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A hopeful tale of friendship and flower power, Alison Jay‘s wonderful wordless picture book Bee & Me opens with a young girl startled by a buzzing bee.

No-one likes to be stung and it looks like the bee might be all over before the story’s even begun. Fortunately, a crack in the door of curiosity and bravery opens up the way for an joint adventure bringing plants and flowers across the grey city, delivering beauty and benefits to all city inhabitants, whether honey bees or humans.

Variations on similar theme may be familiar from The Bee Movie, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown or perhaps Big City Bees written by Maggie de Vries and illustrated by Renné Benoit but what Jay brings afresh to this optimistic, reassuring and galvanising story are the glorious details in her beautiful and textured illustrations, often using multiple panels per page, thereby blurring the boundaries between picture book and graphic novel.

Many layers of storytelling run parallel to the main plot. Repeat readings will lead you into the lives of several city inhabitants, when you peer through apartment windows, watching what happens as time passes and the plans of the girl and her bee blossom. It made me think of a recent discussion I had with author Phil Earle, in relation to his fabulous Storey Street series, where he talked about his firm belief that there is story worth hearing behind every door (or in Jay’s case, through every window). A further strand in Jay’s fabric of storytelling follows the growth of friendship between the girl and another young resident in her block of flats, as if distilling how nature can save us from loneliness and make us feel re-connected once more.

Worldwide, bees are in decline. Because of their role as pollinators, we need bees, and bees – facing the threat they now do – need us. This upbeat, optimistic, can-do example of how children are able to make a real and beneficial difference to their world will hopefully inspire a new generation prepared to make a difference.

Enthused by Bee & Me the girls and I set about creating lots of Bee Seed Tape to give away to all our fellow allotmenteers. Seed Tape is a strip of biodegradable material with seeds already imprinted in it, evenly spaced and super easy to use for speedy planting.

First we dyed (organic) toilet paper, spraying it with natural food colouring.

When the paper was dry, we stuck on seeds using a thick flour/water paste (as thick as possible, so that the moisture in it didn’t encourage the seeds to germinate). We chose to use seeds for sunflower and borage because bees love these plants and the seeds are large enough to handle easily.

Once our seed tape was dry we turned it into bees. Our bee body (which was designed to double up as a plant label) was made from a lollipop stick on which the seed types written on it.

The seed tape was wrapped around the lollipop and held in place with some black ribbon to create bee stripes. Ping-pong balls and pipecleaners were used to create bee heads, and instructions for planting the seed tape were stuck onto black cardboard wings (you can download the template here if you’d like to use ours) threaded on to the black ribbon.

Now it was time to share and plant our bee-friendly seeds so off to the allotment we went:

Here’s the seed tape rolled out before we covered it up with soil.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such fun seed labels before!

A bit of water and now we just need to wait!

Whilst making our Bee Seed Tape we listened to:

Other activities which might work well alongside reading Bee & Me include:

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher, Old Barn Books.

Special Tour de France Miffys are available!

Tomorrow sees the start of the world’s greatest cycling event, Le Tour de France. This year it’s actually starting in the Dutch city of Utrecht, the hometown of Dick Bruna creator of Miffy (or Nijntje, to give her her original Dutch name), but I’m using today’s Grand Départ as an excuse to bring you some wonderful images from the marvellous, multi-award winning French-Dutch illustrator, Charlotte Dematons.

Dematons specialises in wordless picture books including The Yellow Balloon and Holland which have been published natively for English speaking readers. One of my personal favourites, however, is her celebration of bicycles and the many forms they can take, especially in the Netherlands. Fiets, or for English speakers ‘Bicycle’ (only available second hand, even in the Netherlands), follows a boy who, having been at a fancy dress party, goes looking for his stolen bike.

In this illustration you see something which is ten-a-penny in the Netherlands – folk giving others a lift home on the back of their bike.

In this spread I love the enoooooormous ‘bakfiets’ which is being used to transport eight children.

This spread shows a scene outside a school during “Children’s Book Week”. Can you spot the special tandem, with the child at the front? What about the unicycle? Or the child in a bread basket on the front of his Dad’s bike? I also like the twins, with the same hairstyle as their dad.

You can transport just about anything by bicycle, especially if you have a friend to help! Look out for the laden panniers, the tag-along car, and even the windshield for small children riding up front on a bike. These houses also make me smile – very typical modern Dutch suburban architecture!

This scene I love because of the very Dutch sight – a florist, and also the nod to how multicultural the Netherlands is.

Another classic Dutch sight – fishing out old bicycles from the canals. The book must be set in the South of the Netherlands because you don’t see hills anything like this anywhere else.

In the Netherlands lots of moving house is done by bicycle, especially if you’re a student. Can you see just how much this family has loaded up on their bike? What about the recumbent bike?

All these types of bike really are every day sights in the Netherlands. If they’ve piqued your interest, there is a specialist UK supplier who can help you find the bike of your dreams – http://practicalcycles.com/. I’ve never used them, but I love what they have to offer. I’m hoping one day to get a bike like this to use as a mobile pop-up bookshop or library, having been inspired by this bike which belongs to the Belgian bookshop Letters & Co.

You’ve seen the illustrations, now see the bikes in real life!

Float
by Daniel Miyares; illus. by the author
Primary   Simon   40 pp.
6/15   978-1-4814-1524-8   $17.99   g
e-book ed. 978-1-4814-1525-5   $12.99

The joys, fears, and frustrations of exploration — as well as the safety, support, and love of home — are examined in this wordless story. Using inspiration from the newspaper, a boy and his caregiver (the only two characters in the narrative) together fold a paper boat. When the boy takes it outside to play, he pretends to sail the boat around the neighborhood. After a downpour, it floats for real — first in a puddle and then out of the boy’s grasp into a sewer grate. Bereft, he returns home to find care and coziness: a loving hug, dry clothes, and a warm mug of cocoa. Soon after, our hero ventures out again into a bright yellow day, with a freshly folded paper airplane. This time, he embraces the moment when he can set his creation free. With a limited color palette of mostly grays and yellows, each scene is full of reflection, shadow, and texture. The characters are composed of distinct planes of color and appear layered, as if folded out of paper, reinforcing the tactile topic and theme. Miyares’s strong command of perspective and line produces a comfortable suspense between panels and delivers a visual tale of a small moment made spectacular in the eyes of a child. Endpapers supply directions for readers to make their own paper boats and airplanes.

From the May/June 2015 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

The post Review of Float appeared first on The Horn Book.

It is easy to underestimate wordless (or nearly wordless) picture books. At first glance, they can seem simplistic and their educational value can seem limited since so much focus is placed on reading in the classroom, but if used in the right way they can contribute to a number of learning objectives across a wide range of grade levels. The books below illustrate some of the types of wordless books that are available and offer some suggestions for how to make them part of your lesson plans.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan
This book tells a universal tale of immigration through pictures of a man travelling to an alien world in search of work and a better life. The retro-futuristic setting, sepia-toned images, and alien language will make this book relatable to any reader. Geared towards middle school or older readers, this book could be used in a social studies or history class while reading about the immigrant experience in the U.S. and could just as easily be used in a literature class to teach students how to “read” images.

Robot Dreams by Sara Varon
It might seem surprising to say that a wordless book about a robot and a dog who are friends packs an emotional punch, but that is certainly the case here. Varon successfully uses images to pull readers into the story and vividly convey emotions without the need for dialogue. The bright colors of the drawings will make this book appealing and accessible to readers in third and fourth grade, where it can be used to prompt discussions around friendship and how art can prompt an emotional reaction.

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg
Though not completely wordless, this book from famed writer and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg is definitely not a typical picture book. It consists of a series of drawings, each of which has a title and a caption and no further words associated with it. While the drawings all share an odd, off-kilter quality that makes them mysterious and not quite of our world, they are not explicitly connected to one another. As such, they make ideal short story prompts for virtually any age. This book could be used as inspiration for creative writings projects from grade school through high school. If you don’t believe me, you need look no further than the new version of the book published in 2011 under the name The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, which included a story written by a best-selling author to accompany each of the pictures.

Mirror by Jeannie Baker
Here the wordless format is combined with a unique physical format that has readers unfolding each side of the book to reveal side-by-side images of two families, one living in Sydney, Australia and the other living in a small town in Morocco. This layout juxtaposes life in these two locations, showing readers the differences but also the important similarities between the two families. This is an ideal book for younger readers from preschool through early grade school, who will delight in pointing out the similarities and differences between the images. It would work well for teaching vocabulary related to the images as well as for larger discussions about cultural differences around the world.

I hope these ideas will encourage some readers to reconsider the place of wordless books in their classes, but beyond this, I would also love to hear how readers have already been using them. I hope you’ll consider sharing your favorite wordless books and how you use them in your curriculum in the comments!

The post Using wordless books in the classroom appeared first on The Horn Book.

Having mastered ballet in Flora and the Flamingo, Flora takes to the ice and forms an unexpected friendship with a penguin in Molly Idle's Flora and the Penguin.

Things are beginning to heat up. Mock Caldecotts are being decided; best-of-year lists continue to be released; over at Fuse #8, Betsy Bird has made her final predictions.

It’s time to talk about a book that’s been one of my favorites all fall: Marla Frazee’s The Farmer and the Clown.

I find it difficult not to gush over this book. It is so simple and yet so profound: the classic “stranger comes to town” story brilliantly re-imagined and re-visioned. It works for me on both an intellectual and emotional level, so much so that I can start out discussing the composition of a particular page, say, and end up talking instead about the definition of family; love and loss. The search for belonging. What happens when we reveal our true selves to others. You know, the whole human condition.

So to prevent me going off the deep end, I’ll stick to bullet points and simply highlight some of the strengths of the book; some of the things that make it worthy of Caldecott consideration. I hope you will help me fill in the gaps in the comments.

• THE EXPRESSIVENESS of the characters, through body language and facial expressions. To quote the Horn Book “Fanfare” citation: ”Rarely has posture been used so well in a picture book, here used to wordlessly portray the kindness of strangers who are thrown (literally!) together by happenstance but then changed forever.”
• THE TENSION. The story itself has built-in tension — how are these seemingly opposite characters going to get along? will the farmer be able to comfort the child? will this be the child’s new home, or will the circus train come back? — so does the visual storytelling. As a reader/viewer I am pulled in two directions. I want both to linger over each spread to catch every nuance AND to turn the page to see what happens next. The picture book storytelling is perfectly balanced here.
• THE LANDSCAPE. This has got to be one of the sparest landscapes ever depicted in a picture book. The horizon stretches unendingly beneath vast skies. There is no vegetation aside from the one tree on the one knoll. There aren’t even any haystacks to break up the emptiness (though there seems to be plenty of hay to make them with). The color palette is equally austere: brown, sere, desert-like. Does the empty landscape echo and make manifest the heart of the farmer? Or does it serve to keep the viewer’s focus on the characters, their interactions and emotions? I would say both.
• THE ENDING. It is just open-ended enough. You close the book satisfied but also with a little room to fill in details yourself. It’s not the mind-blowing, drop-the-reader-off-a-cliff ending of Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. But the questions asked by the ending can be answered by a the story you’ve just finished reading. It’s a very organic, very satisfying kind of open-endedness. The answers are all in the spot illustration on the last page: in the farmer’s posture (relaxed, upright, hands in pocket — he’s contemplative, but not unhappy), in the hat he’s wearing, the hat HE chose to swap with the little clown; and of course in the presence of the circus monkey, the same size and shape and dressed the same way as the departed little clown.
• THE MULTILAYEREDNESS of the wordless narrative. One of the most brilliant parts of the book is the very first page where Frazee uses a clean white background rather than that mottled sere brown — the page just after the little clown has been jettisoned from the train. Read it one way (with makeup in place): a little clown seeks to entertain an audience. He does a little dive move, he doffs his cap, he takes a bow. All part of a performance. BUT. Read it another way (if one could see through the makeup to the scared baby/toddler beneath): he points desperately to where he came from; he mimics how he fell from the train, he bends over in despair; he runs to the farmer to plead for help. I’m not sure I know of another picture book that accomplishes this layered interpretation.
• THE VISUAL LINKS BETWEEN THE CHARACTERS. There are many. Even when they look like complete opposites — tall skinny old farmer all dressed in black; short round young child all dressed in red — there is a relationship between them. Note the reverse symmetry of the small clown and the tall farmer: the clown’s tall pointy hat is the farmer’s long pointy beard, in reverse; the clowns horizontal ruffle around his neck is the farmer’s flat hat on his head. Then when the truth comes out and the little clown’s true self is revealed, the link becomes closer and nearer: we see their equally bald heads, and the farmer’s red long johns match the child’s red clown suit. And at the very very end, the link between them is cemented when the farmer swaps their hats, placing his black hat on the toddler’s head and donning the tall red cone hat himself.
• THE STORY’S DEPTH. This would have been just a sweet little story of friendship and love/loss/love…but the addition of the painted-on smile of the little clown asks SUCH deeper questions and adds so many deeper layers. And so by the end of the book, this reader, anyway, is entirely emotionally invested. Look at that oversized arm on the final double-page spread (the long horizontal arm balanced compositionally by the long horizontal train, by the way). Is the farmer’s arm waving goodbye? or reaching out, trying to hold on? There’s a phenomenal amount of feeling in that disembodied arm. I am not sure many other artists could invest so much emotion in an ARM.

I’ve heard that The Farmer and the Clown doesn’t work for two- and three-year-olds. Well, no. Is it supposed to? Do people think that because the clown is a very young child, the book also must be for very young children? The age of the baby/toddler clown does not determine the audience for this book. It’s for reader-viewers who are interested in determining and decoding the situation, reading the postures, the facial expressions, watching the specific yet universal story unfold.

And no, it’s not all that funny. Again, is it supposed to be? I am not sure that all Marla Frazee books have to be laughfests. The book does have small moments of humor (the juggling eggs sequence, for instance), but it’s the kind of humor that might evoke a smile rather than a guffaw. I think readers are too involved in the pathos of the situation, the drama, the tension, to want or need to do a lot of giggling. But since the Caldecott committee is charged with looking only at the books of 2014, a comparison to Frazee’s earlier work should not apply.

Can the Caldecott committee ignore their expectations of what a Marla Frazee picture book should be? Will they see the genius of this book?

The post The Farmer and the Clown appeared first on The Horn Book.

We adults need to create space for readers and a defined comfort zone for them to enjoy wordless experiences. We must bite our tongues and allow experiences to unfold right in front of our eyes.

Do you have students who claim they don't know what to write about in their writer's notebooks? Here are 10 new picture books to inspire them to write.

Give a wordless book a try during your next writing workshop and see the possibilities.

Give a wordless book a try during your next writing workshop and see the possibilities.

I've found that the best of these books spoke to my kids when they were pre-readers, but still continue to draw them back again and again, as they uncover more in the multilayered stories. So without further ado, here are the Fitzgerald family's Top 5 Wordless Books.

Cretaceous Companions

• Students can bring in one of their own "prized possessions" and discuss what makes it special. 
• Students might want to create their own simple paper plate dinosaurs, which can be displayed with a colorful bucket on the bulletin board. 
• Students could imagine that they have a real, live dinosaur for a pet. How would that work? How would you feed him? Where would he sleep?
• Looking for a fun and easy cooking project? Check out these fossil cookies.

The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins by Barbara Kerley with illustrations by Brian Selznick ("many of which are based on the original sketches of Mr. Hawkins"). Working with scientist Richard Owens, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins wanted to create such perfect models of dinosaurs that anyone who gazed at his creations would see into the past. By using just the bits and pieces of fossils, bones, and teeth that had been found by early palaeontologists, Waterhouse filled in "gaps" by thinking of existing animals which the dinosaurs might have resembled. This book chronicles his triumphal premiere in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Park (when tens of thousands of spectators, including the Queen, gaped in wonder at his creatures), as well as his tragedy in Central Park (when vandals under the vindictive order of Boss Tweed destroyed his dinosaurs destined for the Americans). Although we now realize that many of Waterhouse's guesses were somewhat inaccurate, no one can dispute his ability to light the imaginations of the thousands who viewed his works.

• Students can use clay to design their own dinosaurs. They don't need to sculpt one specific, real-life dino; instead, they should simply use their imaginations to create an original prehistoric monster. Since scientist continue to discover new dinosaurs all the time, who's to say what the next dino discovery might look like?
• Students might also enjoy building their own prehistoric pasta pets. Show students pictures of assembled dino skeletons in museums. Explain that while these models take many years to collect, piece together, and display, today students will create their own models using pasta as bones. Given a wide variety of different pasta shapes, students can assemble their own dinos by gluing their selected noodles to black construction paper. Once partially dry, the pasta will need a second coat to affix it well to the paper. 
• For a look at how those dinosaurs get to the museum, check out the book (coincidentally called) How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland. This book explains how dinosaur bones go from the earth to you, the museum visitor, via fourteen other people, who are named and collected in a House-that-Jack-Built type progression.

• Taking a cue from this book, students can create their own unique dino patterns on simple coloring sheets. They can either color with vivid colors (danger! stay back!, bold colors (look at me!), muted colors (I need to hide), or patterns which create camouflage (to avoid being seen by prey or predator).
• Older students can be given a simple white dino silhouette (shape) and a variety of a magazine from which to choose pictures. After choosing a large picture which can serve as a background, students will color in their dino shape to camouflage into the background.

• Have each student choose a dinosaur, and write about "a day in the life of..." Students may need to do some research on which dinosaurs lived in which period, and many students may discover that their dinos and their friends' dinos might have shared the same habitats!
• Instead of a dinosaur, have students choose any other animal (or use an animal they've already researched). Require that students illustrate their "daily routine" with view that would be seen from their critter's perspective.
• Create dino fossils in the classroom.

• Challenge students to draw dinosaurs in modern day settings. How would their traits and habits affect their interactions with people?
• Challenge students to put dinos to work. If they existed today, how could their size and strength be helpful to humans?

• The wordless format of both books offers the perfect opportunity for students to tell their own stories. Students can "write" similar books as a group, and tell their own stories.
• Students might also be challenged to write the tales they "see" using poetry rather than prose.

• Brainstorm a How to... problem with the class and write a similar story as a group, or challenge pairs or teams to come up with their own ideas (focusing on social skills seems to work well here).

Once you’ve finished a book what do you do with it? Shelve it away so it can barely be seen?

How about, instead, exhibiting it on a window sill or mantelpiece to invite comment, to become an ever present part of your life?

Not all books lend themselves to this of course, but High Times: A History of Aviation by Golden Cosmos, and Swan Lake by Ping Zhu are not your everyday sort of book.

An almost wordless, non-fiction accordion book, High Times: A History of Aviation takes you on a journey from Icarus via Leonardo da Vinci, to the Wright Brothers, through the Second World War on to Concorde and the Space Shuttle. Key dates and inventions are picked out and briefly explained in the book’s wrap-around cover, which acts as a key for details to spot in the exciting and broad landscape presented as the book opens out.

Ping Zhu’s Swan Lake, which takes the same format, is entirely wordless. One side of the book shows the audience watching a performance of the ballet, whilst on the reverse you can see behind the scenes as the ballerinas prepare themselves to go on stage.

Both books are wonderfully tactile to hold and interact with. Printed on heavy-weight card these are books you really want to feel between your fingers.

Swan Lake‘s illustrations reminded me of 1960s illustrations, and the girls really enjoyed exploring the audience and making up stories about the different characters they could see, from the bored looking lady with a pearl necklace to the rather mysterious animals who have somehow snuck in to the theatre (they made me think of a Finnish illustrator I like, Hannamari Ruohonen, who also creates fabulous wordless picture books).

The printing technique and bold colour scheme of High Times ensures the book feels both retro and modern. Again, there is lots of fun to be had looking for details, from the family going on holiday with their rubber duck, to the zoo animal being transported by Boeing 747. This book is a great example of how science (in this case, engineering and inventions) can also be explored through art. Team it up with The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont by Victoria Griffith, illustrated by Eva Montanari (which I reviewed here) and The Story of Inventions, by Anna Claybourne, illustrated by Adam Larkum (which I reviewed here) and you’ve got a terrific trio of books to inspire the next generation of flying machine inventors.

But these books are not just for the young. Both NoBrow books are immensely stylish, and as such, will no doubt appeal to adults as well as children. I can easily imagine them unfolded and on display in beautiful, architect designed houses. And why not?

Displaying stories and illustration on your walls is great way to integrate books into your lives, and at £10 a pop I can’t think of a cheaper way to get some eye catching, discussion-inducing art up on your walls.

Inspired by the idea of displaying an illustrated story, the girls set about making their own “mural book”. I blu-tacked a length of fax paper (yes, such a thing still exists, I got mine from Rymans) up our staircase and the girls took turns to illustrate a story chinese-whisper style.

M would illustrate a stretch of paper, then J would take over the story and add her twists and turns. Because I was nervous about pen marks going on the wall I illustrated a simple border along the length of the paper and explained that the girls had to draw inside the border. This worked really well and The HWA (Humane Wall Association) can confirm “No walls were harmed during the making of this book”.

The story grew and grew…

The narrative was somewhat complex, with lots of free association going on, but some of my favourite cameos were these:

“Zeus sent down thunderbolts onto the dinosaurs escaping by bicycle.”

“The dragon and the unicorn came to the magic castle.”

The girls’ mural book is still up on the wall and it’s the first thing anyone sees when we open our front door. I rather like how a story welcomes people into our home.

Whilst we were all illustrating we listened to

Other activities which could be fun to get up to alongside reading High Times: A History of Aviation or Swan Lake include:

What books have you enjoyed recently that are gorgeous enough for you to want to display them as art?

Disclosure: I received free copies of High Times: A History of Aviation by Golden Cosmos, and Swan Lake by Ping Zhu from NoBrow Press. I was under no obligation to review the books and I received no money for this post.

Ever had a day where if things can go wrong, then they do go wrong? If so, The Birthday Cake Mystery by Thé Tjong-Khing is for you

It’s rabbit’s birthday and dog is making her a cake. The party is about to get underway but… life is complicated and all sorts of things get in the way before dog can deliver rabbit’s cake. It’s definitely one of those days, where if things can go wrong, they will go wrong. A flying football crashes into the cake mixture, a naughty raccoon steals a mum’s purse, a ladder is knocked and sends pig flying, toys are pinched, monkeys get up to mischief and the poor birthday bunny is left in tears. Will things ever get put to right? Will rabbit’s day finally come together and be a cause of celebration, rather than stress?

This wordless picture book is packed with cameo dramas. Its narrative is not straight-forward and linear; so much is going on and changing from page to page that you can sit and read it together many times, picking up new stories and observing unexpected adventures with each reading. There is much to ask about, look for and piece together, making this is a book for conversation rather than a bedtime story. The accidents, chaos, humour, naughtiness and silliness will speak to all young readers/listeners, and also to their grown ups who will ruefully recognise such days and hope that they won’t be having one like this any time soon.

As a Dutch bilingual family, we were delighted to see one of our favourite illustrators from the Netherlands published for an English-speaking audience. Thé Tjong-Khing was born in Indonesia (at the time, a Dutch colony) in 1933 but has lived most of his life in the Netherlands. He’s a multi-award winning illustrator (with more than 300 books to his name) and there is currently an exhibition of his work in the Children’s Book Museum in The Hague. Some of our favourite books illustrated by him are the Fox and Hare stories (Vos en Haas), written by Sylvia vanden Heede, which, unfortunately, have not been translated into English. The prequel to The Birthday Cake Mystery, Where is the Cake? has been published in the US, and it too is worth looking out for.

In The Birthday Cake Mystery the raccoon thief is tracked down because he inadvertently walks through some spilt paint and leaves a trail of footprints. Taking this as our cue, we enjoyed an afternoon of painting the patio with our feet. Baking trays were filled with paint…

My blogging goals this year are twofold (1) to play a more active part in the online, book-celebrating community I so value and (2) to work on a more creative diet when it comes to playing and exploring with my kids. To help me with my first goal, I’m taking part in Gathering Books’ Award Winning Book Challenge throughout the course of 2012 (it’s not too late for you to join!), and today I bring you my first offering – a review of Invisible by Katja Kamm – Winner of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for best picture book in 2003.

Invisible is a wordless book about an afternoon spent in a seaside town full of interesting characters. Not only will you smile at the Kamm’s observations about the rich panoply of life, from nuns to peeing dogs, you’ll enjoy the tricks the pictures play on your eye; on each spread something appears invisible because it blends in with the background colour. Only the negative shape left behind gives a clue as to what has become invisible, and so it becomes a game to see if you can work out what that is before you turn the page.

The illusions are clever and witty, and the bright, bold, saturated colours give this book a fresh feel. The game is fun even (or perhaps especially) once you know what’s going on – there’s something delightful about being tricked, about falling for the illusion (in this way it reminded me a little of Tullet’s much acclaimed Press Here).

Image copyright: Katja Kamm

This spunky book might not appeal to everyone. There’s nudity (well, invisible nudity…), buxom punks, as well as an anatomically correct male dog doing what dogs like best to do on the pavement, and I do feel uncomfortable about the scene where the nuns are frightened by something in the (black) night – it turns out to be a black man. But it’s nevertheless a fun, original read that I’d definitely recommend to anyone interested in illustration or design: I thought Invisible was a breath of fresh air and am delighted to have discovered it thanks to Gathering Books’ Award Winning Book Challenge.

Of course the girls (and I) wanted to play at being invisible after reading this super book. Making an entire child (or mum) invisible is a little tricky, but I did show the girls how they could make a stamp or a sticker (appear to be) invisible.

I

Following on from the wordless Welcome to the Zoo by Alison Jay we have recently been enjoying another story told without words, The Red Book by Barbara Lehman.

Through simple line drawings and the clever use of frames to create pace Barbara Lehman tells the story of a young girl who, on her way to school, comes across a book, bound in red, lying on the pavement. Upon opening it up she is both magically and literally drawn into the story of a young boy, on an island far away, who has a matching red book. These tomes act like two-way mirrors – the girl can look in to her book and see the boy on his beach, whilst the boy can look through into the girl’s urban world full of skyscrapers. Once these two characters are united we see their red books slipping away and a new set of connections being made by the next lucky people to happen upon the red books.

The clean, uncluttered, apparently simple illustrations are superb – by changing the size of her illustrations, varying the perspective, framing some scenes and not others Lehman has created a real “page-turner”, a story that that swept up M and ignited her imagination. Like stepping into paintings (as in Katie and the Sunflowers or Flyaway Katie), stepping into books and physically becoming part of the story is exciting draw for the reader (young or old), offering whole new worlds of possibilities.

Additionally, I loved the metaphor of books enabling us to connect with people far away, in different countries and from different cultures and how that connection, and personal adventure, can be passed on by passing on the book to someone else. A specific book may come into our lives for a short while but the experience can stay with us long after and be something that connects us to others.

The cyclical or perhaps more aptly the moebius-strip-like construction of the story reminded us of another lovely wordless book – Flotsam (which we reviewed some time back, here) by David Wiesner. The complex and detailed illustrations in the book by Wiesner made me reflect on how engaging the illustrations in The Red Book are, despite being almost at the other end of the scale when it comes to (apparent) simplicity and minimalism.

The landscape the girl with the red book inhabits is one of high skyscrapers and cheek-by-jowl buildings. Inspired by this, we set about making our own cityscape to play with and in.

First I covered several boxes in brown parcel paper. This may not be necessary if you are using brown cardboard boxes, but I’ve found that lots of boxes (eg for nappies) are hard to paint on with tempura paint because of the shiny surface. If you do use paper to cover your boxes then I recommend using masking tape rather than regular sellotape as again, paint

Last week we were on holiday! We had a fantastic time, saw many wonderful things, caught up with some great friends and all in all just got a buzz from life

We spent one entire day at the zoo being thrilled, amazed and occasionally disgusted by the various creatures we saw. M went crazy over the Komodo Dragon, whilst J fell in love with the fish and bugs.

Now we’re back at home we wanted to relived the exploring and excitement of that day at the zoo, and fortunately (thanks to a comment left here by Kelly from We Are Here) , I had the perfect book at hand – Welcome to the Zoo by Alison Jay.

Welcome to the Zoo tells a myriad of stories about events which take place one day at a zoo. There’s the boy who loses his balloon, the ostrich who escapes from his keeper, the monkey who steals a picnic, the poodle who causes havoc in his determination to chase after a woman’s hat blown off by the wind, and more…

These stories are told entirely without words but simply through observing all the tiny, funny and beautiful detail in Jay’s rich illustrations. The book opens with a map of the zoo, and ends with some suggestions of animals or details to look for, but otherwise the stories are waiting there for you to construct yourself.

This is what I both enjoy and (if I’m honest) sometimes feel less enthusiastic about with wordless picture books – if I’m tired I’m happier with a text to follow, but if I (or the girls) have more energy, wordless picture books can be exhilarating in a way that books with a (more or less) “set text” sometimes can’t. The inferences M makes to tie a (wordless) story together are often surprising, giving me wonderful insights into her view of the world.

In my experience wordless storytelling stimulates imaginative leaps in ways that books with text don’t always manage to achieve. Tanya, from books4yourkids.com has written a really wonderful guest post all about “How to Read a Book without Words (Out Loud)” over at The Well-Read Child – I encourage you to read what she has to say!

3 Comments on Going to the Zoo, zoo zoo!, last added: 5/30/2010

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ChoxBox said, on 5/30/2010 1:03:00 PM

The London Zoo?! We lived two minutes from it and went there at least once every week. I remember when the Komodo dragons were first brought – my older child was about 5 then and was very excited and we’d read up all we could about them.

Nice list of songs – will check out the ones I hadn’t heard (of) before – thanks! As usual, awesome activities

And have you seen the Anthony Browne book called Gorilla? I find all his books interestingly different from the usual and this one is so too.

Zoe @ Playing by the book said, on 5/30/2010 1:09:00 PM

Hi Choxbox! How lucky for you to be regular visitors at the zoo… We were there the whole day and still didn’t see everything we wanted to. Yes, I know the Anthony Brown book. I love what he’s using his laureateship to say (about the importance for everyone of picture books) but I’ve never fallen in love with his work. I certainly appreciate it, but he’s not an author/illustrator I find myself telling others they have to track down. What do you think of him?

ChoxBox said, on 5/30/2010 2:06:00 PM

Hmm. His work does border on the weird at times but I somehow like it perhaps because it is different from most children’s books. ‘My Dad’ is a hit with my kids. Am not sure if the little one will appreciate ‘Zoo’, the older will certainly find it interesting, whether she’ll fall in love with it I’m not sure!

And yes, many many afternoons were spent in the zoo as we had annual passes – often blogged about it in my old blog. You are right, one simply cannot cover it in one trip. Did you see the new clock outside the Blackburn Pavillion?!

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