TOP FIVE: Colouring Books
THE KEY TO enjoying colouring in with your child is not just great pens (juicy, both fat and thin, and fab colours), but to love the colouring book so much you’d like to hide it under your pillow (or at least buy another copy) so you can indulge in a little late night colour therapy.
Our current favourites are here: Read the rest of this article
Posted 12 July 2010 in Books
CULT BOOK: Gestalten’s Play all day
WE FINALLY GOT OUR HANDS on Gestalten’s ‘Play All Day: Design For Children’ tome dedicated to unusual, creative and off-beat children’s design. And what a meaty, inspiring tome it is too. We asked author and Gestalten’s creative director, Sven Ehmann - Berlin-based father to a four-year-old daughter - for his favourite children’s design-led projects from the book.
1. Jan von Holleben and his “dreams of flying” images. so simple, so rich in imagination.
I love the fact that Jan von Holleben’s “dreams of flying” photographs are so simple and easy-going. He has this ability to create a whole world with very simple means. Looking at the images you can still feel how much fun it was for him and the kids to create such scenes and to live out their dreams. The sad thing is that his idea was copied so very often in very uninspired ways. I remember seeing ads by a denim brand at a fashion trade show in Spain, that were just too close to the original. Getting inspired by good work and taking it further is one thing - and we hope to inspire parents, children, designers and others to play with this idea further - but copying with no own additional idea is just bad.
Posted 14 June 2010 in Books
Editions Paumes: Children’s Rooms
WE’D BEEN RECOMMENDED the Editions Paumes series of lifestyle books by so many people, in the end it made sense that we stocked a selection of them in our shop.
If you don’t know, the boutique Japanese publishing company Paumes was founded by photographer and art director Hisashi Tokuyoshi and his wife Fumie Shimoji in 1997, two years after returning to Japan from Paris where they had worked with a number of French artists. On returning to Tokyo, they set up Paumes, initially as a way of featuring the work and lives of the artists they still represent to this day in their gallery and boutique known as Galerie Doux Dimanche.
Posted 26 April 2010 in Books
BOOKISH TYPE: Ed Vere
ED VERE, the 35-year-old artist from London, (pictured left) could be one of the UK’s saviours of children’s picture books. Here the award-winning author of bold, modern and slightly subversive titles, Banana!, The Getaway, and latterly, Mr Big, talks morality, crime and idyllic childhoods spent in the Peak District…
LittleBig: How do you think you have got away with what some might consider risqué material for young children? For example, your Fingers McGraw mouse character in The Getaway who commits serial robbery (of cheese) and tries to enlist the help of the reader?
Ed Vere: I did wonder if it might be a problem - the fact Fingers doesn’t show any remorse for his crimes. But if you consider that as part of a mouse’s character they’re a bit cheeky and have the tendency to occasionally purloin the odd morsel of cheese, you could just about get away with it. Puffin were extremely encouraging. They wanted to do something less conventional, for which I’m very grateful. I think there can be a lot of pressure for English publishers to play it safe - particularly as they perceive the American market to be more conventional.
It seems sometimes that there’s also a perception that the book buying public in the UK aren’t particularly intelligent/sophisticated in their tastes, but I think that people who venture into bookshops to buy books for their children can be assumed to be intelligent people who want good, intelligent and challenging stuff for their children.
LB: Your books have a fabulous pre-war gangster feel to them (in a good way!). You’ve described it as Raymond Chandler for children. What other influences are in there?
Posted 1 October 2008 in Books
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