Aren’t these Jonathan Adler book ends gorgeous. Nothing like a long dog to hold up your books. 

Comical and cute; Dachshunds are great little characters for children’s literature. The quintessential Dachshund character being Pretzel by H. A. and Margaret Rey the creators of that other quintessential little animal character Curious George.

Pretzel is a love story that begins and ends with puppies (if you know what I mean!).  First published in 1944, the story is by no means out of date but still has that lovely innocence of books from that era. 

It’s really, really hot here today and we are trapped inside. Ned and I have enjoyed this little book trailer immensely and we will probably watch it a couple more times before the day is out. It looks gorgeous animated so it will be really interesting to see the book.

The author/illustrator, award winning designer, Michael Hall includes 300 hearts in his stunning illustrations and readers are encouraged to try and count all of the hearts at the end of the book. It is due to be published in Australia next month and you can see inside the book more on the Harper Collins website.

Also have a look at some deleted scenes from the book on the newly created blog Under the Greenwillow devoted to celebrating the publishers 35th birthday – this will be a blog to watch.

Thanks to Fuse #8 for pointing me in the direction of this great book trailer. Also check out their review of Cosmic, an intermediate novel by Frank Cottrell Boyce – one of my all time favorite authors.

Also discovered today is this awesome new blog, this is definitely going to be one that I am going to be addicted to. A whole blog devoted meticulously to ‘recommended inappropriate books for kids’. The research, the writing and the images are just incredible and will give you a giggle as well as providing some incredible info.

 Our great friend Nicci directed us towards this hilarious clip on Youtube… 

The Terrible Plop is definitely one of my favourite picture books this year.

A guest post by one of our favourite bloggers, Scribbler, founder and writer extraordinaire of the utterly fabulous blog called Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves. She is mum to a 4-year-old aficianado of vintage kids’ books.

Reading aloud is such a joy when you have the right book and recently I bought one that has even won an award for being ‘terrific’ to read aloud.

A Visitor For Bear won the E.B. White Read Aloud Award this year and deservedly so. Written by Bonnie Becker, the story is a whole lot of fun. Bear is comfortable being by himself, he has never had any visitors to his house and even has a sign to discourage any arriving in the future. Although bears feature quite heavily in children’s literature I think this bear is definitely one of my favorites.

No one ever came to Bear’s house.
It has always been that way,
and Bear was quite sure he didn’t like visitors.
He even had a sign.

There is so much comedy in this story and it is great fun to play up while reading it aloud. A very persistent little grey mouse turns up to visit bear – much to his disgust – and hilarity ensues as the mouse continues to pop up causing the bear great anguish.

‘…there was the mouse! (Small and grey and bright-eyed of course.) “BEGONE!” roared Bear.’

The illustrations match the text perfectly. Illustrator Kady MacDonald Denton captures the humour in the text by making the big brown bear exaggerated in his movements as he tries to make the mouse leave his house; he points to the door furiously, he jumps up and down and finally drops the floor with tears of frustration.

‘“I give up”, he blubbered. “You win, I am done”.’

Eventually they do a deal and the mouse agrees to leave after they have one cup of tea together.

The stunning format that the publisher Walker Books has used is a long paperback, with beautiful paper and MacDonald Denton makes use of all the space. The spreads are beautiful, one in particular as the mouse and bear kick back and have a cup of tea together, warming their feet by the fire.

It is then that bear realises that maybe having a friend is not so bad after all. Not preachy, this is a fantastic story about friendship and letting people in, themes that affect both children and adults.

This time last year I posted about a very cool birthday cake for a special two-year-old we know.

Well, another fabulous book-themed cake was prepared this year – Elmer the elephant!

Elmer is such a lovely book character, and the book conveys a really valuable message. You can read more about it here in our store.

We’ve just got copies of Elmer back in stock, as well as a gorgeous Elmer Sigg drink bottle.

I think this bag would make a gorgeous library/book bag. It is part of the Clothkit range distributed in Australia by Lark Handmade.  The beauty of Cothkits is that  all the cutting lines are printed directly on the fabric so you don’t have to worry about pinning a paper pattern.

The kits contain everything you need, the fabric, thread buttons etc.  The fabric is called Fox and Hens and instantly reminded me of Rosie’s Walk. After finding the designers website, Katrin Moyle, I indeed discovered that she based the design on Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins. Moyle is actually a ceramic designer and has a beautiful tea cup set on her site in the Fox and Hens design.

If you’d like some more books on chooks Katie wrote a wonderful post here about Chook Books!

One of our readers, Kayte, from Dallas, Texas, left a beautiful comment on a post we did earlier this month on Albert by Donna Jo Napoli and illustrated by Jim LaMarche. She wrote:

I love your blog and have been following for a long time. As I do often with recommended titles, I checked Albert out from the library. My daughter (3.5 years old) ADORES this story and asks for me to read it over and over (and over). We finally returned it to the library and I was overjoyed to find it used at a local shop. My daughter has been walking around with a straw nest filled with wooden eggs and a felt cardinal for three days. Thank you so much for giving us Albert!

We always love hearing from our readers and especially when they get some joy from books we mention! I wrote to Kayte and asked if she would be willing to share a photo of the straw nest, wooden eggs and felt cardinal… And here is what she sent us -

Isn’t it beautiful? What an incredible interpretation of a book – and so lovely to think of it being carried into real life in this way.

Kayte also told me that the eggs in this photo had originally been handpainted by her and her daughter after they read An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston and Sylvia Long.

This is another beautiful book, one that celebrates eggs in all their shapes and sizes, and perfect for littlies interested in nature. I’m so impressed by Kayte’s efforts to creatively apply elements of these books!

Do other people create craft or activities based on picture books they read? We’d love to hear about them!

This is definitely my favorite picture book so far in 2009!

The Terrible Plop is a clever take on the formula of Henny Penny or Chicken Licken. Ursula Dubosarsky’s official website says that the story is actually based on a myth from Tibet. I found this cute quote from Ursula in the Adelaide Advertiser…

“Plop” in Asian cultures is quite poetic – the sound of a pebble plopping in a stream, that kind of thing.”

“It’s a more elegant kind of word in the original Tibetan. Whereas when you translate it into English, it just sounds funny: How can a plop be terrible?”

The cute little rabbits are sitting by the lake eating chocolate cake when ‘Suddenly comes A terrible PLOP”.

The rabbits terrified take off, hopping so very fast and gathering an increasingly panicked group of animals along the way. All of them terrified of the ensuing terrible Plop. The audience of course can see exactly what the PLOP actually is, an apple falling from the tree into the lake.

However it is the big brown bear, sunning himself in a deck chair with a cocktail who halts the stampede, grabbing the littlest rabbit by the ear.

‘Now little rabbit,

You show me where

Is the place of the PLOP,’

Snarls the big brown bear.

‘Oh please big bear,

Don’t make me go.

I’m very afraid

Of the PLOP, you know’

So the brave little rabbit leads the bear to where it believes the PLOP to be. While the rabbit realises the mistake they have all made in being afraid, the bear hears a PLOP and runs leaving the one brave little rabbit to once again enjoy his chocolate cake.

The Terrible Plop is so much fun to read aloud and the mixed media illustrations are equally as fun. The expressions that Andrew Joyner has given the animals are priceless and I really love that bear in the deckchair with his drink complete with little cocktail umbrella.

What you can’t see in the jacket image above is actually how beautiful this production is. The spine is bound in a beautiful yellow and orange stripe and the book is a deliciously long oblong shape making the page spreads magnificent and giving absolute justice to Andrew Joyner’s illustrations.

Meanwhile the fabulous South Australian theatre company Windmill are doing The Terrible Plop on stage from the 15th to the 30th of May 2009. I subscribe to the company and when they send their booklet of upcoming plays for the year it’s like getting a present. The program is incredibly presented so I can only imagine what their productions are like and their website is also just amazing.

See The Terrible Plop also featured on Misrule  and Tsk Tsk

||The Terrible Plop is available in the We Heart Books store||

Must be time for another Golden Book… I recently discovered this book was also a favourite of my mum’s so it pre-dates my 1970s childhood. It was published in 1953. The story and pictures are by Richard Scarry, although this book is very different from his Busy Town and Best Ever Word books. Right now in our house, this is not a bad thing. We are going through a phase when the little person would read our copy of The Big Busy Book of Richard Scarry every storytime, while the big people are a little bit over it…

Rabbit and his Friends tells the tale of a Rabbit who discovers a roly-poly egg outside his hole one day. Thinking it belongs to Mrs Hen, he quickly runs to tell her. But when the egg hatches, they discover it is not a chick, but a very strange animal with a tail and fur coat like their friend the Beaver, webbed feet just like Duck, and who is shy like Squirrel. The other animals all come to meet him, but soon have to rush home to supper, leaving the strange-looking animal (who we can see is a platypus) to fend for himself. The next day, his new friends return, but cannot find him, until they come across a circus and when they are let in, they discover the platypus has a new home – the circus man has asked him to be in his cricus and given him a diving board and swimming pool. And best of all, he has lots of animal friends – and he is a little bit like them all.

Richard Scarry is famous for his anthropomorphic illustrations where animals have human characteristics. The animals in this book have clothes, but are a bit more naturalistic, and less stylised than Scarry’s more famous ones. Perhaps this is because it was one of his earlier books. But a glance at the interpretation of Rabbit shows he is clearly a relative the rabbits of Busy Town.

There is a fascinating side-by-side comparison of a select few pages from a 1963 and a 1991 edition of Richard Scarry illustrations found here. Have a look if you are interested in the decisions made to make the illustrations more politically correct – the comments made to this Flickr site are also interesting.

This lovely blog shows what looks like an earlier edition of Rabbit and his Friends which has some additional illustrations to the my 1977 edition.

There is also a lengthy and slightly tongue-in-cheek biography of Richard Scarry to be found here. It describes the process of illustration Scarry used, drawing them in pencil on frosted acetate and filling in each colour one-by-one.

I will leave the last word of this post to Richard Scarry himself:

I’m not interested in creating a book that is read once and then placed on the shelf and forgotten. I am very happy when people have worn out my books, or that they’re held together by Scotch tape.

This will undoubtedly be true in our house.