Kids books

Looking at what's going on now in children's books to take some reference from stuff that's actually managed to get published.

I saw these lovely things at Salts Mill

Little Gestalten is a new fave. Real nice.

Also went in Foyes when I went to London recently. Phone is too crap to take picutres but here are some I liked. There were so many it was quite heartening to see such variation and mass of really well designed and considered childrens books. Also daunting.

Anna Kovecses - great block colours, has a 50s Scandinavian feel

Published by Wide Eye, an offshoot of Quatro. They publish original non-fiction works for kids. That would be grand fun, I'd like to try a non-ficiton topic. I like that theres the impetus to make dry information accessible to kids and simple brains like mine.

http://www.quartoknows.com/imprints/2072/Wide-Eyed-Editions/?page=0#titlelist

they have a bunch of nice books

Also been looking at Hachette Childrens group as they're running the Carmelite Prize competition so it'd be useful to know what they already have and what kinda stuff they publish. 

They're quite a lot more mainstream than other publishers I tend to look at but mainstreams where the money is.

Looking at their site it's clear they've published absolutely loaaaddddsss. I'm on page 7 of picture books and I'm still on the letter A. 

I'm really feeling this cover. 

Ahh, Penguin Small was one of my favourite books as a wee kiddy. My mum made this cool plush story kit matt thing for college based on it with all the characters and stuff.

Mmmm very nice, very french moderrrrnee

They have a wide range of stuff from these really nice things to like My Little Pony stickerbooks, but most of it is pretty decent. There's so much I didn't look through everything

Here is a small selection from my own collection, acquired from charity shops and car boots etc. 

They are my main source of inspiration but the problem with that is they were all published a long time ago and in no way reflect the position of childrens publising today, hense the importance of looking at the other stuff, but nonetheless my loyalty will lie with weird ass books I find second hand, and that is not a thing I expect to ever change.