Finding books for Bryn & Freya is something I really enjoy doing, perhaps even more than for myself, generally because their books are more fun, vibrant, entertaining & so often beautiful.
Once in the library I head straight to the picture book boxes flicking through them all & picking out any that take my fancy. Once I have a pile I then look through them in a bit more detail & try and reduce the number to something more sensible.
Currently with Freya my main criteria for selection are board books with plenty of texture & colour for her chubby hands to grasp. I am also enjoying rediscovering some of the books we read to Bryn at her age, full of rhyme or animal noises.
When choosing books for Bryn there are some established favourite authors such as Anthony Browne, David McKee, Shirley Hughes, Lauren Child etc which I look out for. I look for modern & classic retellings of fairy tales, funny tales, books with interesting illustration especially collage, stories about wild animals, pirates, dinosaurs, food and whatever else Bryn is interested in at the time. I have recently begun following children’s publishers & book reviewers on twitter which provide a great source of recomendations. I also like keep a beady eye for any books that look brand new as there are so much great stuff being currently published.
Bryn likes to get stuck into the book boxes & choose his own too, I have however yet to work out if he has any method to his selection or just pulls out a random bunch of books.
From a recent haul the books that I enjoyed the most were,
Knight Night by Owen Davy
I love the retro style illustrations in this book with its beautiful colour palette, understated but bold. The book follows a little boys journey to bed starting in hallway which turns into a forest. It depicts a normal bedtime routine, but in a truly knightly fashion showing a wealth of imagination with constant reminders of the mundane. I found it a charming book which made me smile at each turn of the page, one of my favourite spreads is the final pages of the little boy with a colander on his head grasping his toy horse.
Limelight Larry by Leigh Hodgkinson
A fun book with the flamboyant & proud peacock, Larry, stealing the show. While Larry is keen to be the star of the book other characters keep popping in when he finally gets the pages to himself he begins to understand the real importance of his friends. This quirky tale is beautifully complimented by the textural collage illustrations and I loved how each characters had it’s own font further adding to their characterisation.