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.

With so much awareness now of environmental issues here are our favorite green children’s books…

1. The Lorax (Dr. Seuss)

The original and the best children’s book about the perils of destroying your environment with greed and selfishness. “UNLESS someone like you…cares a whole awful lot…nothing is going to get better…It’s not.” Of course this picture book is typical Dr Seuss with wild tongue twisting rhymes and technicolour illustrations that almost require sunglasses to look at but it is also probably Seuss’ most important and prophetic work. The Once-ler describes how he has decimated the Loraxs’ habitat with deforestation and air and water pollution to set up his manufacturing plants, leading to the poor Loraxs’ extinction. Check out the Lorax Earth Day website- help the real Lorax forests.

2. Weslandia (Paul Fleischman and Kevin Hawkes)

This beautiful picture book is so very important in many ways. Protagonist Wesley is bullied at school because he doesn’t conform to what his peers consider normal, for example he doesn’t like pizza! While he is on school holidays and with no friends to play with he decides to create himself a self sustainable civilisation. He uses a plot of earth and grows a crop of ’swist’ a plant of his own creation that takes off soon towering above him and and bearing bizarre looking fruit. Soon Wesley discovers that he can use his strange crop as a multitude of things including clothing and shelter thus creating his ‘Weslandia’. Kevin Hawkes beautifully illustrates Wesley’s utopia giving little children a lavish landscape to admire while older children will grasp the themes of environment and social conscience.

3. We are the Weather Makers : The story of Global Warming (Tim Flannery)

This revised and updated version of Australian Tim Flannery’s best selling book on climate change is for a young adult audience, the children who it seems will inherit all these environmental issues from previous generations. This is science without all the jargon, in depth Flannery explains all the problems regarding the climate and also explores the solutions but all in a way that is easy to digest and understand. It is broken into chapters on each issue and has been printed in an excellent easy to read type. Marketed for an audience of 9 to 90 this is a great introduction to the world we live in today.

4. Scarlette Beane (Karen Wallace and Jon Berkeley)

The acrylic illustrations in this picture book are just so gorgeous. Scarlette is adorable with her face as red as a beet and little green fingers. On her fifth birthday she receives a small garden all of her own and begins to plant. Her vegies grow and grow until her whole neighborhood is enjoying the spoils. This is a beautiful sweet tale of ecology, friendship and sharing good food. Children love identifying objects and in this picture book there are plenty of vegetables to point at and name as well as showing them how plants grow.

5. Uno’s Garden (Graeme Base)

And of course funny little Uno! Winner of the The Wilderness Society Picture Book of the Year 2007, they described Uno’s Garden like this “Uno’s Garden is a lively and lavishly detailed picture book about environmental sustainability. A whimsical imaginary landscape demonstrates the importance of learning from past mistakes to ensure a balanced and liveable future“. See Katie’s fab post here about the Uno’s Garden Myer windows last Christmas.

And mummy is reading this!

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, it’s a fascinating imagining of what would happen to the planet if humans disappeared.

Further to my recent post on Gecko Press and publishing children’s picture books in translation, here is a list of five of my favourite classic children’s books in translation. Like with Nicholas, the transition from the original language into English (and into different English-speaking markets) hasn’t always been straight-forward…
1. The Story of Babar (Jean de Brunhoff)

The appeal of this French elephant was recognised immediately by publishers across the Channel and the Atlantic – first published in France in 1931, it was published in both the UK and the US by 1933. There have been criticisms of the colonialist overtones of the Babar story (Babar’s return causes his elephant community to wear western-style clothing). But this is a delightful series, and it’s easy to become immersed in the utterly believable world created and beautifully illustrated by de Brunhoff. I’m a big fan of the vintage-styled hardback edition, which you can still buy, complete with the cursive script from the original. It makes a beautiful gift. Age 2+
2. Miffy (Dick de Bruna)

Adopted enthusiastically by the Japanese, Miffy is of course Dutch, and was originally called Nijntje, which is the word young people use for ‘bunny’ in Dutch. Her books, created by author Dick Bruna, appeared in the UK and Australia soon after original publication in Holland in 1963. However she wasn’t successfully introduced into the US market until 2003. At that time, her broad appeal to children all over the world earnt her the role of New York City’s Family Tourism Ambassador, in an effort to lure family travellers from Europe and Japan. Despite considerable wealth and success, Dick Bruna continues to work as he always has done, perfecting the deceptively simple outlines and colours of Miffy’s books in his studio in Utrecht, Holland. Age 0+

3. Finn Family Moomintroll (Tove Jansson)

All things Scandinavian seem to be à la mode at the moment. The beautiful sparse aesthetic of Scandanavian interior design in particular… I love it, and I find myself swooning over things here and here. There also seems to have been a resurgent interest in Tove Jannsson’s Moomintroll series from Finland, and in 2006, the author’s comic strip series was published for the first time in North America. This highly imaginative and fantastical series centres on a series of characters, each with a distinctive personality. Funny, poignant and strange, but very appealing for young people and adults alike. Age 8+

4. The Thief Lord (Cornelia Funke)

An established author in Germany, Funke was seeking a publishing opportunity in the UK, when she was approached by Barry Cunningham, the publisher who first realised the potential of J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter. Apparently, the book was brought to the attention of Cunningham by a bilingual German/English reader, who couldn’t understand why her favourite German author wasn’t available in English. Upon publication in the UK it sold out within 10 days, and in the US, it went on to become a New York Times bestseller. Funke’s picture books (Pirate Girl, Princess Pigsty and The Princess Knight) are less well known, and all handle the theme of strong and fiesty female characters. A movie based on her book Inkheart will be released in January 2009. The trailer and cast look pretty amazing!
5. Pippi Longstocking (Astrid Lindgren)

Re-issued in 2007 with illustrations by the fabulous Lauren Child, see Lou’s previous post for a review of this delight.

I stumbled across a really interesting independent publisher in a bookshop the other day, Gecko Press.

I subsequently hopped on their website, and became a Friend of Gecko Press, receiving a lovely hand-written postcard in the mail!

With the mission to publish ‘curiously good children’s books from around the world’, Gecko was established by New Zealander Julia Marshall who returned home after living in Sweden for 12 years. Gecko Press aims to corner an underexplored niche of publishing international children’s authors for the first time in English. While in European countries, some 40 per cent of books are published in translation, only 3 per cent of books in the UK originated in another language. (And the percentage would be comparable in Australia and NZ…) There is a great sense of diversity that can come from reading books from other cultures, and I agree there is some room for more quality international authors to be published in English.

Gecko Press authors hale from Taiwan, Sweden, Germany and many other countries. A couple of my favourites are:

Donkeys (Adelheid Dahimene and Heide Stollinger)

This is the tale of two donkeys, Jack and Jenny, who are planning their silver wedding anniversary. They have exactly the personalities you’d imagine of donkeys – a bit cantankerous and very stubborn. But they are a perfect fit, right down to their bodies, worn from countless hugs – Jenny has a hollow on her neck and Jack has a bump in the very same place. When Jack forgets the anniversary, Jenny leaves in a huff, and both donkeys try to find another match. With illustrations in hues of gray and brown, this isn’t a picture book that would hold the attention of most littlies, but it would certainly amuse older kids, not to mention their mums and dads. Very quirky with lots of word-play (I take my hat off to the translator!). Age 4+

I Am the King (Leo Timmers)

I love Leo Timmer’s illustrations, they have such a bold, clean, graphic quality. In this book the animals of the jungle each vie to be king as they take it in turns to try on the crown. But it turns out, of course, that there is more to being king than wearing a hat… The colours in this book jump off the page. Age 1+

Recent successes of the likes of Nicholas bode well for Gecko. Originally published in France in 1956, Nicholas was re-issued in translation to great success by the uber-cool art publisher Phaidon Press in 2005. Written by the well-known Goscinny (author of the Asterix series) and illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist, Jean-Jacques Sempé, the Phaidon translation edition is gorgeous with hardback linen jacket.(I remember reading a small format orange paperback edition of Nicolas as part of our Year 9 French classes…) The story goes that the re-issue by Phaidon happened almost by accident, when the company’s owner, Richard Schlagman, attended the Frankfurt Book Fair with the intention of acquiring some rights to a book about English artists from a French publisher Denoël. But apparently his eye kept wandering to some images at the back of the booth. They were Sempé drawings, and though Mr. Schlagman barely knew who the artist was, he wound up making an offer for virtually his life’s work.

Phaidon have also published the gorgeous Martin Pebble, also by Sempé, about a childhood friendship between a boy who can’t stop blushing and a boy who can’t stop sneezing… Very cute.
This post is reminding me of all my favourite classic children’s books published in translation. Will post about these shortly…

A highlight of my mum and sister’s recent visit to Europe was a chance encounter with an amazing bookshop in Porto, Portugal, called Lello. I was gobsmacked by their photos…

I would love to visit this shop, can’t get over the beautiful art deco decorations, the red staircase, the rails for the book cart… Sigh!

Also came across this great blog, the Bookstore Guide - ‘an amateur guide to book shopping throughout Europe’. What a fantastic concept for a blog! Perfect for any booklovers travelling to European cities, you can search by city - big and small. (Although can’t say many of these bookshops look pram-friendly!) Their post describes the place and history of Lello in some detail.

Photos by my mum and sister, (c) 2008

Have a look at the collection of photo’s of globes on this gorgeous blog. I love globes and I really want to get one for Ned’s room but have been procrastinating about the right one.

The one that fascinated me is the paper globe. Made from 100% recycled card from this website in the UK, they are flat packed for you to assemble.

While I was in awe of the paper globe I found this on the same site..

The constellations have been substituted with characters from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass using John Tenniel’s artwork. The makers have gone to great lengths to link the characters with constellations and there are some amazing photo’s on the website of the painstaking work that goes into creating them. I think they are stunning and now I so want one!!