One, Two, Three, Me by Nadia Budde is a board book for the pre-school / nursery crowd. It is a quirky take on the “learn about the world around you” type of book with an exploration of colours, shapes, weather, locations, clothes, sizes and emotions/characteristics. Told in rhyme with naive, childlike drawings that reminded me a little both of Finnish illustrator Hannamari Ruohonen and Dutch illustrator Babette Harms, this is not your average toddler learning book, and is so much more fun for all that.

The choice of vocabulary is interesting (eg “gigantic, average, wee” when talking about size, or “spotted, plaid, pale” when talking about colours and patterns), and the animals modelling the cloths / locations / emotions etc are unusual: you’ll meet boars, cockroaches, rats, moose and a gnu!

The unusual lexical and illustrative choices made by Nadia Budde ensured that was this book inherently more interesting to read than many of its ilk. Whilst I wouldn’t be surprised if some parents felt happier with a more conventional approach, for example Kali Stileman’s Big Book of My World (which I reviewed here), the slightly anarchic slant taken by this book meant I loved reading it aloud, my enjoyment came across to J, and she too discovered a new book to love.

So now for a slightly geeky diversion, if you’re interested in translation. As a rhyming book, and a book where there is a close connection between the text and the images I was curious to find out how it had been translated.

Nadia Budde’s book is called Eins Zwei Drei Tier (One Two Three Animal) in the original German. A little rooting around has shown that not only has the translation been creative, Nadia Budde also must have redrawn some of the images for the English language version. Here are some images from the original book side by side with the corresponding images from the translated version.

German and English frontcovers. Note the different animal at the end of the row.

"In bed, at the window, at the table, fish" vs English language version

"Blonde, black, bald, Jackal" vs English language version

I’d love to know more about the process that went on here – the conversations between writer/illustrator, translator and publisher. If you’re a writer/illustrator and have ever had to make such substantial changes to a book of yours, in order for it to be published in another language, I’d love to hear about it.

But moving on…

J loves to rhyme so it seemed very natural for us to make our own sing-song version of One, Two, Three, Me. J came up with the rhymes and then illustrated them for her own book about her world. Here’s her poem in full:

MY WORLD

Ewan, Alfie, Molly, Dolly

In a dress, in a t-shirt, in a cloak, what a joke!

triangle, semi-circle, square, chair

in the clouds, in the sun, in the light, bike

Ginormous, medium, teeny, what a meanie

red, blonde, black, sack

filled with snacks, filled with bread, filled with presents, elephant

trumpetty-trump, raa, moo, you!

I gave her prompts for each line but J had tremendous fun “filling in the blanks” and especially coming up with the rhymes. Whilst not the most detailed of books, she’s tremendously proud of it and it’s become a favourite to read together at bedtime alongside the original which inspired it.

Whilst helping J make her book we listened to:

Other activities which might work well alongside reading One, Two, Three, Me include:

Can you recommend any picture books that are particularly interesting from the translation point of view? Books that posed particular problems for translation, but that were nevertheless translated successfully?

Last week I listened to one particularly interesting programme on the theme of reading mindfully. Part of Radio 4′s book of the week, Stop What You’re Doing and Read This, Tim Parks explored the idea of really attending to what we read. It certainly inspired me to be a little more thoughtful about what and how I read.

But, do you know what? Sometimes I don’t want to take time, and savour things. Sometimes I just want to gobble up a book. I want to lick my lips and wolf it down.

Well, here are the books we have literally been munching on the last few days:

We made our mini edible books from white chocolate and fruit leathers.

We melted a chunk of white chocolate just a little by placing it for a few seconds on a hot frying pan.

We then squidged it down on the fruit leather.

We then melted the other side of the chocolate a little.

Finally we folder over the fruit leather and pressed down hard. We trimmed the leather and then used a knife to tidy up the oozing chocolate, just spreading it out a bit.

We used just the tiniest bit of icing to give our books titles.

Once complete I left them in the fridge for an hour or so to harden up. When we came to eat them, they were actually yummy enough to make again!

I wish I could claim this idea as a Playing by the book original, but actually my inspiration came from Hungry Happenings. although she uses a different method to make hers.

We’re now experimenting with marzipan and chocolate books, and other tomes made out of kendal mint cake and chocolate… (if you’ve any further ideas for what to use, do let me know!)

For more edible books (make sure you’re not hungry when you follow the link!) click here: it turns out that there’s quite a worldwide movement of Edible Book Festivals, and even an “official” Edible Book Day – April 1. I quite fancy hosting a virtual Edible Book Festival – would you be up for it?

If eating a whole book would be too much for you then how about a poem, a word or even a just a letter or two? Do take a look at this gorgeous post from Resistance is Fertile. It ends with a home made out of poetry…

Photo: Jemimus

For just a letter or two you can salivate over Typolade – a German company that makes chocolates in the shape of printers’ alphabetic blocks. They’re a little like mini versions of the Dutch chocolate letters you get for Sinterklaas.

So, what do you say? Are you up for joining in a virtual Edible Book Festival? We all make something to eat on a bookish theme and then I’ll have a gallery of your images up here and link to your posts about what/why and how you created your Edible Book?

We don’t really “do” Christmas in our home.

It’s not that we go out of our way to avoid it, but it’s not a celebration we wait all year for. M’s birthday is just before the 25th, we’re not a religious family, and we don’t want to be sucked in to a big cycle of (over) consumption, so all in all, Christmas is a quiet time for us. We don’t do stockings, we don’t have faith, but (of course) we can’t entirely do without books.

Findus at Christmas by Sven Nordqvist is one of the few Christmassy books that we have already enjoyed and will no doubt read ever more frequently in the coming weeks. We’re huge fans of eccentric old farmer Pettson and his cheeky cat Findus (for my reviews of earlier Pettson and Findus books click here), and in this story there’s everything we could hope for.

It’s December 23rd and after days of terribly wintry weather, finally Pettson and Findus can set about getting everything ready for Christmas Day. They’ve got so much to do; shopping, baking, felling the Christmas tree and preparing the house. But disaster strikes when out in the forest they have a sledging accident and Pettson badly hurts his foot.

Having limped back home it becomes clear that Christmas isn’t going to happen as they’d planned. They’ve almost no food in the larder and the house is bare of decoration. “Silently they sat and watched their reflection in the window against the darkness outside. It can get this quiet when things don’t turn out the way you expect.”

Christmas morning arrives and a neighbour pops his head round the door to check everything is ok. When he sees the state of Pettson’s foot, and hears Findus’ wailing he steps into the breach and brings in some firewood and promises to return later with milk.

As word spreads of Pettson’s predicament, one by one neighbours rally round, each bringing a basket of delicious food. Pettson and Findus have managed to make a Christmas tree laden with imaginative decorations out of a bits and bobs they have lying around and unexpectedly the house is full of ““Merry Christmas!” and talk and laughter” as neighbours and their families stay and share good will and good cheer. Christmas turns out to be better then the farmer and his cat could have possibly hoped for.

This story is my sort of Christmas story: what really matters about this season, is not the tree, is not the rushing around like crazy trying to do too many things, but rather simply generosity, kindness and community.

The “message” shines through in a gentle but powerful way because the book is packed with humour, both verbal and pictorial. The capers Pettson and Findus get up to, from surfing over the wet floor of the kitchen, to choosing unusual Christmas presents for each other will get you giggling, whilst the affection that is so strong between the farmer and his feline friend will make you feel like hugging those near and dear to you. A pretty good way to start Christmas, don’t you think?

Pettson's shed (this image is actually taken from Findus and the Fox)

In every Pettson and Findus book there’s a special mention of Pettson’s shed, with his bench and tools spread about like treasures suggesting so many possible adventures. So we decided we’d use Findus at Christmas as our excuse to try to make something in our own tool shed.

We came up with the idea of a (sort of) advent calendar (we’ll actually use it to count down the days to M’s birthday, and next year we’ll re-use is for other family birthdays), in the form of a bookcase full of books.

First M drew up the plans.

Then we set to sawing…

…sanding

…hammering

and painting.

Next up we had to make our books. We used these wooden trinket boxes and decorated them to look like books, by drawing pages around three sides and giving them front and back covers.

These books (a little like mini versions of these hidden book boxes we made a while back) will work perfectly as places to hide hidden treats, and the birthday child will get to open one book a day in the run up to their special day.

Finally we varnished everything and then looked back to admire our bookmaking and woodwork skills!

I fear M, J and I don’t have the carpentry skills that generations of our family have had, but we certainly stayed true to the spirit of Pettson and Findus with all our botching and finding solutions to problems of our own creating! And in the end we’ve created something we’ll enjoy and re-use, remembering a good time in our tool shed, and a great book.

Whilst we made our advent/birthday-countdown bookcase we listened to:

Other activities which would go well with Findus at Christmas include:

Have you made an advent calendar for this year? Have you got any woodworking skills?

Disclosure: I received my copy of this book from the publisher. This review, however, reflect my own and honest opinion.