Friday, April 03, 2009

Petr Horacek

Author number one... Petr Horacek.  I love this author/illustrator.  It was the illustrations that caught my eye in the beginning.  They are bright and wonderful.  Open each book and it gets better and better...  The stories are simple and easy to follow with repeating and directional text such as over, under and through.
Choo Choo was the first book that I bought.  It just caught my eye.  I had no idea who Petr Horacek was.  
My god-daughter Milla and I chose this book during an outing to Borders.  We both loved how the story followed the little mouse through the pages.  It wasn't until I got home that I realised I now had two Petr Horacek books.  It was from this moment on that I was on the hunt!
I moved over to the Book Depository to look for more of Petr's books.  This online store is fabulous.  Books are usually affordable and cheaper than Amazon as there is no postage.
I bought my three most recent Petr Horacek books...
Hello Little Bird... Sweet
What is Black and White.  I love this one.  The texts repeats between "A goose is white", "A crow is black".  Each page is slightly shorter than the page before.  As the pages turn, the left of the book has long black and white stripes.  More and more appear until the final page which says... "A Zebra is black and white".  The body of the zebra is made up of the page stripes.  Lovely!!!
Beep Beep.  This is my favourite book so far.  The text uses words like over, around and through as the family travel in their car to Grandma's house.  Super lovely!

My baby library...

My sister and brother in-law are about to have their first child (not sure if it is a boy or girl - doesn't matter at all except for the shopping issue for me).  It is an exciting time.  Each time my phone rings or I get an SMS, my heart seems to skip a beat...
They live in London right now and are planning to return by Christmas.   Postage is one expensive issue!  Keeping all of this in mind, I am not planning on sending much over to them unless I think they will use it between now and then.  I have been thinking hard about what kind of presents I should buy.
This is where the baby library comes in.  Not a teeny tiny, small library but, a library for the baby!  From the time my sister was about 8 weeks pregnant, I have been buying books a few times a month.  I have been buying mostly board books but also several hardback picture story books.  I have collected picture story books for as long as I can remember and it works like a kind of relaxation therapy for me.  If I feel stressed or run down, I just head over to a favourite book shop and buy a book... Bliss!
I am planning to give these books to my sister when she gets back to Melbourne and presto... Instant library for the baby.
I am pretty fussy about the kind of board books I will buy.  They have to be simple and effective.  No long stories!  Single words per page are okay but these books have to be beautiful or clever!  My favourites have a short story and beautiful bring illustrations.  I think I am going to share some of my purchases and review books here.  Read if you share my love or read if you'd love an idea for a new book.
Anyway, thanks for dropping by...