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Will Mabbitt writes. He writes in cafes, on trains, on the toilet, and sometimes in his head when his laptop runs out of power. The Unlikely Adventures of Mabel Jones is his first book. Another one is coming soon.

I believe any book can fuel the imagination when it arrives in the right hands at the right time, but there are also some which explicitly explore how we nurture creativity and create space for inspiration and following our dreams. The Wonder by Faye Hanson and The Imaginary by A.F. Harrold and Emily Gravett are two such books which I’ve read recently and which have left me brimming with delight, hope and happiness and which have sparked hours of inspired play in my children.

The Wonder by Faye Hanson is a sumptuous début picture book about a young boy whose head if full of daydreams which transform the humdrum world around him. Time and again adults tell him to get his head out of the clouds and come back to reality, but this is barely possible for a child who finds wonder, curiosity and delight wherever he looks. Finally in art class he’s able to let loose his imagination onto a blank sheet of paper delighting his teacher and filling his parents with pride.

The child in this story sees ordinary objects but has the imagination to turn them into astonishing stories, breathtaking ideas, and worlds full of adventures waiting to happen. I know I want to foster this ability in my own children (and in myself!); the world becomes more beautiful, richer, and simply more enjoyable when we are able to imagine more than the grey, wet and humdrum daily life that all too often catches us up. This utterly delightful book is an enthusiastic encouragement to let more imagination in to our lives.

Click to view a larger version (it’s really worth it!) of this interior spread from The Wonder by Faye Hanson

Hanson’s illustrations are dense, saturated, and rich. Careful use of colour lights up the boy’s dreams in his otherwise sepia coloured life. Limited palettes add to the intensity of these pictures; it’s interesting that their vitality doesn’t come from a rainbow range of paints, but rather from focussing on layer of layer of just a few colours, packed with exquisite detail. There’s a luminosity about the illustrations; some look like they’ve got gold foil or a built-in glow and yet there are no novelty printing techniques here.

All in all, an exquisite book that will tell anyone you share it with that you value their dreams and want to nurture their ingenuity, inventiveness and individuality.

Now let me play devil’s advocate: Is there sometimes a line to be walked between feeding a child’s imagination and yet enabling them to recognise the difference between real life and day dreams? In The Wonder, there are plenty of adults pointing out the apparent problems/risks of day dreaming a great deal. On the other hand, in The Imaginary, a mother fully enters into her daughter’s imaginary world, not only acknowledging an imaginary best friend, but actively supporting this belief by setting places at meal times, packing extra bags, even accepting accidents must be the result of this friend and not the child herself.

Amanda believes that only she can see her imaginary friend Rudger. But all this changes one day when a mysterious Mr Bunting appears on the doorstep, apparently doing innocent door-to-door market research. But all is not as it seems for it turns out that Mr Bunting has no imagination of his own and can only survive by eating other people’s imaginary friends. He’s sniffed Rudger out and now he’s going to get him, whatever it takes.

Click to see larger illustration by Emily Gravett, from The Imaginary by A. F. Harrold

If you’ve ever wondered where imaginary friends come from, and what happens to them when their children grow up and stop day-dreaming this is a book for you. If you love a good villain, adventures which include libraries and narrow escapes you’ll enjoy this too. If you’re a fan of elegant and attractive books you’ll want to feel this between your hands. The illustrations by Emily Gravett are terrific (in every sense) and incredibly atmospheric, magically adding beauty and tension to a story which I thought couldn’t be bettered.

Intelligent, clever, thoughtful, and packed with seeds of love and inspiration The Imaginary is perhaps my favourite middle grade/young fiction book of the year. If you want a fuller flavour of this gem before hurrying to get it into your hands, head and heart, there’s a full teacher’s guide to The Imaginary available on the Bloomsbury website and you can watch a video of Emily Gravett working on her illustrations here.

One of the ways my girls have been inspired in their playing since sharing these books became clear when they told me they wanted to make a star-making machine to go with the one features in The Wonder (see the illustration above).

M first wrote out some recipes for stars:

I provided a little food for thought…

…and a selection of machine parts.

Several hours later the star machine was coming together

Next up a selection of star ingredients were sourced:

The machine was fed…

Can you see the pulses of one star in the making?!

And out popped these stars (here’s a tutorial) at the end of the star making process:

Here’s one just for you:

Whilst making our machine we listened to:

Other activities which could work well alongside reading The Wonder and The Imaginary include:

How do you foster your kids’ imagination? And your own?

Disclosure: I was sent free review copies of both books in today’s post.

At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last weekend, three writers shared advice for aspiring children’s book authors.

During the “Pictures on the Page: The Art of Children’s Books” panel discussion, Blue Chameleon author Emily Gravett, Hang Glider & Mud Mask co-author Brian McMullen and Not a Box author Antoinette Portis talked about their craft and writing lives.

Below, we’ve collected their advice for aspiring authors…

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This week I was asked to create a banner for New England's SCBWI Facebook page. This was an honour and a lot of fun to do. What better than lobster and water on a day that was over 90F .. phew, Maine!

Here is the banner.

Scary stuff and not appropriate for sensitive readers. Read more after the jump. There once was a white rabbit who went to the library and signed out a book on wolves. Like Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, the rabbit unknowingly becomes part of the book he is reading. Oblivious to the looming danger of a wolf, [...]

Hello my dearest blog readers! How the dickens are you? Isn't 'blog readers' is a dull term? Personally, I quite like 'bloggles', or 'bloggins,' or perhaps (if you were all kindly prepared to don leg-warmers), 'bloggets'...?

Anyway, I hope you're all well and dandy. Things have been barmy, naturally; but a little more so than usual. To give you some indication, I'd say, crazier than a soup sandwich, but not quite as mad as a bag of cats.

I've been working on several illustration jobs at once and have been attempting to fairly price up another couple. I've met up with the Surrey Illustrators (a very fine bunch of people) and I've been down to London to blether at the feet of Harry Potters' people in Bloomsbury.

Incidentally, I know I've spoken about the different 'feels' of each publishing house, but have I mentioned the eccentricity of publishing buildings?

If you lined all the publishing offices up next to eachother you'd have the kind of skyline of which Tim Burton could only dream. What's really great is they're all so unexpected. I always find myself picturing an interview beforehand to try and steady my nerves, but I NEVER get the situation right. I'm half thinking, I might have to envisage a bouncy castle or an icecream van in my mental walk-through next time... just to cover my bases. Publishing houses are all fantastic. They range from shiny, high rises with gated security stations and receptionists, stern and highly armed (with biro's and name badges, naturally), to eccentric tumbledown houses, to Templar's magically warren-y offices (which I'm sure they're short-leasing from a large family of badgers). At the end of Publishing Road, I'm sure there'd be an old, and very esteemed art director that lived in a shoe.

One publisher has wall to wall windowed lifts, so if you're romantic you feel like you're flying, and if you're like me, you feel like you've farted with enough gusto to launch. I'd also note that when visiting said publisher, due to a strategically placed Starbucks below, when travelling higher than second floor, short skirts are to be avoided at all costs. And picking ones' nose is an out and out no-no.

The Bloomsbury offices have THE smallest lift you've ever seen. I'm not joking, it's about a metre and half wide, by a metre deep.... and there's three of us in there.... and we're all the same height. Now, the height thing can be seen one of two ways. With tall people, I tend to be at armpit (or worse still) crotch height. For anyone that's never had the pleasure; introducing yourself when you're eye-to-crotch is something from which it's kind of hard to recover. With people the same size as me, and particularly in a interview type environment, the eye-to-eye thing is always slightly unnerving; you over-analyse your movements until you develop an erratic twitch. On top of that, it's before the interview, so I'm attempting to make small talk AND impress at the same time. On top of THAT, our faces (all three of them) are mere inches apart... I feel like I'm in the Bohemian Rhapsody video. Quick, I think... and twitch, and twitch and think; drop some enlightened phrase on publishing current affairs. Talk apps, talk distribution channels, talk anything but... 'I LIKE HARRY POTTER!' Dear God, when you belt out this inanity, you can only hope you didn't top it off by spitting in anyone's eye or stomping on anyone's foot. And unfortunately, we've still got another three floors to ride...all staring (in extreme close-up) and in palpable silence at my reddening, twitching face.

Thank goodness publishers are a nice breed of human. Whether I'm trying to exit out of the 'entrance' door at Orion, bashing head-long, like a trapped wilderbeast, into the glass doors at Hodder, or babbling incoherantly in Bloomsbury's lift, all of them have been decent enough not to mention it. All I can say is, if they can be this nonchalant at my behaviour though, it does make me think; what on EARTH do the rest of you illustrators get up to????

The Children's Book Council hosts the Children's Choice Book Awards. The favorite book finalists for this year were determined by close to 15,000 children and teens. I highly recommend checking out these books!

This book titled Dogs by Emily Gravett is for all dog lovers. The cover has a wrap around of a dachshund with his red leash in his mouth begging for you to grab it and walk yourself through the book.

The book has beautiful illustrations of all types of dogs and some of the dogs that appear are clearly identified by type in the front and back cover.


Descriptive adjectives clearly describe the type of dog as big, small, tough, soft, etc.








My favorite type of dog the hairy sheep dog takes up a whole page.






At the end the reader finds out that a cat is telling the story. But the dog that I love best? Let's see....





Check out the book and Emily Gravett website at http://www.emilygravett.com/.

Emily Gravett is one of those authors that make librarians sigh. We lovvvve the books she writes (seriously, she's one of my favorites), but there are always parents that check out Wolves and come back with complaints about how "tragic" or "terrifying" the ending is. And I can tell that as brilliant as The Odd Egg is, it will be the same story.

That being said, I still think every single librarian and mom should own ALL of Ms. Gravett's books. They are funny, contemporary, utterly sarcastic at times, and just plain brilliant, not to mention THE KIDS LOVE THEM!! As long as the kids love them, that's what counts Just be aware that someone out there will deem you evil, because innocent animals are harmed within the pages of her stories. :)

Now, The Odd Egg, Gravett's latest, is about a poor duck that is without an egg. All of his friends have eggs: Flamingo, Parrot, Chicken...but no egg for Duck. He (yes "he", now you know why there isn't an egg) finds an egg and thinks all of his problems are just solved instantly! It's a big, beautiful, if not a tad bit odd egg, but what does a little oddness matter? Unfortunately, Duck's "friends" still judge him, picking on his choice of an egg, until slowly that egg cracks. Out pops a creature that fixes ALL of Duck's problems.

I really did love this one and it reaffirmed my faith in the ever-fabulous Gravett! It's creative, the half-page flaps are interactive for kids, and I think it would make a fabulous read aloud, bound to get all of your kids cracking up. Definitely a must for your library shelves (and home shelves too)!!

The Odd Egg
Emily Gravett
32pages
Picture Book
Simon & Schuster
9781416968726
January 2009

…that’s a fear of solitude or “I don’t like being alone, or in the dark”, as Little Mouse puts it in Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears by Emily Gravett, which has just been awarded the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal. While bedtime itself can be such a cosy, reassuring end to the day, with a story and a cuddle, there often comes a time when children don’t want to be left alone in the dark. Logical reassurances go unheeded and sometimes the turning-out ritual takes on the stuff of the very stories they’ve been laughing at, as monsters are chased from under beds and spooks are ousted from wardrobes… This is where Little Mouse comes in.

The book’s template is a self-help book for people to log their own fears: and each pair of phobias on a double page is cleverly interlinked.

“Each page in this book provides a large blank space
for you to record and face your fear using a combination of:
Drawing
Writing
Collage.

REMEMBER!
A FEAR FACED IS A FEAR DEFEATED.”

Only, what we have here is Mouse’s personally completed copy – and what a timorous wee beastie he is! He has filled in every page, from Entomophobia, a fear of insects, through monsters, yes, to, well, everything (that’s Panophobia!). In fact, Mouse has chewed it and glued it; and with all he goes through, it’s amazing that both he and his pencil survive until the end.

There is genius behind this book – every time I look at it I am struck by the lightness of touch Gravett has brought to this tricky subject. There is so much humor (not least in the way it ends) and this provides a very real opening for children to talk openly about their fears, however irrational – and, in fact, not just their own: my Arachnophobia (though I’m loathe to acknowledge it by its proper name) was pounced upon gleefully by my two…

The artwork is stunning, right down to the tiniest detail of a dog-eared page corner. As well as the holes and torn edges, there are collages with flaps, some terrifying feathers and an annotated “Visitors’ Map of the Isle of Fright”. This is a book to be drooled over - though perhaps not literally. Button and Mr Moo, the rats to whom the book is dedicated, have already done their business… In fact, some of the illustrative techiniques involved seem set to cause a furore – but that mustn’t be allowed to detract from the quality of the book itself. I go along with The Ultimate Book Guide’s comments about the publishers too – Macmillan are indeed to be congratulated; and I can only envy Daniel is preview peek at Gravett’s soon-to-be-published The Odd Egg!

Here’s a link to yesterday’s interview with Emily in The Guardian and do look at her own website, including this activity to “Make Your Own Collage of Fears”. She was also recently selected as one of The Big Picture campaign’s ten Best New Illustrators in the UK, as announced at the Bologna Book Fair. You can read The Big Picture’s interview with her here.

And a little PS – we will be featuring three of The Big Picture’s longlisted artists in our Gallery in our next PaperTigers update…