This week and next week I’m going to be covering all the books I bought at Mocca this past weekend. But before I start I wanted to show you this book author/illustrator Annette Simon sent to me. The gold seal on the front of the book means it has won one of the fifty best book covers from the AIGA. It’s a kid’s story about birds that copy each other’s words. Every sentence in the book gets repeated twice which I can imagine could be fun to read with a child. Also Annette shared with me that she drew the entire book in Quark. If you are not a designer, Quark is a layout program. I can’t imagine trying to draw using that program. The illustrations in the book are very simple, mostly made of a few shapes on a white background. It works well having such a limited palette with red text for the red bird and blue text for the blue bird. Annette also sent over a book her five year old son Simon wrote, as told to his mom. It’s called This Book Is For All Kid’s, But Especially My Sister Libby. Libby Died. It’s a book of all his questions and thoughts about death after his three and half year old sister Libby died of a rare disease. The book is touching-”And when you die, you don’t even have to get chicken pox” fills a whole page in bright colors and little pink dots. It certainly would be a great book to read to a child who has experienced a loss. You can pick up a copy of these books here and here. Thanks Annette for sharing your great work!

© Julia Rothman 2007