Winter's Tale by Nike Sulway and Shauna O’Meara

Winter’s Tale by Nike Sulway and illustrated by Shauna O’Meara is an illustrated children’s book; a short novel with pictures, rather than a full-blown picture book. It is currently being Kickstarted by Twelfth Planet Press, making this one of my timeliest reviews ever. This book drew my attention for two reasons: the colourful illustrations and the Tiptree Award-winning writer of the story.

A hare in the moon.

A town with streets that won't stay still.

Hidden worlds hide within these painted walls...

Existing within these hidden worlds, outside of them, and in a world all of their own, is a child called Winter. As a baby, Winter was found in a fruit box; ever since they have been searching for a home and a family.

With an elusive blue hare as a guide, a daring new friend, and a family with their own kind of magic, Winter might finally find a place to call home: a place to belong.

Winter’s Tale is the story of Winter, a founding who has passed through a few families by the time the story starts. Unsurprisingly, Winter doesn’t feel like they belong, especially when they have to move families again. Winter is also agender (my impression from the book was that they were intersex, though that is less clear), but their sense of not belonging stems more from the series of foster families than from this fact.

The whole story has a magical vibe to it and this is especially emphasised when Winter meets their fourth family and learns about the changing landscape their house is found in. Throughout the story Winter keeps catching glimpses of a blue hare, which apparently no one else can see, and this is linked with the magical surroundings and Winter’s quest/desire to find somewhere to belong.

Overall, this was a fun read with very nice illustrations throughout. I think it would appeal to the kind of children that enjoy magical (or partly magical) stories and would work well both read to or by a child. I’m not sure I have any appropriately aged children in my life (my niece is probably a little too old by now), but if I did I would certainly buy this for them.

4 / 5 stars

First published: October 2019, Twelfth Planet Press
Series: No
Format read: Hardcover ARC
Source: Publisher
Disclaimer: I work with Twelfth Planet Press but was not involved in the production of this book

The Tame Animals of Saturn by Adam Browne

The Tame Animals of Saturn by Adam Browne is a short, illustrated book. As far as textual length goes, it's in the realm of long novelette to short novella, and illustrations of the titular animals are presented around and between the text.

A large-format, heavily-illustrated compendium of fantastical animals inspired by the imagined extraterrestrial menagerie of nineteenth-century Christian mystic, Jakob Lorber.

I am inclined to describe this book as surreal, in what I think of as the artistic definition. I have also heard it called absurdist philosophical steampunk. Whatever you call it, that style is not really my sort of thing, to be honest. I'm probably too much of a scientist to get very into fantastical descriptions of animals of Saturn, particularly when coupled with a story-telling style I'm not especially enamoured of (the prose was a little purple). Which is not to say that others won't enjoy this book, just that I didn't.

The story is written more in the style of philosophical non-fiction than conventional fiction, and concerns itself with describing the inhabitants of a fantastical Saturn and their goings on. It also focuses on Jakob Loder and his writings, fixating at times on the possibility of a Saturnian Loder to parallel the real Austrian one. I suspect someone who had studied more old philosophers and philosophy than I, may have gotten more out the book, too.

The illustrations were detailed pencil drawings, mostly, depicting the surreal and/or absurd animals described in the text. Many of them were grotesque and, to me, a bit disconcerting. Although it went well with the text, it is not my favourite art style either (you can probably see a trend here...).

The Tame Animals of Saturn was an odd book and one I probably wouldn't've picked up myself. That said, I recognise most of my response is personal rather than objective and, if what I have described appeals to you, absolutely give this book a go.

3 / 5 stars

First published: March 2016, Peggy Bright Books
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher

The Illustrated Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling and Jim Kay

The Illustrated Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone written by JK Rowling and illustrated by Jim Kay is, basically, a large-format, glossy, illustrated version of the first beloved Harry Potter book. Do I need to put a blurb in? Well, I wouldn't want to break the flow of my blog...

Prepare to be spellbound by Jim Kay's dazzling depiction of the wizarding world and much loved characters in this full-colour illustrated hardback edition of the nation's favourite children's book – Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Brimming with rich detail and humour that perfectly complements J.K. Rowling's timeless classic, Jim Kay's glorious illustrations will captivate fans and new readers alike.

When a letter arrives for unhappy but ordinary Harry Potter, a decade-old secret is revealed to him that apparently he's the last to know. His parents were wizards, killed by a Dark Lord's curse when Harry was just a baby, and which he somehow survived. Leaving his unsympathetic aunt and uncle for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry stumbles upon a sinister mystery when he finds a three-headed dog guarding a room on the third floor. Then he hears of a missing stone with astonishing powers, which could be valuable, dangerous – or both. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

I enjoyed reading this edition with it's illustrations every few pages. It probably helped that there's been a few years' distance since my last read of the series but I found myself paying attention to small details that hadn't necessarily stuck in my mind. Or maybe it was a case of reading the words arranged differently on the larger pages.

The illustrations were nice and it was interesting to see that Kay did not stick to making the characters look like their actors. Keeping in mind that I'm not an art expert, I think a variety of media were used for different illustrations. As far as I could tell, there were water colours, pencil and, er, thicker paint. (Oil paint? I don't know. Can you tell I wasn't paying that much attention in art class?)

As well as illustrations of the actual story and characters, there were also a few pages that were excerpts from in-universe books. For example, a page showing different types of dragon eggs. There were also some lovely details in the art that weren't explicit in the text like the extra shops in Diagon Alley and Hagrid's keys, which certainly added to my enjoyment of the story. Right now, Bloomsbury's Harry Potter website has a lot of info about the new illustrated edition including some previews of the art. Have a look if you're on the fence about buying it.

Harry Potter is Harry Potter and if you haven't already read it, I can't imagine anything I could say would change that. If you're wondering whether to get this particular edition, then I would say probably yes. Y'know, depending on the factors going into your decision, like price (it isn't cheap). It strikes me that this would be a very nice edition to read to children as their first exposure of Harry Potter, especially if they're young. As far as I've managed to ascertain, Bloomsbury (and presumably the US publisher) are planning to release one volume a year so if you start now with 10–11 year olds, they can keep up being the same age as Harry and friends through to the end. (And more reliably so than when the books were originally coming out. I started off being the same age as the characters, but with longer delays between books that did not last, alas.) At any rate, I eagerly await the illustrated Chamber of Secrets coming next year.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: October 2015, Bloomsbury
Series: Harry Potter, book 1 of 7
Format read: Hardcover
Source: Online, non-Amazon-owned bookshop

Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan

After looking at the Ditmar ballot more carefully, I thought I'd try to get an idea of what Shaun Tan's Rules of Summer is like. Poking around on the book's website, I learnt that it had an app and, seguing my poking to iTunes, I saw that the app was in fact an ebook rendition of the book. Since there's very little chance I'll even get the paper book and since the app was a bargain ($6.49 AUD) for what it was, I grabbed it.

RULES OF SUMMER, is a deceptively simple story about two boys, one older and one younger, and the kind of ‘rules’ that might govern any relationship between close friends or siblings. Rules that are often so strange or arbitrary, they seem impossible to understand from the outside. Yet through each exquisite illustration of this nearly wordless narrative, we can enjoy wandering around an emotional landscape that is oddly familiar to us all.

The "rules" described by the protagonist start of fairly innocuously like "Never eat the last olive at a party" but become darker and more worrying as the story progresses. Although the narrative is told in sparse sentences, a large amount of the story is conveyed in the gorgeous artwork.

The layout of the app is that you turn pages (more or less) to get to each "rule" and then each rule leads you to the corresponding artwork. On the iPad, a single-page image is taller than the screen in landscape mode, but being an iPad, you can easily pan and zoom to see as much or little of the image and detail as you wish. In fact, each image "lands" zoomed in to some pertinent element. The magic of the iPad (or iPhone/iPod Touch, but I can't imaging that experience would be as good) is that you can zoom in on details much more easily than would be possible in the printed version. It's like having a built-in magnifying glass for the artwork. There's also a little bit of pulsing colour areas, which obviously wouldn't exist in the printed version. Another non-printable feature was the background mood music that you could turn up while reading. I think the music complemented the work nicely, but in terms of listening with sound on and off, I don't feel that strongly about it.

A few other features are in the app but (I assume) not the printed book. When you've read through it once, it unlocks sketch mode. This allows you to go through the illustrations (and words) again but with preliminary sketches instead of the finished illustrations. Some of these are charcoal (I think? I'm not entirely au fait with art stuff), while some are in colour but on a smaller scale to the finished oil paintings. The most interesting to me, as someone who isn't remotely a painter, was seeing the sketches which were slightly different to the finished works, and thinking about why they evolved that way.

After reading through the book in sketch mode, you unlock a journal with some early concept images, storyboard and so forth. Seeing some of the "rules" which didn't make it into the book was probably my favourite of the bonus content (for lack of a better term). The glimpse into the development of the book was fascinating.

I highly recommend this book and the app in particular to anyone with a passing interest in fantasy art, children, and fans of Shaun Tan's work. To be honest, I'm not actually sure that the app would be the best way to read the book to children, but it would good for a slightly older child to explore by themselves, I think. Assuming the printed book is what I think it is (that is, just the finished artwork), this app would be a great accompaniment for anyone interested in looking further at the developmental process.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2013, Hachette Australia
Series: no
Format read: iPad app
Source: Purchased from the App Store