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From typography to tsunamis by way of quantum physics, or what Langston Hughes has to do with LEGO.
Artful and fanciful children's books make frequent cameos around here. Part of what makes them so great is their ability to whisk the young reader away into an alternate reality full of whimsy and possibility. But the present reality is often full of so much fascination we need not escape it to have our curiosity and imagination tickled. We've previously seen how comic books can be a medium for nonfiction, and today we turn to 7 wonderful kind-of-children's books that bring imaginative storytelling to real, and in many cases serious, issues for young minds to ponder.
GRAPHIC DESIGN FOR KIDS
Graphic Design for Kids, part of the excellent Design Dossier series by Pamela Pease, introduces kids to the wonderful world of graphic design, from its history to its problem-solving and critical thinking methods, spanning a wide spectrum of visual elements and design mediums – shape, color, size and typography; posters, books and websites – to demonstrate design's role in everyday life, exploring how people use words, pictures, and symbols to deliver and digest messages. The interactive, spiral-bound volume includes profiles of iconic designers, with flash cards featuring pithy insights on their craft, brimming with die-cuts, pull-outs and other treats that only analog books can offer.
THE FIRST BOOK OF JAZZ
Prolific poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes is considered one of the fathers of jazz poetry, a literary art form that emerged in the 1920s and eventually became the foundation for modern hip-hop. In 1954, he set out to educate young readers about the culture he so loved. The First Book of Jazz, which you might recall as one of our favorite children's books by famous authors of literature for grown-ups, became the first-ever children's book to review American music, and to this day arguably the best.
Hughes covered every notable aspect of jazz, from the evolution of its eras to its most celebrated icons to its geography and sub-genres, and made a special point of highlighting the essential role of African-American musicians in the genre's coming of age. Even his discussion of the technical aspects of jazz – rhythm, percussion, improvisation, syncopation, blue notes, harmony – is so eloquent and engaging that, rather than overwhelming the young reader, it embodies the genuine joy of playing.
Alongside the book, Hughes released a companion record, The Story of Jazz, featuring Hughes' lively, vivid narration of jazz history in three tracks, each focusing on a distinct element of the genre. You can here them here.
THE SERIF FAIRY
From our friends at Mark Batty comes The Serif Fairy – a charming book for type geeks and their progeny, which follows The Serif Fairy as she hunts for her lost wing across and airy, meticulously designed typographic landscape. She wanders through Garamond Forest, the Zentenar Gate, the Futura City, and Shelley Lake, where she falling into the water to find her lost wing, then rises to the air revived and full of magic again.
It's an archetypal story of quest and belonging, told through a unique vehicle that educates and entertains at the same time, letting children learn about typography without realizing they are. Originally conceived in German by writer and graphic designer Rene Siegfried, the story's sensitively English translation by Joel Mann takes nothing away from its poetic fable-like quality.
The book won the 2007 Type Director's Club award for best children's book.
SEASONS
Seasons by French artist Blexbolex, which you might recall, is a more meditative and abstract than the other books in this omnibus, but no less profound and stimulating for the young reader. With his signature retro-inspired minimalism, Blexbolex uses the metaphor of seasonality to reflect on a number of life's big themes and the subtle dualities of being human. Four spreads depict the same landscape during each season, with a single word or phrase in bold block-letters on each page. But don't breeze by the seeming simplicity of the concept – many of the thoughtful pairings on the beautiful double-page spreads give you pause and make you wonder why and how the two words go together, gently nudging you towards a philosophical meditation on the seasons, change and impermanence.
With its rich, textured colors, the creamy matte paper, and the tactile fabric on its spine, Seasons is as much a window of curiosity for kids as it is a beautiful art possession for grown-ups.
VOYAGE TO THE HEART OF MATTER
Since 1954, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, has been pushing the boundaries of human knowledge as the world's largest particle physics laboratory. Voyage to the Heart of Matter: The ATLAS Experiment at CERN is an extraordinary collaboration between CERN and acclaimed paper engineer Anton Radevsky, bringing to life CERN's proudest creation: The Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator.
The meticulously engineered pop-up book captures CERN's quest to understand the universe by bringing to life the astounding activities of the LHC, from protons colliding at nearly the speed of light at the heart of the ATLAS detector to reenactments of the conditions that existed millionths of a second after the Big Bang.
I LEGO N.Y.
I LEGO N.Y. by the brilliant Christoph Niemann (♥), which topped our selection of the best children's books of 2010, takes an imaginative look at New York rendered entirely in LEGO – a manifestation of Niemann's incredible gift for taking something ordinary and transforming it into pure whimsy. From the city's iconic architecture to the peculiarities of its day-to-day, this pocket-sized treasure offers both a guide to and a wink at The Big Apple, full of Niemann's characteristic subtle humor and charming aesthetic.
TSUNAMI
On Boxing Day 2004, a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck the Indian Ocean, killing more than 230,000 people in 14 countries. To commemorate the victims, West Bengali scroll painters Joydeb and Moyna Chitrakar created a ballad and a stunning picture scroll in the tradition of Patua, a form of narrative graphic art, transforming the tragic news into an artful and poetic fable. The fine folks at Tara Books, who brought us such handmade gems as The Night Life of Trees and I Like Cats, turned the Patua scroll into a book – but it's no ordinary book. Tsunami is made entirely by hand and silkscreened onto handmade paper. It unfolds like a scroll and even features a hole from which to be hung on your wall. Its thick pages exude the rich smell of the authentic Indian dyes used in the screen-printing process, breathing even more mesmerism into the project's extraordinary feat of bridging the fodder of newsrooms with the ancient art of Patua storytelling.
From coquetry to selfishness, or what the Sea of Wealth has to do with the City and District of Love.
Nineteenth-century ideals of womanhood and beauty expressed as much about women as they did about the society in which they were germinated. At a time of radical sociocultural and economic shifts – rapid urbanization, new modes of transportation and communication, increasing mechanization of industry – the expectations for women's role in society shifted as well, with an idealized version of what was known as "True Womanhood" underpinning pop culture representations of women in everything from newspaper advice columns to art.
A Map of the Open Country of a Woman's Heart was a map created by D. W. Kellogg circa 1833–1842, in the tradition of these maps of the human condition you might recall, subtitled "Exhibiting its internal communications, and the facilities and dangers to Travellers therein." Though it mostly depicts Woman as a sentimental, selfish, and superficial being driven by vanity, it places Love at the center of her heart, with Good Sense, Patience, and Prudence at its tip – or bottom, depending on the interpretation.
For a fascinating look at the expectations of True Womanhood, marvel at Bernard O'Reilly's 1883 classic The Mirror Of True Womanhood: A Book Of Instruction For Women In The World.
What evil stepmothers and conniving wolves have to do with understanding the future of reading.
The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Register for the preservation of cultural documents, have been delighting and terrifying children since 1812, transfixing generations of parents, psychologists, and academics. The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is an astounding new volume from Taschen editor Noel Daniel bringing together the best illustrations from 130 years of The Brothers Grimm with 27 of the most beloved Grimm stories, including Cinderella, Snow White, The Little Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty, amidst artwork by some of the most celebrated illustrators from Germany, Britain, Sweden, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the United States working between the 1820s and 1950s.
The new translation is based on the final 1857 edition of the tales, and stunning silhouettes from original publications from the 1870s and 1920s grace the tome's pages, alongside brand new silhouettes created bespoke for this remarkable new volume.
An introduction by Daniel explores the Grimms' enduring legacy, from the DNA of fairy-tale scholarship to the shadow play and shape-shifting at the heart of the stories, and a preface to each tale frames it in its historical and sociocultural context.
The Grimms' were a vital engine for a whole new caliber of artistic activity [...] Suddenly, artists across the Western world could make a living illustrating books, and they found a solid foundation for new work in the heroes and princesses, talking animals, dwarfs, and witches of fairy tales. The tales were an important part of each technological advancement along the way, and the best of this visual iconography still influences artist, art directors, filmmakers, and animators today [...] Even as our modes of reading continue to change with new technologies, taking a measure of the interactivity of text and image in past treasures helps us understand the changing landscape of reading in the future."
And in case you were wondering why Taschen, purveyors of high-end and often risque art and design books, are doing a children's book, they've got a thoughtful answer:
Taschen recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. We have many readers who have come of age with us and are now have their own families. These readers are interested in beautifully produced children’s books that take seriously a child’s exposure to stories and images with depth and historical meaning. We wanted The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm to embody our mission to create meaningful books that are timeless yet original, modern but classic."
Rigorously researched and breathtakingly art-directed, The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is a whimsical wonderland in its own right, blending seminal cultural history with our private individual nostalgia in an utterly gorgeous volume to charm the design lover, the history buff, and the eternal kid all at once.
