The Most Beautiful Colouring Book Ever and Drawing with Sachiko Umoto

I picked up these books at Foyles on the South Bank about 12 months ago now.  They were supposed to be for Little Una Fox, but I love them and have probably spent as much time as she has at Sachiko Umoto's illustration school drawing cute animals, and plants and small creatures.

So simple and charming, the illustrations and instructions are easy to follow and the result is a very relaxing passing of the time.

As much fun, and possibly even more relaxing, as drawing is simply colouring in.  And the most beautiful colouring book ever surely has to be The Secret Garden by Johanna Basford.

Johanna Basford's beautifully intricate drawings are created first by hand before being digitised, each colouring book can take around a year to create.

 Illustrator Johanna Basford with her Amazon bestselling colouring book, Secret Garden. Photograph: Johanna Basford and Lawrence King

Una has both The Secret Garden and The Enchanted Forest, they can keep her occupied for hours and I have to admit to stealing them for a little go myself.  They are so beautiful and quite addictive.

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Ladybird Tuesday - Talkabout the beach

Talkabout the beach was  published in 1974, compiled by W Murray, illustrated by Eric Winter, Harry Wingfield and Martin Aitchison. 

“All the books in this talkabout series are designed to stimulate conversation between child and adult, encourage the early growth of vocabulary, assist mental development and provide a sound basis for future progress in reading and general awareness.”

We’ve been having such a lovely time this summer hols and visiting the beach is one of those classic summer time activities that young children get so much from.  It has also been something of an inspiration for this month’s Crafty Box, due out soon.   The little foxes and I have been having fun developing the various crafts and activities in this month’s box, if you would like to pre-order one click HERE.

So, this book, another in the Ladybird’s Talkabout series, is perfect for this month’s Ladybird Tuesday post. The usual classic Ladybird illustrations depict the typical delights of the british seaside resort.  Well, from my childhood anyway though I must admit we did not see quite so many donkeys and Punch and Judy shows on our last visit to the beach.

Despite the nostalgia the beach games...
















...and the puzzles portrayed in the book still amuse my little foxes.

It seems that these ladybird books are timeless, just as a child's love of the beach is also.


This post is part of the Ladybird Tuesday linky started on the Being Mrs C blog, take a look at her posts here.

The rest of Mrs Fox's Ladybird Tuesday posts are here and if you have a collection of Ladybird books, please do feel free to join in.

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And the winner is ...

Emma Clements..., enjoy your copy of this gorgeous book!

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Ladybird Tuesday - Talkabout holidays

With the summer holidays upon us and many people off, or about to set off, on their family hols this book seemed a good choice for this week’s Ladybird Tuesday post.   Talkabout holidays was  published in 1977, compiled by Margaret West, illustrated by Robert Ayton and Martin Aitchison, with cover design by Harry Wingfield. 

“Most children become excited at the mention of holidays and this interest can be encouraged and developed to increase vocabulary.  Planning a holiday involves choosing; a place to go, a type of holiday whether you go by road, or rail, or air.  Packing brings in the question of volume and weight: how much will go into a suitcase, how much will it weigh, can you carry it?”

This Ladybird book is from the ‘Talkabout’ series, to be read - and enjoyed - with pre-school aged children.  Talkabout holidays was produced by Ladybird with the aid of qualified nursery school advisers, to encourage comment and discussion, with young children.  The Talkabout series covers a range of topics that young children would be familiar with and is intended to help parents develop their children’s appreciation of books and ready them for learning to read once they start school.  I’ve already covered Talkabout home and Talkabout starting school in previous Ladybird Tuesday posts.

Each page heading and picture is the starting point for conversation about an aspect of holidaying.
Illustrations are realistic and representative of familiar situations to enable young children to identify objects, creatures and situations.  This recognition and interest is used to encourage their verbal development with simple counting, identification of objects, shapes and descriptive vocabulary, positional language and many other skills useful in developing effective communication and learning to read.

There are also these comic strip pages that allow children to look at the pictures and tell the story themselves.  Not only is this a fun and creative activity, but learning that pictures in sequence can tell a story is a useful strategy to employ as they learn to read.

Ladybird provides parents with notes at the back of the book to enable them to make the fullest use of this book.  

So, we're having a lovely time, how are your summer hols going?  We’ve been bike riding and  scootering, dog walking and garden visiting, painting, sewing, crafting and making to our little hearts content.  And with the British weather doing it’s best for us at the moment (Well, today's dog walk was in the rain, but...) we are having a wonderful time.

I love the summer holidays when there is no need to jump up and get the children off to school.  The little foxes sometimes argue a bit more than usual, as they are spending more time with each other, but, I feel that I am nagging and shouting less, with nothing that we have to get to in a hurry.  

Hurray for the holidays!  If only they could last forever...

This post is part of the Ladybird Tuesday linky started on the Being Mrs C blog, take a look at her posts here.

The rest of Mrs Fox's Ladybird Tuesday posts are here and if you have a collection of Ladybird books, please do feel free to join in.

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Belle & Boo - And The Yummy Scrummy Day

Belle & Boo is a brand that I love, loved it since I first picked up a Boo badge that my daughter wore on her coat all year.  We have a couple of Mandy Sutcliffe's other books, prints for each of the little foxes and the Belle and Boo range is getting bigger all the time.  I love the look of her latest crafting book, I'm going to buy it and see what we can make during the summer holidays - that's for another post methinks.

In the meantime we have a copy of her beautiful book, Belle & Boo - And The Yummy Scrummy Day  to give away.  It is such a pretty little book and the reason I love it, is that it is about all the fun young children can have with food.  Belle and her best friend, the rabbit Boo, play, make and bake a healthy feast.

My little foxes love their food and are, I hope, developing a great attitude towards food, it's pleasures and what's good for them to eat.  I think it really important to teach my children where their food comes from, and introduce them to the wonderful tastes of unadulterated fresh fruit and veggies.  We have a garden full of edible plants and an allotment, and we love to go foraging on our dog walks; blackberries, apples, plums, elderberries and their flowers and sloes to mention just those that immediately spring to mind.  

They both love to cook with me.  Cooking, gardening and foraging are healthy, creative and cost effective ways to pass the time over the summer hols.  For me, good food and making things, the creativity of our own hands, are my passions and something I can share with my children daily.   I sometimes think I'm just a little old fashioned.

And I love the nostalgic aura of Mandy Sutcliffe's beautiful illustrations, they make me think of a childhood of warm summer afternoons.  We have a few of the Belle and Boo paper dress up dolls in Mrs Fox's store.

My daughter loves hers, plays with it loads, we've downloaded extra clothes from the Belle and Boo website and she has made up her own designs too.  It just shows how simple, old fashioned toys can turn on a child's creativity.

If your little one's birthday is soon Belle and Boo party-ware is in Mrs Fox's store, a Belle & Boo Party Box for 8 is only £35, it includes invitations and thank you cards, tableware, a pin the tale on the donkey game and cake topper.

So, one lucky person will win copy of this beautiful hardback book, Belle & Boo - And The Yummy Scrummy Day, simply comment on this post, we'll draw the winner on Monday 5th August, Little Louis Fox will pull one name out of a hat, (call me old skool but I prefer that to one of those random number generator thingys) and if you like what you see here and want to go visit our Facebook page, or watch my pinterest addiction, or join our mailing list, or check out our shop, please feel free...  it's all great stuff, honest xxx

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The Princess And The Pea

One of Little Una Fox's favourite fairy tales is The Princess And The Pea and her favourite version is the one by Lauren Child and Polly Borland.

"'What a beautiful bed', gasped the girl.  'Oh, I am sure I will sleep like a real princess in this bed.'  And up the ladder she climbed. We'll see, thought the queen"

Lauren Child's text is, of course, great but it is her and Polly Borland's illustrations that I really admire.  They remind me of my favourite Fairytale book from my own childhood, which my mother unfortunately did not keep.

Each page was illustrated with posed dolls in 3 dimensional sets.  This is an idea that I keep thinking I would like to try my hand at.  If I ever get around to making the dolls, the sets and taking the pictures it will be a miracle but I am not ruling it out altogether.




Because this is our favourite it was natural, when Mrs Fox's was asked by a friend for a princess themed party for their daughter's 4th birthday, to turn to this tale.  Mrs Fox's created a Hunt the Pea party game, (we made felt peas and pea pods), place mats with the missive; "Give peas a chance" and one of my favourite Mrs Fox's crafts, our Make your Own Sleeping Princess.  This is a craft activity for the party that doubles as a party bag for the little guests to take home, along with a packet of sweet pea seeds.

For the make-your-own sleeping princess craft I attached a patchwork pocket to the front of a natural cotton bag.  Our princess was a blank rag doll each made up with a different hairstyle.  The patchwork pocket on each bag is for the dolls to 'sleep' in.  At the party the children designed their own sleeping princess, with fabric pens.  It was a huge success, and you can see what an impressive party bag it was too.

I made Una her own sleeping princess doll for Christmas that year, you can see her at the top of this post.  I make each of the little foxes at least one Christmas gift each year.

This weekend I was working on updating the, very simple, instructions for this craft as we intend to sell it on our website as one of our crafty boxes.  We even have long-term plans to make two versions, one for children that can sew and could make the patchwork pocket themselves.

While I worked and as we chatted about my old fairytale book and the pictures I remembered from it.  And the usefulness of shoe boxes when creating a four poster bed.  Una began fashioning various items for her own sleeping princess pictured above.  Who seems to have a rather severe case of jaundice!

I just couldn't keep out of it.  I was soon, secateurs in hand, fashioning a ladder and we were picking fabrics to make bedding.  I admit this is a rather niche craft, but, this is how we made the Princess Bed for our sleeping princess.  Just in case you ever have need of such an item!

YOU WILL NEED:

First we decorated the shoe box and it's lid with patterned paper and paint.  While it dried...

We measured the bottom of the box and cut out two rectangles of each of our fabrics to these dimensions.  We used other scraps of fabric as the wadding for our mattresses.  With the wadding between each piece of fabric we sewed round the edges.

The lid of the box is the bed's headboard and to this we attached some netting (off cuts of old net curtains from granny's house) I sewed these onto the lid, you could glue or staple them.

To make the ladder I cut up a thin bamboo cane and tied the steps on with garden twine.

The pea is a green felted ball.  You could just use green felt rolled into a ball or paper scrunched up and painted green.

Our Sleeping Princess Crafty Box is available on our website for a very special price at the moment only £6 +p&p (£4.50). Each Sleeping Princess is unique, with their hairstyles and the patchwork pocket on the bag hand-sewn and so each different from the next.

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Ladybird Tuesday - Birds & How They Live

Only a day late!  This month the theme for Mrs Fox's Crafty Boxes is flying animals, so how could I not pick Birds & How They Live for this week's Ladybird Tuesday post.  This is one of the books from my childhood Ladybird collection.  Written by F E Newing, BSc and Richard Bowood and illustrated by Ronald Lampitt again this book was first published in 1966.

"Almost everyone has some interest in birds and bird life, and this is  book which will give pleasure and much fascinating information to readers of all ages.

With a simple and clear text and superb colour illustrations, it describes feathers and flight, beaks and bills, feet and legs, eyes and ears, nests, songs, food and defence against enemies, and rouses enthusiasm for further study."

And that last quote just about sums it up.  I'm not a 'twitcher' by any stretch of the imagination but I loved natural history as a child, wanted to grow up to be a vet for a long time, and this book was a fantastic way to learn about birds.

The inside cover, as with many of these natural history books, is illustrations with line drawings of bird's skeletons, feather and wing structure.

Starting with a page on the definition of a bird and their evolution, the book defines first feathers, then wings and tails and then flight.  

And this is what I love about Ladybird books.  As the books readers are children the explanation of how birds fly is in simple scientific terms, as follows;   

"...in level flight the flow of air over and under the wing surfaces, and the angle at which the wing is tilted, cause a lower pressure to exist above the wing than under it.  This gives what is 'lift', which balances the weight of the bird."

The explanation is clear, the language is precise and there has been no attempt to "dumb-down".  The child that reads this explanation of flight is expected to try and understand this level of language and scientific thought.  As a result he or she will come away with a clear understanding of flight, and how birds manage to defy gravity.

In Ronald Lampitt's illustrations there is great detail and information for the young ornithologist and for the young artist examples of skillfully drawn, beautiful images.  I remember drawing copies of the bird heads below as a child.

This book taught me so much and I am really happy to share it as part of the Ladybird Tuesday linky started on the Being Mrs C blog, take a look at her posts here.

The rest of Mrs Fox's Ladybird Tuesday posts are here and if you have a collection of Ladybird books, please do feel free to join in.

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Ladybird Tuesday - Animals And How They Live

This week's Ladybird book, Animals and How They Live was bought for me by my brother and sister in law and my niece Sasha for my birthday this year.  They know about my obsession with Ladybird books.  As the title sugests this is another Ladybird Natural History Book, written by F E Newing, B.Sc. and Richard Bowood with illustrations by Ronald Lampitt.  This book is part of Ladybird's Series 651, published pre-1970's as the price on the cover is pre-decimal (2'6 NET in case you are interested).

"It is not just a book about animals, it is much more; it is the story told in simple language, of how animals live, and how they have evolved to suit their way of life.  It is, in fact, a book about the evolution of mammals."

On the front inside cover of the book is this great picture of animal skeletons.

The book begins; " Everything can be divided into 'animal, vegetable or mineral', as in the game.  The animal we mean is any creature which can move of it's own free will, including birds, fishes, reptiles and insects.  When we speak of animals in the ordinary way we really mean mammals, which are all the animals which produce their young complete, and nourish them in infancy on their mothers' milk,  This book is about those animals, the mammals."

The book then goes through the biology of mammals and through page titles like; Hooves and Paws, Claws and Teeth , Tusks and Horns, Eyes, Ears, Noses, Voices and Tails; explaining the process of evolution by natural selection.

There are the usual wonderful illustrations displaying the magnificent diversity of the animal kingdom.

The book ends with the typical human preoccupation of our own similarity, yet difference, to the rest of the animal kingdom.  Having explained what instinct and knowledge are and that animals operate mostly on instinct the author does recognise that some young animals are taught by their parents as children are;  "A mother bear teaches her cubs to stay with her, to remain quiet and to hunt, and if they are disobedient she picks them up and spanks them - hard." 

However, "The top order of the mammals is called the primates, and includes monkeys apes and Man.  These have the most highly developed hands which they use in varying degrees under the direction of the brain...  Intelligence depends on using the brain to think and reason, instead of relying only on natural instincts."

It's quite interesting that intelligence is being defined like this, as the co-ordination of brain and hand.  I think more modern books would probably place more emphasis on the brain and the animals ability to communicate.

In my collection of Ladybird books from childhood I have more of their Natural History series than any of their other non-fiction series.  The last Ladybird Tuesday I joined in with was a post on one of the other books in this series, Plants and How They Grow, and I think next week I will post on Birds and How They Live.

This post is part of the Ladybird Tuesday linky started on the Being Mrs C blog, take a look at her posts here.

The rest of Mrs Fox's Ladybird Tuesday posts are here and if you have a collection of Ladybird books, please do feel free to join in.

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Ladybird Tuesday - Plants and How They Grow

I have been extremely remiss on my Ladybird Tuesday posts for the last few weeks, while the lovely Mrs C has soldiered on alone.  Mrs Fox's Crafty Boxes, our wonderful children's craft boxes,  have been taking up all our time.  This months box will be going out this week and it's all based around the theme growing.  So, my Ladybird Tuesday post is very 'on-trend'.

Plants and How They Grow is a Ladybird Natural History Book by F E Newing, Bsc & Richard Bowood with illustrations by Ronald Lampitt and is part of series 651.

"A plant is any member of the vegetable kingdom.  Everything which  grows in the ground is a plant: flowers and vegetables, grass and ferns, bushes and trees.  In this book we shall find out about plants and the wonder of growth; how they grow, feed, live and reproduce themselves."












This is a book that I bought from a charity shop a few years ago.  We have an allotment as well as a small garden and I am an avid (though untidy and unskilled) gardener and have many gardening books.  This book however approaches plants from the stance of a botanist.

It defines the parts and process of a plant, it's growth and survival.

Roots, stems, buds, leaves, flowers, fruit and seeds are examined, and their role in the plants structure and lifecycle illustrated with simply experiments.

Food, warmth and light are defined as the essentials for life and experiments to demonstrate this described.

The different types of plants are also shown; trees, ferns and mosses, water plants, grasses etc, along with fungi, which I'm sure I was taught in biology was not a plant at all.

My favourite page is the above, on parasites and the sundew, mostly because I love mistletoe and have always wanted to grow carnivorous plants.  I'm impressed that this group of plants is covered, it's a good choice as I think they are such interesting plants, likely to capture a child's imagination and spark an interest in plants that could last a lifetime.

The final page recommends botany as a hobby; "There is no end to the delight in finding out about plants, from the smallest wildflower to the greatest tree, and getting to know their species and their ways."

I had forgotten how good this book was at explaining the wonder of living nature and suggesting ways to explore, observe and record it.  My little Una Fox loves helping on the allotment and in the garden, has a little flower press that she got for her birthday last year and already loves taking photos of flowers, maybe I will suggest we make a little project of this - Let Operation Botanist Fox commence...

This post is part of Ladybird Tuesday started on the Being Mrs C blog, take a look at her posts here.

The rest of Mrs Fox's Ladybird Tuesday posts are here and if you have a collection of Ladybird books, please do feel free to join in.

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