Rebound Books are not only practical and environmentally sound but also very beautiful, especially to book lovers like myself.

A Melbourne business, Rebound Books make note books and journals out of vintage book covers that are then filled with 100% denim paper, made from denim fabric offcuts. They are completely hand made and absolutely gorgeous.

Recently written up in the Sunday Age M magazine, they are also stocked at one of my favorite shops Five Boroughs in East Brunswick, who have posted on their blog about them this week.

The children’s book covers they use are fabulously retro, some I’ve seen have been the original Ladybird books, Enid Blyton covers and at Five Boroughs they have one that is an old Romper Room book. Very cool.

After what feels like weeks of packing… we’re off to the homeland of the authors of treasures like this, this and this.

Some book-related preparations have been made… We have tickets to Ghibli (”a portal to a storybook world” and home of creators of Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away) and we are considering a visit to Tokyo’s Thomasland for our Thomas-loving 21-month-old. He won’t remember much but perhaps the photos will last…

And finally we will have a week on the largest uninhabited island in the South Pacific visiting some friends. Can’t quite believe our luck.

I am very, very excited. See you soon.

A fabulous day for me today. It was a recipe for success: a day in the city (of Melbourne) including a visit to Metropolis (more on that later), a coffee at Degraves, a little bit of shopping and people-watching, a kids’ book illustration exhibition and a stop on the way home at a friend’s house, filled with talk of kids’ books… I. Heart. Melbourne.

It’s amazing how many ideas can be generated from one day on the town when you don’t get out as much as you used to. But I will stay focused, and the topic of this post is the aforementioned kids’ book illustration exhibition. It was called Hooked on Books, exhibited at Artplay, as posted here by Lou. The exhibition runs til 13 June, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in children’s book illustration.

The exhibition is of original illustrations from a range of Australian picture books, collected by Albert Ullin. Ullin is most famous for establishing the specialist children’s bookshop, The Little Bookroom, here in Melbourne. Ullin’s collection of original illustrations from Australian children’s books was initially driven by his desire to support young illustrators of picture books who were struggling to make a living. In 1973, he started by buying the works of Ron Brooks (illustrator of John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat – reviewed by Lou here – and of one of my favourites, Fox, by Margaret Wild). Later, he was approached by Peter Pavey, a friend of Brooks, who had not yet found a publisher for his illustrations. (Pavey later went on to publish One Dragon’s Dream which became a Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year.)

Part of the joy of the exhibition was seeing the original artworks for illustrations of books I know well - books by Graeme Base, Bob Graham, Alison Lester, Shaun Tan and Kerry Argent. Seeing the vibrancy of colour in the originals was amazing, as well as the three-dimensional aspect to works which included media such as fabric or paper sculpture. The other part of the joy for me was discovering many books I had not heard of. I took furious notes and have a new long list of books to search for in the library and in second-hand shops… Plenty of inspiration for future posts!

Backpacks for kids seem hard to come by if you are not inspired by the licensed character merchandise à la Dora, Wiggles, Bob and Bratz. But I discovered these gorgeous animal-inspired backpacks, made by Little Packrats, and tracked down their Australian distributor. These are three of my favourites:

I ordered the mouse one for Rowan, and it’s now his childcare bag. Made from thick vinyl, it’s durable and easy to clean, and the 3D ears are so cute. It is smaller than the average kids backpack, which makes it ideal for toddlers and preschoolers – small enough that you don’t attempt to overload it to make it too heavy. Having said that, it’s not really big enough to accommodate ALL our books from the library and for anyone who’s seen the back seat of my car lately, that’s just as well cos I couldn’t reasonably expect a toddler to carry that weight…

Rowan’s bag was bought with the intention that he would wear it on our forthcoming overseas trip. We are going to JAPAN! Yippee! But right now, Rowan hasn’t quite got the idea that he is supposed to wear the bag on his back, so invariably it’s me who can be seen carrying it on my shoulder. So now I’m not so sure that this bag will make the cut with all the new rules on carry-on luggage…

More posts on the travel theme coming soon. Meanwhile, Lou is having a sunny break up north, and some guest posts will be appearing shortly.

Lou and I dragged our partners and kids to the Back to Booktown book festival at Clunes on Saturday.

Clunes is situated about 1.5 hours drive from Melbourne, so it’s not really the type of drive you do for only a couple of hours at the other end, but hey, when you’re a busy mum, you take what you can get! And if at least one leg of the car trip is free of a whinging child, you’re pretty happy.

The idea behind a booktown is to create a critical mass of bookshops in order to make a small town a destination, and it’s an idea that is catching on worldwide. The first booktown was in Hay-on-Wye in Wales, and there are now more than 20 booktowns internationally. The Back to Booktown weekend at Clunes is a great way to kick-start the generation of a new booktown.

Clunes is one of those towns that feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but from the buildings it’s not hard to imagine it bustling with life in goldrush times. There is evidence of a flush of new life in Clunes, too, which is nice, with lots of brand-spanking newly renovated shops and a couple of swish places to eat and drink. It would be a lovely place for a weekend getaway.

You really need at least a day to explore Back to Booktown properly, and there were plenty of secondhand booksellers to visit, tucked in different buildings around the town. For a bookseller’s view of the festival, check out The Book Grocer’s post – scary stuff.

Unfortunately for Lou and I, there wasn’t a dedicated kids’ section at Clunes, but we each found a treasure at the CFA sale which cost us the grand total of 40 cents! We also bumped into a WeHeartBooks reader, which was lovely!

I’m always envious of those bloggers who show off their thrifting and op-shop finds - so here’s my token effort.

The book is Mandy Moves In by Bodil Selge, originally published in Swedish. I love the idea of the tiny little girl who has installed herself in a corner of the bookshelf with all her furniture. And the production quality of the illustrations is so beautifully of the era.

Speaking of secondhand books, if you haven’t already checked it out, go over and visit the inspiring blog Vintage Kids Books my Kid Loves, there are some beauties there…

The children’s TV series Lochie Leonard last night won Most Outstanding Children’s Program at the TV Week Logie Awards. This gorgeous series based on the award winning Tim Winton books for intermediate readers is a more than deserving winner, with perfect casting, wonderful scripting and stunning Western Australian scenery. This was the best Australian children’s series that I have seen in years and I instantly fell in love with it. The charm like Winton’s books is that it is natural and funny, sometimes a little sad, I did have a little cry in one episode, and always exquisitely Australian without being cliched. The books and the TV series are perfect for boys from about 10 years and up, especially reluctant readers but girls will love Lochie also.

Lochie is a surf mad 12 year old who moves to a new town with his father, ‘Sarge’, the town cop, mum who is beautifully understanding but fighting depression, little brother Phillip who is older than his years and is still wetting the bed and baby sister ‘Blob’ who likes to eat lino.

Season 1 is available on DVD.

Today I have bought myself a copy of Breath, Winton’s newest adult novel the first in seven years. I can’t wait to go on holidays next week, find a nice sunny spot and devour Breath. It also has one on the most gorgeous jackets on a novel I have seen, it makes me want to jump in.

The April edition of Cookie Magazine have done a design feature on bookshelves, One For The Books, perfect shelving units for your child’s tomes and trinkets.

This one was my favorite. See the wallpaper behind, which is pages from the Olivia books by Ian Falconer. What a great idea, although it might be hard getting your head around pulling a book apart.

I wrote a post at Christmas time about Olivia. If you like the Eloise books you will love Olivia, the funkiest, feistiest pig in literature.

If you want something really special, have a look at Teatro Olivia, a play set in which you have six Olivia paper dolls to create your own ballets and theatre. Falconer, whose background is set design, has created a masterpiece with Teatro, stimulating creativity and passion for the arts in his audience.

Katie did a post recently about Eric Carle fabric and there is also Olivia fabric available, I found it here. It’s very gorgeous and it’s about time I bought some.

The very cute toy on the shelf in the picture from Cookie Magazine is made by Mizutamago, a great blog I read regularly.

Apartment Therapy features a tour of Shannon Lamden’s (Aunty Cookie) house this week. All the photo’s are beautiful, she is such a stylish and creative lady. In particular I love the photo’s of her daughters room and the use of flash cards as a frieze.

Shannon has more stunning photos of her house and fabrics on Flickr.

No longer dull and uninteresting and banished to the classroom there are some gorgeously illustrated flash cards available at the moment. For Ned’s birthday from wonderful friends Nigel and Ruth he received Eric Carle animal flash cards. They are packaged in a beautiful box and are a great size for little hands. I was really tempted to use them as a frieze in his nursery but he loves them too much. He picks each one up and examines it intently and often sits on the floor surrounded in the cards.

What he does have is G is for one Gzonk flash cards on his door, they are a bit big for a wall. Taken from the book G is for one Gzonk each card has one of Tony DiTerlizzi’s wacky creatures on it. Ned thinks they are extremely funny and I enjoy looking at them too. DiTerlizzi is the illustrator behind the characters of the Spiderwick chronicles.

Some other funky flash cards I have found…

Black and White is engaging for very young babies, check out the Wee Gallery website for an excellent explanation of babies brain development and the benefit of black and white contrasting artwork. Even as children grow up these cards remain a funky and contemporary decoration.

eeBoo makes ‘Wall Cards’ specifically. Vintage styled illustrations makes these a great option for decoration or framing. The subjects of the cards are kind of quirky too like the hardware store flash cards and the counting birds cards.

From Amazon, Paul Frank flash cards. These are great, they are bright, fun and very trendy.

Also these are very cool! Animal tracks flash cards from doggiepiggie on etsy.

On the serious side of things flash cards are a great tool for visual learning. Karen Cheng wrote a fantastic post here on the accidental effect of flash cards on her son.

Learning can be fun and pretty at the same time.

Just discovered this gorgeous Eric Carle fabric via 123O’Leary. I HAVE TO have some!!

Imagine a patchwork quilt or pyjamas made from these?! Keep an eye on this Flickr group, where crafty people are invited to display their creations using the fabric. There is a 10% discount on the fabric available through the museum website if you order before April 30 and mention where you heard about the special. For Australian readers, I found out shipping will be $25 for 2-4 yards.The museum’s mission is “to inspire, especially in children and their families, an appreciation for and an understanding of the art of the picture book”. I like the sound of that. I’d love to go to one of their art workshops in their studio…Ned has the hungry caterpillar hand puppet – check it out at Lou’s post here.

LAUNCH COMPETITION! Between March 31 and April 15, you could win a fabulous book prize! Simply add a comment to enter the draw.

The book prizes are kindly donated by wonderful Australian publishers, Penguin Australia and Scholastic Australia.