The cycle of nature is beautifully and imaginatively traced from an acorn to a tree, to a forest, and a lot more in between in this attractive information picturebook. The process is shown in clear images with a minimum of words, and readers will find reason to pause at each page and look closely at what has happened.
Things to Do is a visual and verbal feast, with the stirring poetry of Elaine Magliaro matched by the stunning pastel shades of Catia Chien. In her extended poem, Magliaro reflects on what it would feel like to be the parts of the everyday world all around us – the dawn, birds, a honeybee, an acorn etc. The language employed is rich and carries real depth, giving young readers a sense of the
wonder of the world all around them and the limitless nature of imagination.
These four stories cover a day in the life of Charlie and his little brother, Mouse. We meet them in bed, the smaller lump assuring the larger that, despite their conversation, he’s still asleep. If that sounds impossible, a trip to the parental lumps’ bed proves Mouse’s point. When he asks, ‘How can you be sleeping? You are talking,’ the answer from the grown-up lump is, ‘I am a mom. I can do what I want.’
I Really Want to See You, Grandma explores the powerful bond between grandparent and grandchild. Yumi wakes up one morning and really wants to see her grandmother, who has the same idea on a mountain the other side of town. They both set off at the same time and end up at each other’s houses. There is confusion and frustration as they criss-cross the town before eventually being joyfully reunited.
Wildly creative, inviting and fun, Most Marshmallows is sure to delight young readers. Like them, most marshmallows have a parent, or maybe two, live indoors and have to put up with seemingly arbitrary rules, limits and exercises in school. Also like them, some marshmallows know that these limits are utter nonsense.
This a delightful catalogue of the most common (and some less common) items that you find in a house. You have everything for sitting on, everything that brightens, and everything for cooling down, amongst many other such headings. But it is far more than an illustrated catalogue. It has a mysterious narrator.
‘My name is Olga. Can you find me?’ And so the hunt begins and is brought to a conclusion on the last page: ‘I’m the one with the long whiskers.’ Observant readers will have noticed that we are being stalked by a handsome black cat throughout the book.
This début picturebook from Sarah Jacoby unfolds in the form of a conversation of sorts between a narrator that might be a parent and a listener that might be a child across the length of a single day.
What does time mean to you? How do we feel it? How do we see it? Jacoby poses these questions but tellingly never offers definitive answers, preferring instead to provide the reader with intimate images of how time might be spent and made meaningful, usually through important relationships.
‘Your little fingers wriggle, your little fingers wiggle. Your little fingers just want to dance!’ – what a perfect opening for this hands-on, multi-sensory book for little ones. Wiggles invites children and their grown-ups on a journey of exploration through the sense of touch, using their fingers to follow a series of die-cut dots, lines, spirals and squiggles.
At first glance Aquarium looked a bit like it was all fur coat and no – ahem– underwear. Created by a young Argentinian graphic designer for readers of 3 to 5 years, it looked too design-led with not much else going on. But first glance was wrong; the underpinnings in this stylish wordless picturebook are considerable. And at first glance there doesn’t seem to be much happening in the story: a little girl runs to a lake or sea where she plunges into the water.
When Ken Nedimyer was little, Nasa was just sending its first rockets, and then men, in to space. But while the whole world looked to the unknown realms of space for inspiration, Ken was far more interested in the unknown here on Earth – in the ocean. As a young man he collected hundreds of fish and sea specimens in his home-town near the Florida Keys, and as an adult he went on to form the Coral Restoration Foundation, an organisation which works to rebuild coral reef colonies all over the world.
