300 Picture books

10 ways to celebrate 10 years of Augustus and his smile.

14th June 2016 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

Augustus and his smile by Catherine Rayner is a very lovely book. It’s about being sad, and finding ways of not being sad. Including dancing in the rain, and going on a very long walk through nature. It *always* makes me smile, and quite often inspires me to go out for one of those walks to see what I can spot, and I was thrilled to be asked to help celebrate the 10th anniversary edition. (It’s shiny and gold and really rather beautiful. See? Amazon links are affiliate links.)

Augustus and His Smile 10th Anniversary Edition

So then I wondered what I could do to celebrate. And I decided that I would come up with 10 ideas to share.

1) Buy (and/or read) the new 10th anniversary copy of the book 🙂 (Handy Amazon links above. Other bookshops are available.)

It’s got a shiny gold cover! (Did I already say that?) And if you do, a donation is made to David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation’s TigerTime campaign.

2) Go on a nature walk. I did exactly that this afternoon, and it was wonderful. Yes, I took my camera, why do you ask? 😉

3) Visit a tiger. We did this last week, as we went to Colchester Zoo for a home education session, and they have Amur tigers there. Obviously Tigerboy wanted to go see them, so we did, and got a really good view.

4) Sponsor or adopt a tiger.

Various zoos and organisations allow you to sponsor one of their animals. For example, Colchester:

5) Dress up as a tiger. Probably works best if you’re small and cute 😉

6) Dance in the rain. Jump in puddles. Splash!

7) Play sleeping tigers. (Wonderful excuse for a nap, and don’t we all deserve one? )

8) Paint/draw/stick your own tiger pictures.

My attempt here too.

9) Have a tiger party – tiger bread anyone? It’s stripy 🙂

10) Invite other people to come up with their own tigery suggestions – so over to you? How should we celebrate 10 years of Augustus?

A good picture book day

13th August 2015 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

Yesterday I took the three youngest over to a home ed fencing session near Cambridge. A long way to go for a couple of hours, but we made the most of it with a visit to a nearby library for the little ones while Small was fencing, and then we spent the afternoon in a nearby park with a couple of other home ed families.

Small enjoyed the fencing, we’ll be looking for a more local club. (Yes, I know. I was kind of surprised too. Goes to show your children can always surprise you 😉 )

And the little ones loved our library visit. We read quite a few books.

There’s Winnie the Witch at the seaside. Oh no George in board book form. A rather dubious Thomas the tank engine spin off, something about a Lemur in the Laundry, Bob and Rob, and the rather wonderful Can you see a little bear?

That last was definitely the find of the day. As a result I followed Jackie Morris on twitter and instagram, and discovered she’s also done the cover art for the new Robin Hobb, which I really must catch up with. (I’ve liked Robin Hobb since she was Megan Lindholm 😉 )

I did ponder somewhat on the bear book. The words are sparse, rhyming and lyrical yes, but few and far between. And they could have been illustrated in so many different ways – cartoon anthropomorphic bears perhaps, or cuddly toys. But in this version they are glorious and somewhat wild, though they travel with a circus. Very definitely not tame animals though.

It’s difficult to explain, and definitely a case of a picture thousand word thing. All I can do is recommend that you seek out any and all Jackie Morris books, as I’m planning on doing, and find out for yourself what it’s all about. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Afternoon, as I mentioned, was spent in the park, catching up with a couple of families that we see all too infrequently nowadays. Smallest in particular was thrilled to spend time Afish, while Tigerboy discovered a new playmate in Jfish, who really is very good with little children.

And I got a shot of a squirrel.

On the way there and back we listened to the audio book of the Worst Witch from Puffin books. Suffice it to say Smallest is now a huge audio book fan, and wants to listen to any and every worst witch book I can find. Which was the result I might have hoped for, but certainly didn’t expect. We’ve not done that much long reading – we do do chapters here and there, but so far she’s listened to it straight through three times – she may be working on memorising it. A definite hit, which is all you can ever hope for really.

A Higgidy garden picnic while reading Rebecca

28th July 2015 by Jax Blunt 4 Comments

A little while ago I was sent a lovely picnic bag from Higgidy and vouchers to try out their quiches. The idea was that we’d have a family picnic.

The reality is that that was the week both the little children got sick in succession, and apart from shopping, the furthest I got from the house was the garden :/ However, that does mean that I got to enjoy the various quiches over the course of the week, and enjoy them I did, as did Tim and Small. Since Small got adventurous with food (thank you Kentwell!) he’s started trying different types of cheese, and very much enjoyed a saag paneer we made together, so I chose the Little Spinach & Roasted Red Pepper Quiche for him as it’s got feta as well as spinach, and it was a real hit. Tim and I were torn between the Smoked English Bacon & Mature Cheddar Quiche and the Little Smoked Bacon & Cheddar Quiche – both were very good. They would indeed lift a picnic out of the ordinary, and I decided that I would enjoy a meal outside with a good book.

I’m reading Rebecca. I’ve never read any Daphne du Maurier before, and I was thrilled to be sent two copies by Virago as part of their relaunch and re packaging. The idea was that I would read it alongside Big, but we’ve singularly failed at that, sadly. We’re out of reading sync at the moment, and I know that the thing to do when you hit a reading slump is to ride it out. Distraction can help, maybe a quick switch of genre, but the last thing you should do is force a book. I’ve had too many books forced on me throughout my educational journey to ever want to do that to anyone else.

I’m enjoying it. But. A bit like the sensory overload I’ve written about previously I’m finding it’s a book I can only read in very small bursts. I sink into it. It surrounds me. I don’t know who Rebecca is yet, but she’s in my head, I’m at Manderley, and there’s so much truth in this book.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

You tell me how long it takes to get those words out of your head. That’s why this is a classic I’m guessing.

Have you read any du Maurier? Which would you recommend?

Buy Rebecca (VMC) at Amazon

Disclosure: quiches and books were provided for the purpose of review. Amazon links are affiliate links – thank you for your support.

Playing with Paper – a somethingosaur

24th July 2015 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

A night or two ago our bedtime story was The somethingosaur by Tony Mitton, illustrated by Russell Ayto. It’s a lovely story of a little lost something who treks all over the ancient world, looking for his mother. It rhymes, which makes it easy to read aloud, there’s mild peril (rhyming creature with eat yer!) and a reassuring ending.

Definitely a winner at bedtime.

Tonight I had a go at drawing a somethingosaur on Paper on the iPad.

I do wonder if I could do better if I had a decent stylus. But it’s not horrendous.

The original is available at Amazon, unsurprisingly. The Somethingosaur (affiliate link. Thank you for your support.)

Angelina Ballerina – breaking the fourth wall in picture books

13th April 2015 by Jax Blunt 7 Comments

The Angelina Ballerina books form a series of stories about the heroine, Angelina (a mouse) and her friends and family (also, unsurprisingly, mice). Although ballet is an important interest, it’s not a feature of every story and in fact is barely mentioned in Angelina’s Birthday by Katharine Holabird (Author) and Helen Craig (Illustrator) (affiliate link). Instead this particular story focuses on the run up to Angelina’s birthday starting with a trip to the village on bikes to get decorations. The books are quite wordy for picture books and also feature incredibly detailed illustrations.

The thing that we noticed (we being me, Smallest and Tigerboy) when we were reading, is the way that the illustrations break the frame. So for example, on the very first page, setting the scene, there’s a beautiful framed picture of the main street of the village with mice pottering about, and Alice and Angelina on bikes riding into the frame.

This device crops up throughout the book although there are also full, double page, illustrated spreads, resplendent in detail.

Breaking the frame somehow adds immediacy to the story, drawing the reader in to events, as in the third illustration where the “big rock” as described in the words is so large that it edges out of the picture.

The children’s favourite though is the following page, where the force of the impact with the rock fires Angelina right out of the picture she’s in, across the double page, to land in a heap in the picture opposite.

(We had to read this page several times and carefully trace the trajectory of poor Angelina’s flight!)

The different styles of pictures throughout the book interact with the words to keep the story moving along. So little images for each day of the week take us through 5 days of story right up to the several fully illustrated pages that bring the story to its climax.

Again, important elements of the narrative are highlighted with pictorial elements breaking out of the frame, Henry below the line of the rest of the drawing in his own little patch of floor, leaping excitedly.

And I particularly love the end plate, the two friends who began the story on their bikes, finishing it the same way.

Up until today, I’ve not been an Angelina fan. But that was seeing it on TV, and somehow there’s a level of detail lost in the animation, and it’s the type of picture/ word interaction I’ve detailed in this review. Hopefully what I’ve learned from this is that it’s worth taking a second look, just in case, at pretty much everything.

300 Picture books

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