BOOKS: A Boy And A Bear In A Boat

By Jo Middleton

IMAGINE READING Life of Pi and Winnie the Pooh in one evening, when you’re tired and really should be in bed, and then being asked in the morning to recount the stories. A Boy and a Bear in a Boat is what you might well end up with.

Captained by a bear of equally little brain, but with considerably more self-belief, Harriet is a small rowing boat in which the boy hitches a ride, allegedly just ‘over to the other side’. But things don’t go quite according to plan.

“Shouldn’t we be there by now? Or at least be able to see it?”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” said the bear. “Well, yes, normally we would have arrived by now but unfortunately there were… unforeseeable anomalies in the currents and we had to adjust our course. So now we’re running a little behind schedule. Sorry.”
“I see,” said the boy. He didn’t see at all. “But are we nearly there?”
“Not really, no.” Read the rest of this article

Posted 3 February 2012 in Books

BOOKS: Faces

Introducing our new Books Editor, Jo Middleton, the fine writing talent otherwise known as blogger Slummy Single Mummy…. Send Jo your book recommendations via Twitter to @mummyblogger.

By Jo Middleton

HAVE YOU EVER looked at a cloud and seen a face? Or watched the car coming towards you and imagined the headlights as eyes, staring intently at the road, like a strict headmistress at the front of a class of naughty school boys? No? Perhaps that one’s just me then.

As children, our minds are open to imagining personalities for all kinds of inanimate objects, but as adults, many of us lose this ability to think creatively and imaginatively about the everyday items in the world around us.

David Goodman is one person who certainly hasn’t lost the power to look beyond face value. In his new book, Faces, co-created with Zoe Miller and published by Tate Publishing, David creates a series of faces from anything and everything - from musical instruments to old tea strainers. Some look friendly, some beautiful, and others, like Sad Sam and his zip mouth, just a little bit scary.

What is clear though, is the power of a face to convey emotion and personality, to create ‘people’ from what is only a pile of buttons and cotton reels. No wonder that so much of how we communicate with others comes from our facial expressions, rather than words. Read the rest of this article

Posted 27 January 2012 in Books

BOOK ILLUSTRATION: Oscar Bolton Green

NOT JUST A BRILLIANT name, Oscar Bolton Green is a very talented illustrator. His new Bird Beak Book (pictured below) for Corraini - featuring the forms and functions of various bird beaks - is incredibly detailed and informative whilst managing to be cute as pie (buy it here). But then the project came about after the Camberwell College of Arts graduate visited the Natural History Museum where he found “the most amazing cabinet, which contained skeletal heads of birds, displaying all different types of bird beaks. I ended up spending the whole day there drawing these beaks and laughing to myself.”

Oscar’s other inspirations are just as curious. There’s a new poster featuring his favourite objects from the 20th century collection at the V&A museum - including a Flos Toio lamp and a Robin Day chair - and his latest book (self-published, available shortly from Oscar’s webshop) is called Football Stadiums, because it features, yes Read the rest of this article

Posted 14 April 2011 in Books

COLLAGE QUEEN: Lorena Siminovich

ARTIST Lorena Siminovich has made quite an impact upon the graphic design for children we see around us today.

We are now so used to seeing collage mixed with illlustration, it’s easy to forget Lorena’s influence on the style. Her petit collage brand has spawned a number of copycats, but the San Francisco-based Lorena is not a one-trick pony. Her wooden cutout mobiles, new decals (elephant pictured below), and in particular her growing range of book titles - including her Petit Collage touch and feel baby board books for Templar (in the UK) and her series of story books featuring the characters Alex & Lulu, [picture below left] mark her out as a special talent. Here she took a break from designing to talk to us:

LittleBig: What were the seeds of your very distinctive style?

Lorena: My background is graphic design and art direction, however I always had a bit of an obsession collecting papers without a clear goal in mind. I had been feeling for a while my illustration style was too dependent on the digital. One day, for my friend’s baby shower, I quickly did an little owl family original collage. I loved the connection with the real materials and I kept experimenting with supports, until wood came into the picture, and my company, and then my art style was born. Read the rest of this article

Posted 1 March 2011 in Books

AUTHOR Q&A: Tim Hopgood

THE INTERNET IS a marvellous place sometimes. You write a little story about colour, mention a favourite author’s name, and suddenly said author has emailed you out of the blue, and you ask him to do a Q&A and he says yes, and there you are.

Or rather here you are: Children’s author / illustrator Tim Hopgood’s thoughts on colour, childhood and books especially for us.

Tim moved to North Yorkshire 10 years ago - from Kingston, Surrey in search of “more space, less people and open roads and it’s all here!” His children - aged 21 and 19 are now in London and Manchester respectively, which means “the house is a lot quieter than it ever used to be!” Tim’s new children’s title UnPOPpable is out shortly.

LittleBig: What comes first for you, line or colour? Read the rest of this article

Posted 20 January 2011 in Art + Media, Books