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    Picture Books

    Last year I visited the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts. Mainly because Mrs Thistle wanted to go. As per usual in America it was a fab museum experience.

    Anyway it got me interested in picture books and Mrs Thistle and I have acquired several since coming home. I particularly like Oliver Jeffers and Chris Haughton as author illustrators. 'Oi! Frog' and the sequel 'Oi! Dog' by Gray and Field are very good too.

    'Where's Walrus' is a picture book with no words in at all. But still charming.

    Anyway, any other picture book fans on here?

    #2
    Oh, Jeffers did The Day the Crayons Quit. Really popular book.

    Of other current authors/illustrators, Jon Klassen is a great one. He has a few books about animals and hats. The writing is spare and minimal, and there's a lot of irony in the illustrations paired with the writing.

    I'm also a big fan of Kevin Henkes. Kitten's First Full Moon and Waiting are my two favorites of his.

    Another favorite of our family is Nikki McClure. She makes art by cutting black paper with an X-acto knife, it looks very similar to woodblock prints. All of her themes are very nature-focused and she's done some political art. All In a Day is a great picture book that she illustrated.

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      #3
      Jeffers is great. Er...that's it. Sorry.

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        #4
        Yes, every recent trip to the library has me leaving with at least three or four picture books. I was, perhaps, too hasty to move onto reading chapter books to my son and have been going back to picture books lately with great success. Oliver Jeffers is an interesting one. He studied fine art and sometimes has exhibitions on at galleries. I think he sort of fell into children's picture books as another way of expressing himself artistically. But he found he had a real story-telling gift too. My favourite is the one about loss - The Heart and the Bottle. I recently read his latest one. It's called a Child of Books and is a collaboration with another artist. They merge their illustrations together. Jeffers' style is instantly recognisable and the other guy - Sam Winston - weaves a typographical landscape into each page, using texts from children's classics like treasure island, peter pan etc. It's for an older audience than his usual ones and it doesn't work particularly well in a narrative sense but the pictures are well worth a look at.
        Last edited by Jon; 11-08-2017, 01:08.

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          #5
          That museum sounds great, Patrick. Eric Carle is a master (jon klassen, who inca mentioned, is clearly influenced by him) and it's good to see he's got his own museum. I have actually been to Amherst but it was 25 years ago and i doubt it was there then.
          Last edited by Jon; 09-08-2017, 22:18.

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            #6
            No. It's relatively recent. Eric Carle lives nearby and does some events there, but we unfortunately didn't get to meet him.

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              #7
              Going to try to post some images to go along with what we've discussed so far.

              Here's the most recent Oliver Jeffers. Like I said, the typographical bits were provided by Sam Winston.

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                #8
                Ooh, it worked. Here's another one then.

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                  #9


                  Here is a Jon Klassen. Quite Carlesque, to my mind.

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                    #10
                    Nikki McClure I'd not heard of but she seems to have had an interesting career. In the late 80s/early 90s she was involved in the Riot Grrl movement and was friends with Kurt Cobain, dancing onstage at one of Nirvana's gigs. Here is one of her woodcuts from All in a Day. I shall look out for next time I'm at the library.

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                      #11


                      I mentioned Luke Pearson over on the graphic novels thread some time ago so he really doesn't belong on this thread but I just wanted to eulogise him and his Hilda books. All-ages but especially suitable for children 7 - 11ish, I reckon. Coming to Netflix next year. This image looks like a poster rather than a page taken from one of his books (I certainly can't place it) but it gives you an idea of his style and the world he has created.
                      Last edited by Jon; 11-08-2017, 01:19.

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                        #12
                        Just enjoyed reading Grumpy Frog by Ed Vere. Laughed at the very last panel but the whole book was good.

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                          #13
                          http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/...-shortlist.php

                          The shortlist for the Kate Greenaway medal came out a few weeks ago. This is the foremost prize for children's illustrators, I think it's voted for by libararians. I've only read one of them - Town is by the Sea. The artist is Sydney Smith. I'd previously read his Sidewalk Flowers but this new one is even better. He's from Nova Scotia and the titular town by the sea is situated on the nearby Cape Breton island. Beautifully illustrated landscapes and (especially) seascapes. Here is the front cover.



                          Of the other nominees, I only know of Levi Pinfold's work. His work is incredibly detailed and stylised and he's won the Greenaway medal before. Personally, I prefer Smith's work to Pinfold's but they would both be worthy winners.

                          Here is some Levi Pinfold art from The Greenling, the first book I read by him. Funnily enough, I thought I'd mentioned him in this thread before but it appears not.




                          I was talking upthread about how much I love reading picture books with my son. Despite him being 8 now, I still read picture books to him nearly every night. We read chapter books too but picture books are much more of a shared experience and I am so glad that the quality of picture books for slightly older children is so high nowadays. There are lots of them at our local library although it has to be said, we are reading them quicker than they can get them in. He has aspergers syndrome and, although he normally likes the chapter books I read to him, he usually fidgets more and wanders around the bedroom when being read to, often acting out scenes. Case in point - tonight we were reading The Explorer by Katherine Rundell and he was building a den, just as they were doing in the book. This is all well and good but a picture book is really the only time he will sit still, next to me as he is being read to and it's often a magical experience for me.

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                            #14
                            I'm sure this will mark me out as some kind of ingenue, but I'm a huge fan of Russel Hoban and Quentin Blake's How Tom Beat Captain Najork And His Hired Sportsmen

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                              #15
                              I've read quite a lot of blake's stuff but I'm not sure if I've read that one. Got it out of the library this morning.

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