| Small Stories | Books that small children might enjoy |
In preparation for another visit to Japan I’ve been reading the children some Japanese folk tales – as well as watching large swathes of the Studio Ghibli films, paying particular attention to the shape-changing Tokyo-dwelling racoons in the quirky Pom Poko. I probably would have introduced the awesomely weird Great Yokai War had they been […]
I’ve never read the Ramayana nor really delved deep into Indian mythos. Brought up on the Greco-Roman and Chinese pantheons, the only other mythos I really explored intently as a child were Egyptian (no child can really resist pyramids?) and Norse (Thor! Loki!). However tonight I read my youngest the first half of Sanjay Patel’s […]
When should children start on graphic novels & comics? Well there’s a question. I can’t remember when I started reading comics. It was some time in the early years of primary school. And I can only really remember that because I got in trouble for running a comic lending business which lasted all of a […]
I’m not quite sure when it is ‘appropriate’ to introduce ghost stories to children but I reckon if there are tooth fairies who exchange money for enamel and calcium, and trolls that might leave treats under the bed, then there must also be less savoury magical creatures too. In the late 60s and early 70s […]
I’m not quite sure why I ended up with this as a child. But here it is, a 1974 propaganda book from the People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Language Press. Essentially a pictorial guide with English text to being a ‘good child’ it offers helpful guidance on how to behave on International Working Women’s Day, […]
Gerald McDermott’s The Magic Tree is a not a tale with a happy ending – indeed the final pages are deliciously ambiguous. First told as an animated short film in 1970 and then published in book form in 1973, The Magic Tree is apparently adapted from a traditional Congolese folktale. It tells the story of […]
A Halloween story illustrated by J.Otto Seibold was almost certain to be a winner. Seibold is probably best known for the slightly demented digital illustrations and his Mr Lunch series. You might also know his work from Olive. I picked this one up at the Giant Robot store in San Francisco after a surprisingly short […]
This book used to be my mum’s. She got it at “Christmas 1946 from Auntie Nellie”. Published during World War 2, I’m pleased to report that inside it has a little insignia stating – “This book is produced in complete conformity with the authorized economy standards”. It has stood up pretty well considering that, just […]
Being a hoarder I managed to keep several boxes of children’s books from my own childhood. They’ve moved house with me and I’ve been paring them down slowly. One of the first to be retrieved from the boxes upon the arrival of child #1 was Yellow Yellow. Dating from 1971 (although the edition I have […]
Several months ago one of my friends was asking on Twitter about good ‘classic’ children’s books and I recommended this one as possibly the best collection of Grimm’s fairytales. I had just bought a copy and we’d started going through it as bedtime reading. Apart from being entirely un-Disney-fied, what is especially nice about the […]