Book Review: The Gruffalo

I love children's books and not just because I have the peanut to read to everyday but also because I just love, love, love the art, the story and the inspiration I can get from them.

I'll admit happily to being one of those people who pick a book based on the cover, especially in the case of a good children's book, where the illustrations are just as important as the story itself.

When we started reading to the Peanut we always chose and continue to choose books that have a good story, some kind of narrative, characters that are enjoyable to reading about, and of course there must be brilliant illustrations. This has meant that for the most part, the board books featuring a single word and illustration have been fairly rare in our house, when they do come in they are the Peanuts picks and we read them as many times as she wants to along with the other great story books that can be read over and over without turning our brains into mush.

This is what this feature is about*, those books we bring home (from the book store, from the library and from wherever we come across them) and fall in love with. A while ago a good friend gave us a copy of one of these.

click on the book cover to buy this book

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler quickly became a rhyming success at quiet time and nap time with the Peanut. It has fun illustrations, a snappy rhythm; written in Iambic Pentameter making it fun to read aloud. The Peanut loves reading with repetition and we found that she jumped in and start telling us the story herself after one read.

The book tells the story of a little mouse who takes a stroll through the deep dark wood where he encounters a number of scary creatures who would like to take him home and make him their dinner, all pretty scary if you are a mouse but none so scary as the Gruffalo. Reading along to see what a Gruffalo is and how our mouse evades becoming a snack is a fun and entertaining book with a great twist that allows for the underdog of the story to put one over on the big guys! It's not easy to find a book that doesn't get boring to read after the first 20 re-reads and The Gruffalo fits happily in the read it over and over category with ease.

Julia Donaldson has written a number of other fabulous books including another current favourite Tyrannosaurus Drip and a past library re-renewal Night Monkey Day Monkey as well as a number of other equally lovable books, you can find out more at her website www.juliadonaldson.co.uk and more about the Gruffalo on his website www.gruffalo.com where you can find activities, games and become one of the Gruffalo Gang.

Now go read a book!

*None of the books I will review here are solicited by authors or publishing companies, they are just books that we can't get enough of. If this is not the case, and I have been given a book to review by anyone I will make it very clear at the beginning of a review that this is the case.

A little direction

I've been on hiatus from my weekly Q&A feature and I've been using the time to do a little shop tweaking and banner making for TMCPhoto and rethinking what I want this blog to be about and where I want to take it, not to mention working on ways to keep things fresh. I've been wondering if I've had enough focus here and whether I've veered off of the original track and onto another one running a little parallel but with a few more wide curves.

What got me thinking was the number of Mommy Bloggers I have been following. These women are smart funny and in some cases brutally honest about their lives. I've been known to laugh out loud at certain posts and to blow my nose and wipe dripping eyes after others. So I was wondering if I've started to slot myself into the Mommy-Blogger role.

Not that that's a bad thing, I am a Mommy, the Peanut is a pretty big part of my life and our days together make up quite a lot of blog fodder for me. When I started out, the purpose of writing was to let people get to know me, my art and hopefully lead them to my Etsy shops. So I've been thinking about how to balance out the art and the mommy stuff.

I'm hoping I've got it all worked out. In the meantime I'm gearing up for the return of the 5 question feature. I've got a list of shops and artists I want to feature and I'm truly excited about getting back into the swing of things.

Your questions please!

My original idea for my last post was to do what I'm doing in this post but when I sat down to write this post I couldn't concentrate on what I had planned on writing and instead you got my thoughts on a truly terrible situation that to be honest is still on my mind but I'm pushing past it and getting back down to business.

I'm gearing up for the return of the 5 question feature. I've got a list of shops and artists I want to feature and I'm truly excited about getting back into the swing of things.

The questions I use for this feature are a compilation of random questions that I find interesting to find out from artists I admire. To keep things fresh, fun and interesting I'd love to hear the questions that you'd ask the artists and artisans you admire.

Leave me a comment with your questions and I'll add them to my roster, with props to you of course!

7 years ago

I had the news on and in passing I heard the name of a former classmate from the Red Deer College Fine Arts program. Of course I stopped what I was doing to see if it was the same girl I knew and what she was doing on the news. It was the girl I knew, Nicole Hoar had gone missing near Prince George while hitch hiking to see her sister.

I didn't know Nicole very well, we shared classes and spoke here and there, I admired her work and I admired her quiet maturity. While she was not a part of my immediate circle of friends, (Nicole took ceramics and painting while I focused on sculpture and printmaking) she never seemed to keep herself apart from those who were not a part of hers. One night I drove her home after a late night working in the studios.

After two years at RDC Nicole transferred to another fine arts program and that was the extent of our relationship. This is what happens in life, people pass in and out some make a big impression stay in your life for years others make a brief appearance before moving on to other experiences. Sometimes you keep in touch, sometimes you only think of them in passing.

At the time, I couldn't imagine what her family was going through. I only knew that I wanted to know what had happened to her and in the best case scenario I wanted Nicole to be OK and home soon.

Time went on and Nicole's name joined the roster of women; victims who had disappeared along what is known as the Highway of Tears here in BC. Now that I'm a mother I can fully imagine the nightmare that Nicole's family has been living. It's the worst possible thing that could happen to a family, to your child.

Nicole's name has popped up in the news again recently. This time it seems that there is a break in the case and a search has been made on an acreage close to the last place that Nicole was last seen. The results of this search are not being made public; but, I'm hoping that if nothing else there will be some closure for the Hoar family. At the very most I hope that whatever they've found will also lead to closure for the families of the other women.

For me, Nicole will always be that talented girl I went to school with, the girl with the Brown hair and blue eyes, the girl who created the amazing ceramic torso that looked like it was made of bricks, the girl who I drove home late one night when she asked, because I happened to live close by. I know that she was a million more things to those people who knew and loved her better than I did and my heart and thoughts go out to those people.

Reply and kind of a rant or is it a motivational speech?

For those of you who read the comments on this blog, my latest post had a comment from Le ShallowGal, one of my favourite Blog Authors (as a huge Terry Pratchett fan I enjoy most writings that include humorous footnotes SG's posts are no exception. Go check out her blog now. It's OK I'll still be here when you get back).

In her comment, SG mentioned both her love of art supply stores and her lack of artistic ability. I replied to her Comment via email but I felt that my reply would also make some pretty good blog fodder too so here's an expanded reply that kind of went a little ranty and hopefully ended a little more motivational as opposed to a demanding lecture...

I can't even begin to tell you how many people say that they don't have a single creative bone, artistic bone, crafty bone.... in their body whenever they find out that I'm one of those "arty" people. The fact is that everyone is creative, case in point? Remember when you were a kid? a new box of crayons was a goldmine.

As we grow older, we're trained to consider art to be of lesser importance than other aspects of education. When budgets are cut, the first things that are threatened with the budget scissors are the art classes. It's kind of sad and it kind of makes me angry and it kind of puts me in the mind of home-schooling the Peanut so that we can keep the visual art as a big part of her education instead of slowly eliminating it as she grows older.

There is a misconception that creative talent is something that you have to be born with and that there are people out there who can just pick up a pencil and create master works from day one; and there are lucky souls out there who pick up a pencil at age two and can draw photo- representative images by age 13, their name is Picasso (this I think explains why we have cubism. The man had mastered rendering and got bored...) What we don't think about is that these people also work at what they do. Some people are more natural at it than others but the creativity still has to be nurtured. Natural talent is something that we are all born with.

What I'm getting at is that the Artistic bone can be cultivated. When I started art school I couldn't draw at all; some introductory art classes helped me learn, advanced classes helped me to grow and continuing to draw keeps my skill sharpened.

I'd suggest that the next time you find yourself haunting the art supply store to pick up a nice sketchbook and a pencil, even if you use it to just doodle swirly lines and tic tac toe's while you're talking on the phone, you can feel all artistic and creative without too much risk. After a while you might feel confident enough to graduate up to paints... or not; just don't let the fact that you can only draw a stick man stop you from drawing a stick man.

branching out or at least that's the plan

Saturday we went on a family adventure to the Glass Art Supply store in Vancouver.

We'd been talking about going there for months now. I've been playing with a few ideas in the back of my mind and thought there was no time like waiting a good four months to go out and get the supplies for a new project.

In my defense, the Peanut keeps us pretty busy most of the time, and up until a little while ago she needed needed needed a nap in the middle of the day. Don't get me wrong, she still needs the nap most days but it's a little easier to miss it now that she's a little older.

I used some birthday money to get myself a soldering iron, flux and solder for some new projects and I couldn't be more excited. I'm in a bit of a productive stage right now and I'm hoping that I keep up the momentum. So what am I working on? Well, something new for PeanutButterPie, but I think I'd like to keep that under my hat until I'm ready to unveil them.

I have to say that we had a fabulous experience with the staff in the store. I took a Summer Series course in Stained Glass over 10 years ago so I had some idea of what I needed and what the process for my projects would be, but I wanted some advice. The sales lady walked us through everything, gave us options, suggestions and extra information. All of it was useful and pleasant.

When I worked at the Art Supply company their focus was on customer service and I often find other stores don't share the same attitude. Happily this was not the case. The place also offers classes in stained glass as well as for glass slumping and fusing. seeing the facilities got a few more bees in my bonnet...

Are you thinking of branching out with your creative processes? have some new things on the go? let me know, I'd love to hear about them.

sky gazing

today was one of those days that rest in the memory and drift up with fond recollection. Idyllic. looking up into the summer blue sky and searching pictures in the feather light clouds. This is what summer is made of. Well this and popsicles for lunch. (whole fruit, tofu popsicles but they were frozen and yummy and we ate them for lunch)