A while ago we read a book from the library, Sylvester and the New Year and I was so enchanted by it - the story, the illustration, the production of the book, everything - that I had to contact the publishers and thank them for it, and they were kind enough to send me some books to read with my kids and review here on the blog! So instead of my usual post, this week I will talk a little about the publisher and then review four of the seven books that they sent me. The others will be coming soon, I just wanted to be in keeping with the number of books that I usually talk about!
There isn't a huge amount online about Far Far Away Books, but I have discovered that they were founded in 2011 and are a publisher of a large number of beautiful picture books for children of various ages. They also publish a beautiful range of fairy tales, one of which will be featured in this post, and for all of which they plant a tree for every book sold. You can see the book trailer for The Three Little Pigs here.
The books are also all beautiful, colourful and printed on high quality paper (and would make brilliant Christmas presents this time of year!).
I'll start with our favourite of the lovely books we were sent. Rumplestiltskin by Noel Grammont and Peter Bailey is a retelling of the popular fairy tale, of which I've always been a fan. In a lot of ways this retelling is very faithful to the original which I really liked as I don't like it when fairy tales are totally changed in order to cater to kids, but the ending is a little nicer and more resolved than the original tale as I remember it, which I thought worked very well. We took it on a train journey with us the day it arrived and read it about five times that day alone I believe - high praise from my three year old! My favourite thing about it though is how eye catching it is. Inside the text is often in different sizes and colours for emphasis and it makes it really fun to read. I also thought the illustration was absolutely beautiful; not at all overdone and pretty much perfect to compliment the story. I forsee it being loved for a long time to come!
Also by Noel Grammont with Nina Filipek and Emmeline Pidgen is The Ocean Counting Book, a simple and sweet little story about a giraffe who is tired of looking at trees and builds a boat to discover new things in the ocean. Again it's really colourful and charming and we had to spend a while on any page with fish on as Sam is currently obsessed with the word ('fis!' 'fis!'). It's a lovely, beautifully produced counting book with a very sweet little story.The last two I want to talk about today are both by Chloe Elliot and Dean Russell and were also both big hits with the kids. So Frog is a great, simple little story about a frog who hops away from his mummy and all the things that he does during his busy day. As you can probably see from the cover illustrations, it's also full of colour (a recurring theme with these gorgeous books) and the rhymes are lovely. It's a much simpler story than Rumplestiltskin and suits a younger age group perfectly. Sam brings it to me a couple of times a week at the moment which is impressive considering he often won't sit through a story unless it's bedtime.
Finally Mouse and the Moon Made of Cheese tells the tale of a mouse who believes the moon is made of cheese and wants to eat it up. He goes around asking people who he thinks will be able to help him get to the moon, and despite them all telling him he's wrong and the moon is not made of cheese, he never gives up. A funny little story about not giving up on your dreams, and again gorgeously illustrated.
There are a lot of interesting looking titles coming in 2016 from Far Far Away Books and I'm so thankful to them for sending us these beautiful books to read and love! Reviews of the other three will be coming very soon, but in the meantime you can find out about them on their website.
Catch up with the rest of the Make Mine an Indie series here
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