With its unique sounds and amazing abilities, the human body is not only interesting for children. Jane Wilsher’s new book feeds that interest in a setting that is almost as colorful and curious as the human body itself. What on Earth comes with a magic lens, a red magnifying glass that you remove from the heart of the front frame, to see the work inside. eyes and organs, sore knees and baby bumps.
Designed by Andrés Lozano, each ad focuses on a different aspect of the body and its care (e.g. teeth, night what happens during surgery). Full of vivid facts and good anatomy, it’s a title for children to return to as they grow: little hands will love holding the glass and watching the bones emerge; those in upper elementary school can read from cover to cover, learning new words as they go.
The emotions that are evoked in the lower body of the self are a major priority for art at this time. One recent publication, My Bindi (Scholastic), takes a fun approach to addressing diversity concerns. The time has come for Divya to start wearing a bindi but at first she was afraid to stand out, and her classmates saw her as “weird”. Archana Sreenivasan’s photo shoot expertly adorns bindi symbols with Hindu motifs, symbolizing inclusiveness. of tradition, in the pages of Gita Varadarajan’s first photo book.
Speaking of the beginning, this year I judged the Macmillan award for illustration, an award that promoted the work of new graphic talent, such as Emily Gravett, for 37 years. It’s an exciting time for the genre – in January, Nielsen BookScan statistics showed that picture books are selling fiction aimed at older readers for the first time since accurate data began. And if the new talent of the new art school to enter the 2022 Macmillan award is anything to go by (especially Heike Scharrer, who was crowned this month the winner for Queue, his beautiful vision , the eyes of the child in a daily situation), will boom for years to come.
Board letters rarely feature in this column but they’ve really come on in recent years and Rob Jones is one writer who clearly enjoys the form. Following his concertin-style sausage dog, Where’s Brian’s Bottom?, his new “veeeerrrry long fold-out” book for babies and toddlers, Who’s Tickling Tilly? (Farshore, 4 August), features a tall dinosaur that can’t help but try to find the tail of its distant tail. On the pages he asks everyone from Valerie the T rex to Terry (again roasting marshmallows on a volcano) until finally – with the book fully extended to two meters long – the beautiful child is revealed. It’s not just a story, it’s a bit of engineering. It really scared me.
Another master of the absurd is back for the third outing in the Billy and the Beast series. Nadia Shireen Billy and the Pirates (Jonathan Cape) finds our big fat heroine and her sidekick, Fatcat, trying to return a secret key in a bottle to Kevin the Kraken. Expect especially, share-travelers and lots of food.
Renewed in the role of children’s laureate, Joseph Coelho (the first black person in the role since the beginning in 1999) publishes Our Tower (France Lincoln, 2 August), the story of three friends are living in a “weak, gray” height, Richard Johnson said. One day, the children are drawn to the forest by a magical tree that gives them a stone, allowing them to see their home in a new light. Coelho, who described his experience growing up in London, said: “I wanted to bring the magic of Narnia to the tower block” – which seems to be the perfect description of the mission to the beginning of a reign that coincides with rising bills and struggles. family, when books cannot fill the stomach but can provide hope and escape.
