A poem by Edward Lear illustrated by Charles and Nicholas Santore
What is a Pip? And more, what is a Scroobious Pip? My guess, is when you love children and words so much that you invent new ones of the latter to amuse the firsts ones 🙂
Edward Lear was a boy in his heart even when he was an adult. He loved to play with words and colors to change them and combine them as no other before him. Lots will tell you that he has the father of literary nonsense and that he loved the absurd in any form. I would say that he was beyond all that. That he imagined a world for him and him alone early in his childhood, when he first started having epilepsy seisures. And that he continued to work at it and to make it more and more beautiful and rich, for him to be able to have a space where he would feel at home. And later in life he chose to share his world with others like him, with a heart and imagination wide open and unaltered.
Charles Santore has an imaginative mind and great talent in depicting reality and fantasy alike in a unique way. He found joy in illustrating some of the great classics in children’s literature. The work at Scroobious Pip wasn’t finish at the time of his passing, so his son Nicholas, an visual artist himself, felt that he was the one meant to complete his father work. So it came one of the most anticipated and beautiful albums of 2025, that already has great reviews. Enjoy!
Astazi s-au decernat premiile Oscar 2025 si pentru a celebra Cinema-ul, va invit sa aruncam o privire asupra vietii unui mare cineast francez, Francois Truffaut. Cartea pe care o privim astazi a primit premiul Andersen 2021 pentru cel mai bun album ilustrat si este o biografie scrisa de Luca Tortolini si ilustrata de Victoria Semykina. Francois Truffaut a stiut inca de la 8 ani ca pasiunea sa cea mai mare va fi cinema-ul. Cinema-ul si lectura. “Trei filme pe zi, trei carti pe saptamana”, aceasta a fost deviza sa. Pentru ca pasiunea pentru arta are nevoie de mult studiu individual si un mare bagaj de cunostinte acumulate.
Sper sa va placa propunerea mea de astazi si sa ne aduca aminte ca orice copil cu un vis indeajuns de mare va gasi mereu o cale sa il vada transpus in realitate.
On Monday, in Phoenix Arizona were announced the winners of the most important awards in children literature from America.
The main atraction every year is the Caldecott medal. The medal is it named after the 19th century american illustrator Randolf Caldecott and it is offered to the “most distinguished American picture book for children”.
Another great recognition is the Newbery Medal, offered by ALSC to the author of „the most distinguished contributions to American literature for children”.
Named after Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King, the Coretta Scott King award recognizes outstanding books for young adults and children created by African American artists that reflect the African American experience. Awards are given both to authors and to illustrators for universal human values.
Another distinguished prize is Pura Belpre Award, a recognition presented to a Latino or Latina author and illustrator whose work best portrays the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for children or youth.
The Geisel Award recognizes the „author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year”.
The Sibert Informational Book Medal is awarded annually to the writer and illustrator of the most distinguished informational book published in English during the preceding year.
The Batchelder Award recognizes the publisher of the year’s „most outstanding” children’s book translated and published in the U.S.
This year recepients were of little surprise for many. Some of the most beloved books that were published in 2024 didn’t catch the jurrors attention so much to receive a medal.
Some of the laureates were new names in the industry and for some, odd choices.
Everything seems very specific and well targeted to a certain type of public. As if beauty in children art and a beautiful book in general is it not enough anymore for all of the children. But maybe this is normal in a nation that has so many cultures and people living together, each with a different history and reality. Each with their hopes and dreams of a future that feels totally uncertain now.
I tried to put myself in the shoes of a kid or a teacher and see what kind of books, messages and art from 2024 would be most suitable to be read.
I also took some time to see as many titles that appeared in 2024 as I could and picked my favourites.
Some of those choises are in the pictures below. And also you can see who the actual winners were.
As a final note, I salute any kind of human emotion that children art still been published offers us. In a few years we might have the surprise that the AI will try and do that also instead of us.
That for an artist that works a full year to create something so magic and unique as a quality picture book, the AI would do a similar work in a few seconds. It is something to put things in perspective, of course. As well as the limitations that some face in doing what they feel doing in kids art and culture.
We are more and more told what to do, what to wear or eat, what to read or listen to. It would be a great loss for the little readers of the world not being able to read and enjoy ehat they chose, the great works from all those talented artists out there.
But now let’s just enjoy all those beautiful books that 2024 brought us!
Today I saw the Oscar nominations and my surprise was so big to find out that a magical story, that also receive the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2022, is a nomination for the Animated Short Film Category. I am talking about Magic Candies, the animated movie made after the picture book imagined by Heena Baek. I hope the jury will love the movie at least as much as we enjoyed the book. Take a look , isn’t is magical?
Today, on International Thank you Day what better book to celebrated it that the gorgeous art of Icinori. A remeberance of being grateful and to realy apreciate what we have.
Maria Popova is an artist that has chosen to share her light and her talent on all of us willing to wonder to the beauty of the world.
Her project The Marginalian is a monography of what is real important and has meaning in literature. Her work on all the presentations and reviews is huge and of a great quality and realism.
Her latest work is a printed book. “The Universe in Verse” started in 2017 as a gathering of people interested in poetry, stories, a festival of wonder as the author herself name it.
Now we have this gorgeous book to comfort our need to know and to feel the beauty and the reality, what is inside of us and what lays there, all the way to the horizon and beyond.
A beautiful album about people still living in remote and faraway places, after their own traditions and customs, in perfect harmony with their native land and all it surround them.
A masterpiece of history and beauty and beyond magic places to be discover. A work of more than 10 years of study and travelling for the author, Nat Carduzo.
An encyclopedia of nature and live, of past and present meeting. Of beauty. Enjoy it!
The most important book of all, the one’s keeping all the words in the world, would like to tell a story. How to do that? Who will help her do that? A hungry Crocodile, a Donut afraid to be eaten up, a Ghost, the Moon hershelf, the Queen and her Ruler, a Splash of ink and a Tornado!
If you want to emerge yourself in a great story and a superb illustration, then the art of Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston is the book right for it!
Part of Candlewick Biographies and Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children
Reading age: 8-12 years
In a beautifully crafted biography, Hester Bass and Caldecott Honor winner E. B. Lewis pay homage to the most famous American artist you’ve never heard of 🙂 Reclusive nature-lover Walter Anderson spent weeks at a time on an uninhabited island, sketching and painting the natural surroundings and animals to create some of his most brilliant watercolors, which he kept hidden during his lifetime. Only after his death they were revealed to the world, for all of us to be able to admire his true talentand love for painting and nature.
