went flying of the stand at Magnolia Square was the most gorgeous edition of Red Riding Hood. This is one of those pop-ups that just takes your breath away with the paper engineering genius! Louise Rowe uses a leaf motif as a theme for her illustrations, and the sepia tones are staggeringly beautiful.

I love the red riding hood story, the feelings of innocence, strength, security and risk beautifully rolled into one great edge-of-your-seat story. Do you know Angela Carter’s version? I just re-read it tonight and it is so deliciously adult…

I’m not sure if red riding hood is de rigueur at the moment, but I seem to be spotting her everywhere… Love, love, love all these…

Red Riding Hood earrings by MadeByWhite

Red Riding Hood by Courtney Brims

Little Red Riding Hood Teaset from made590

Red Riding Hood print by Mara Girling of Printspace.

Red Riding Hood card (with customizable face!) by HMC Designs

KnitKnit Hooded Scarf Knitting Kit by Olive and Me

I finally had a chance to do some baking with some of our fabulous Moomin Cookie Cutters. As usual, the batch got eaten before I had a chance to ice them, and while these two probably aren’t the finest specimens, but I was lucky to rescue them for the photo.

The characters of course come from this book. Magical, whimsical, philosophical – and universally acknowledged as a great read-aloud – Finn Family Moomintroll is perfect for snuggling up with to read together… I really love this production too – check out these beautiful endpapers and the exquisite drawings by Tove Jansson.

The We Heart Books store also has limited copies of this stunning Moomin picture book – the first published by Tove Jansson.

The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My has recently been re-released by uber-cool Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly. Luxuriously thick pages have beautiful die-cut pictures, tantalisingly revealing a hint of what’s on the next page. This is one of those books that’s so gorgeous that you want to use as a display piece on a shelf or mantlepiece!

||All these treasures are available at the We Heart Books store.||

We are so happy to hear that Taeeun Yoo has jointly won the 2010  Ezra Jack Keats Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature for the stunning picture book she illustrated – Only a Witch Can Fly (written by Alison McGhee).

Her lino block illustrations in this book are simply magnificent and match McGhee’s text perfectly. Written in an ancient form of poetry called a sestina this picture book is indeed so unique and ground breaking in the picture book market. Read more about the book on our website.

To celebrate we’d love to give a copy of this wonderful picture away to a good home. To win just leave a comment on this post telling us your favourite Award Winning Children’s Book, it doesn’t have to be a picture book just one that you love.

The winner will be randomly selected (by one of those number generator thingys) on Wednesday the 14th of April.

We are definitely in the midst of the ‘Why?’ phase with Rowan. Seems like it has already been going on for a while and friends tell me that it keeps going for a lot longer again… I know it’s healthy, but sometimes I just like to get through a page of a book at bedtime without five questions about the story and the illustrations.

So last night I could hardly believe it when Rowan sat absolutely absorbed and completely silent as I read him for the first time A Story for Bear by Dennis Haseley and illustrated by Jim La Marche.

The book tells the story of a friendship between a bear and a woman who lives for a time in a woodland cabin. The bear stumbles upon the cabin and sees the woman reading. He is very curious about the square object that she holds, which at times makes her laugh, and at others afraid or pensive. Day by day the bear gathers courage until he is able to lie close to the woman. For the shortening days of summer, and until the leaves change colour, she reads to him. And although the bear can’t understand her words, he feels the emotions conveyed through her voice. Her words make a story: a story for her bear.

I’m not sure which aspect of the story was so captivating for Rowan – it could have been the idea of a wild bear meeting a human for the first time, or perhaps the bear’s perspective, learning about the existence of books and the power of storytelling. Whatever the reason, it was wonderful for me to share a book with him that is very special to me – it was Lou who gave me my copy and I think it is such a beautiful story about the wonders of reading.

I also love Jim La Marche’s illustrations – I reviewed another beautiful book of his, Albert, here. He has such a talent for illustrating light and shadow, and this is done so beautifully again for the woodland scenes in A Story for Bear.

||A Story for Bear is available in the We Heart Books store||

Written by Richenda and David Martin and published in 1974 it is based on the true story of the authors black and white kitten named Katie.

‘Mr and Mrs Dodds lived in the Australian countryside with their son, Ian. Mr Dodds wrote books and Mrs Dodds taught in the little bush school. In summer the big wide shady veranda of their house was also the schoolroom.’

Ian is given a kitten one day by the post mistress in their small town and he calls her Katie. She is a tabby cat with a white bib and four white socks plus a white tip on the end of her tail. Katie likes to snuggle in warm cosy places and one morning when Mr Dodds is getting ready for a trip to the big city Katie falls asleep in his suitcase.

And so the story goes; poor Mr Dodds is stuck in the big city with a kitten in his case and a meeting with his editor imminent and meanwhile back at home Ian, his mother and the school children are frantically searching for the cat.

Silly Mr Dodds tries the police station to get some help with the kitten and then he can’t get a hotel room because the town is full ‘…on account of the big cattle sales this week’ In the end, alls well as he leaves the kitten with a friend’s family, attends his meeting and eventually takes Katie home to the country.

Although this was a cute story I have realised that it’s the illustrations that really make this picture book special. The story is quite long, and a little strange but it is Noela Young’s gorgeous illustrations of this curious little kitten that I fell in love with ‘when I was little’ and fell in love with again now. Some stories and characters I remember vividly from childhood and I have found that that is also true with illustrations.

This illustration of Katie the kitten asleep in a dolls pram with paws wrapped around a dolls bottle is one that I absolutely remember fondly.

Noela Young also illustrated the classic Muddle-Headed Wombat series of books written by Ruth Park. Katie is now out of print.

Some of the books I particularly remember from my childhood were the special ones that my paternal grandmother, known affectionately as Marty, kept in a wardrobe for visiting grandchildren. I visited quite frequently, often staying during school holidays and I have vivid memories of these times and being snugly curled up in a very comfortable bed with a selection of books for reading ‘in the morning’ before Marty got up. Books were important to her and an obvious presence in her home. She valued them greatly and indulged in purchasing them from the Folio Society, a luxury she couldn’t really afford. Although we didn’t get many presents from her, when we did they were often books.

All the children’s books in Marty’s wardrobe were produced in the late 1940s or early 1950s and so all now suffer from yellowed paper which is quite embrittled; most have been read so many times that they have been mended in the past with Sellotape, and so are quite stained along the spine edges.

My favourites were the titles from Peg Matby’s Ben and Bella series and Marty had a number of them. However, there were also four books which now are of interest looking back as an adult and with my ‘social historian’s hat’ on. They are the Adventure series produced by Barker & Company and printed in Australia “by the New ‘FANTASCOPIC’ Method.” (I haven’t been able to find out exactly what this method was, but it supposedly produced more realistic colour.) Two of the four titles have been passed down to me: The Zoo Garden Mystery by John Tombs and Excitement on Elf Island by Elsie Sheppard; both are held in the National Library of Australia and listed as printed in 1948. Other titles are The Story of Thought Castle and Fairy Grandmother’s Story. There is no mention of illustrators and as the style differs, I imagine that Tombs and Sheppard were both author and illustrator. A number of internet sites list the titles as rare and have them for sale, for widely varying prices, but most do not seem to have stood the test of time any better than mine.

A re-reading of the stories is somewhat disappointing. I did like these books as a child, although now I cannot imagine why! Both have the text pre-eminent in a central box on each page with illustrations awkwardly placed surrounding them. Both are text heavy and John Tombs particularly tends to over-write. The language is very dated and at times overly moralistic, but what does interest me now is seeing the resurgence of an Australian orientation, post-World War 2. This is obvious in the case of the The Zoo Garden Mystery. My copy has koalas in a gum tree on the cover and indigenous fauna mixed with exotic zoo creatures central to the story. This focus is less obvious in Excitement on Elf Island, but the gum trees are there and are something that the publisher feels the need to explain.

Time and perspective change. The importance of these books was not intrinsic. What was important was the love of books that they helped develop.

Have you seen the latest post on the gorgeous Magnolia Square Little Snippets blog?

It is a review by us of the stunning picture book Madlenka by Peter Sis. If you are looking for a present for an independent and inquisitive little girl aged 4 plus then this book is perfect.

Little Snippets is the new blog by the clever girls from Magnolia Square markets that is devoted to children’s product. The next Magnolia Square Market will be held in Sydney July 2nd to 4th and we will be there selling beautiful books – of course! AND holding storytimes – Yippee.

Hop over to Little Snippets to find out all the details.

I love Jon J Muth’s work so much and was thrilled to find this clip this morning via Fuse #8. Muth discusses working on the illustrations for an adaptation of The Stonecutter, a Chinese fable, rooted in Taoist principles. Originally published in a limited, fine art edition and long out of print it has just been re released in the US.

It took my breath away when I first watched it and I’m sure you will all feel the same.

||More Jon J Muth||