the sign on rosie's door

Maurice Sendak's books—they are the stuff of childhood.  There are few who capture the heart of childhood as intuitively as he did.  In The Sign on Rosie's Door, he delves into the pretend world of children with its energy, noisiness, stomping around, imagining, game-inventing and traversing worlds.  Their animated gestures, candid expressions and wide-eyed sensibilities are expressed so deftly in his illustrations.  Let them play, he is saying.  Let them play.

This is what childhood used to be like, before this era of myriad lessons, activities, electronic devices, workbooks and scheduled play dates.

Hope everyone is seeing more free time in their days with the arrival of summer, including unstructured time for play!

a trip to the bottom of the world

Mouse is a reluctant traveler taking a trip to the bottom of the world.  A simple narrative for early readers and bold, modern and stylized illustrations by Frank Viva.  Edited by one of my favorites in the publishing world, Françoise Mouly.

“‘A Trip to the Bottom of the World’ is based on Frank’s experiences aboard a Russian research vessel during a trip to the Antarctic Peninsula.  On this once-in-a-lifetime adventure, while crossing the Drake Passage (the roughest waters in the world), he became sick—over and over and over again.  But it was worth it.  Once in Antarctica, he saw penguins and whales—and swam in the thermal waters of a submerged volcano.”

finding wild

Such an apt book for the first day of summer.  Where to find wild?

“Wild keeps many secrets, waiting to be discovered—

like its candy: honey from bees and sap from trees,

swift-meting snowflake and juice-bursting blackberries.”

I would love to know where everyone goes to find wild in their neck of the woods.  If you’re ever in San Francisco and you find your way to Mount Sutro, take this book with you. ;)

Finding Wild was written by Megan Wagner Lloyd and illustrated by Abigail Halpin.

let me finish!

Let Me Finish! by Minh Lê and Isabel Roxas.  Seriously clever interaction between word, picture, texture and design.  If you don’t normally like “doing all the voices” when reading a book aloud, this one might just compel you to.

fish

A boy casts his line for a different type of fish and gets a lot more than he bargained for.  FISH is one of the most novel wordless picture books to come out in awhile.  By New Yorker illustrator Liam Francis Walsh.