As much as a treat for myself as a way of sharing my love of books, at Jenna’s prompting, I’ve now started work on a quilt for J’s 3rd birthday, made out of some of the fabric from the new Liberty’s range designed by children’s illustrators.

It was really hard choosing just a few fabric designs (and be quick if you want to order any as they have already sold out of some lines), but in the end I went for Carolyn Jane, Charlie’s Paisley and Kate Ada by Quentin Blake and Olivia Strange and Reuben Kelly by David McKee, the creator of Elmer, King Rollo and Mr Benn. Lots of colour and pattern, which I’ll be breaking up with a lime green fabric so hopefully it will remain playful without being too hectic!

To go with the quilt I want to give J a couple of Quentin Blake and David McKee books, and this is where I’m hoping you’ll be able to help. Both Blake and McKee are prolific author / illustrators and so I’d love to hear your recommendations for books by them. Which are your absolute favourite books they’ve illustrated? Which books would work particularly well as gifts?

Zagazoo and All Join In (the latter reviewed here on Playing by the book) are two of our favourite Quentin Blake books, and we got our first David McKee book earlier this week from the charity bookshop.

[On a side note, Tasha and I are dreaming of Super Hero Capes for ourselves trimmed with any leftovers of this fabric...]

Photo: Victoria Peckham

Quentin Blake, his exuberant, funny illustrations and childhood go pretty much hand in hand I think. I know my own first 10 years were full of his drawings (for example in many of Roald Dahl’s books), and now he is one of the illustrators most frequently found on the bookcases which M and J have taken over. However, I didn’t know until recently he was also a poet!

ALL JOIN IN (both written and illustrated by Quentin Black) is short collection of poems fantastic for reading out loud (and by out loud I really mean LOUDLY) with children. First of all there is the joyous, eponymous All Join In which opens:

When Sandra plays the trumpet
it makes a lovely sound

And Mervyn on his drum-kit
can be hear for
miles around

Stephanie is brilliant
when she plays her violin

But the very best of all is when
we ALL JOIN IN

Then there is a very mischievous peom, The Hooter Song, about well-meaning children (let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, shall we?) who like to use their (very) noisy instruments to cheer up or otherwise help anyone they perceive to be in need. Nice weather for ducks and Sliding capture quintessential joys of childhood, but my personal favourite is Sorting Out the Kitchen Pans, which opens:

We’re sorting out the Kitchen Pans
DING DONG BANG

Sorting out the Kitchen Pans
BING BONG CLANG

Sorting out the Kitchen Pans
TING BANG DONG

Soritng out the Kitchen Pans
CLANG DING BONG

Although not the most nuanced of poems, I think it is easy to imagine how this is great fun to read loudly and energetically with your kids, who you’ll find are all too keen to ALL JOIN IN!

So the poems are great fun, and then of course there are the illustrations – each page bursting with Blake’s colourful ,quirky and humourous illustrations which celebrate living life to the full. Altogether it adds up to a pretty near perfect book, and one I would wholeheartedly recommend you track down.

Ever since we discovered this book (for £1 in a charity shop!) the girls have been desperate to “sort out the kitchen pans” ie to empty all my kitchen drawers and bang all the saucepans, bread tins, cake tins, lids and anything else they find. Eventually I realised resistance was futile, and caved in (or rather I thought, “Here’s an opportunity for a bit of a spring clean with the help of the girls!” ). They were of course delighted to be given permission to raid the drawers:

Everything was neatly arranged on a quilt….

And then the banging began! BING DONG BANG indeed!

As you can imagine this activity didn’t last a very long time – I may tolerate a lot of mess in the name of creativity but raucous banging can only be allowed to continue for so long, whatever the circumstances! Nevertheless, the kids had a wonderful time, and everything got put back in my drawers in a very neat and orderly manner. A few items I had thought were lost were even recovered from the detritus my kids unearthed! So all in all, not a bad way to spend a wintry afternoon!

ALL JOIN IN: *** (3 stars)

Whilst banging away we didn’t have any music on (we didn’t need to afterall), but we’ve since been listening to the rather more melodious:

Our music making reminded me of two wonderful banging music projects:

This post is part of Poetry Friday, which is being hosted today by Mary Ann at Great Kid Books. For a rather quieter time than we’ve had here, why don’t you pop over and see what other poetry books and poems are being discussed today.

Photo: Crystl

Don’t you just love it when having kids “allows” you to do something you’ve always wanted to do, but as a “sensible” adult you felt you couldn’t quite get away with? Well this week I finally got to indulge in something on my if-only-I-were-a- kid-again wishlist…

Thanks to my wonderful daughter M, the new Disney-Pixar film UP, and a funny and quirky book called Up with Birds! by John Yeoman and (for the second post running!) Quentin Blake, I got to play with lots of helium filled balloons and a variety of playmobil, lego and duplo people. Sometimes being a mum is hard work indeed

It all began with a trip to see the film UP. M has been going to the cinema for about a year now and adores the whole experience from the orange curtain which “opens like magic, mummy” to the dancing she always does in the aisles as the credits roll at the end (to say nothing of the maltesers which are her cinema munchies of choice). In UP one of the characters uses hundreds of helium filled balloons to make his house fly. This vision reminded me of Up with Birds! – a story of how birds originally learned to fly, recounted and illustrated with great wit.

It was a long, long time ago, several years before you were born, that birds first began to fly. I’ll tell you how it happened.

In the days when birds used to walk everywhere life was very difficult indeed. Especially for the Fflyte family who lived in a small town where there were lots of birds. Most of them were very nosy, and whenever they found an open door they would just walk in.

The Fflyte family eventually become rather exasperated by the birds under their feet and so Dad Fflyte sets to finding a way round this problem.

Mr Fflytes’ solution is to enable his family to take to the air, with Icarus-inspired flying bike machines. But the bikes being rather heavy need some extra lift – and that comes in the form of large bunches of gas filled balloons. The flying bikes are a success and great fun. When the birds see what’s going on they too want to get in on the act, and so launch themselves for the first time ever into the air, each holding the string of a balloon in its beak.

Everyone is happy. Indeed a small fat sparrow is so happy that he gives a chirp of pleasure and… without the balloon string to hold on to he starts falling at speed towards the ground… Is it all over for the sparrow?

Let me just say that as is reassuringly often the case, that great mother of invention, necessity, ensures that the poor sparrow’s accident leads the birds to discover their true calling – that of flight

This original story from John Yeoman will make you laugh, a really enjoyable read, illustrated in classic Quentin Blake style. Although available in a format that makes it look like a picture book (and indeed it is packed with plenty of illustrations) this is probably going to be enjoyed most by children who are already reading or listening to longer stories such as Roald Dahl’s The Enormous Crocodile or The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me.

So with the story playing in our heads we went off to get some helium filled balloons. Once home we investigate how many balloons were necessary to lift (a) a duplo person (b) a playmobil adult (c) a playmobil child and (d) a lego person.

This article from How Stuff Works has some useful background information on the science of lifting things with helium balloons (or you could try this from the Learning Network at the New York Times), which I won’t go into here. Instead I’ll cut to the chase: We needed 5 balloons to lift a duplo person, 4 for a playmobil adult and 2 for either a playmobil child or a lego person Now you have the knowledge, you really ought to try it out for yourselves with your kids!

We then wanted to try flying our balloons a little higher than the height of our ceilings indoors so we came up with a different object for the balloons to lift – some “birds” made of craft feathers stuffed into a selection of felt tip lids from our junk stockpile.

These “birds” were lovely and light so they each needed only one balloon to lift them. As it was our intention not to let the balloons float off into the sunset we attached some kite string to each balloon before we let it float out in the garden – we didn’t test how how they could go with the kite string guy rope attached, but certainly well above our house roof!

As the sun and temperature dropped, our balloons were not so successful at lifting their payloads, and so we became blase about attaching kite string. This was not a good idea as before we knew it a gust of wind took our remaining balloons and sent them off on an adventure of their own…

Oh well. Definitely a fun afternoon for all, and we’ve picked up extra litter in the street to make up for our balloon pollution.

Up with the Birds!:

We’ve been having fun listening to Up in a Balloon by Alan Mills, It Only Takes One Night to Make a Balloon Your Friend by Lunch Money and bringing back memories of my childhood with 99 Red Balloons by Nena.

Balloon related craftiness that we want to get up to next includes:

So do you feel like sharing what’s on your if-only-I were-a-kid-again wishlist? I’d love to hear from you