Books with author Judy Pelikan

Instill a lifelong love of reading in children. Created by Judy Pelikan, Books Make Me Happy is the perfect gift for a beginning reader, an interactive journal that encourages reading. It begins where classroom reading logs end―title, author, illustrator―and offers prompts that knit the bond between story and reader more deeply, such as "My favorite part of the book was..." and "I will recommend this book to a friend because..." There are fill-ins where kids can list their favorite books, draw scenes from a story, and write about the pleasures they get from reading. Throughout are full-color embroidered illustrations based on real children's drawings about their love of books. Also included are five pages of stickered bookplates that kids can customize and use to personalize their own books.For children, Books Make Me Happy is an invaluable tool to inspire first-time readers to become lifelong readers. For parents, it's both a keepsake and a rare window into the mind of their child at a particularly interesting time.

This playful alphabet, lush with surprising details and limned in delicate colors, was inspired by that familiar and beloved nursery companion the alphabet block. As reimagined by artist Judy Pelikan, each letter of the alphabet takes possession of its own face, covering, carving, painting, and manipulating the surface of the block in a variety of inventive and unexpected ways.Pelikan approaches humble wooden cubes as points of entry into a magical world, one of surprising objects, exotic animals, intimate landscapes, and delicate balances. Every face is decorated with images related to its letter: the Painter's Pointillist block introduces a Pitcher and Pearls and one-Point Perspective, while a Tolstoy Tome straightens a Teetering Tea Table (set with a complete, and minute, Tea service). And some are not quite blocks at all: a Folded strip of Film follows sandy Footprints past a Friend's cowrie shell while a quartet of Jaunty Jacks squares up to form a miniature house of cards. Each page offers up its own intriguing and challenging little world, a combination of the best of Kate Greenaway's color and form and M.C. Escher's mystery and visual disconnects.On the verso, facing each block, is the upper and lower case letter, redrawn after the forms of Paul Renner's simple, modern Futura typeface, elegant counterpoints to the fascinating, minutely detailed pencil-and-watercolor illustrations. This is small enough for a child to handle, and sophisticated enough for an adult to appreciate. It is a little bijou of a book.

Instill a lifelong love of reading in children. Created by Judy Pelikan, Books Make Me Happy is the perfect gift for a beginning reader, an interactive journal that encourages reading. It begins where classroom reading logs end—title, author, illustrator—and offers prompts that knit the bond between story and reader more deeply, such as "My favorite part of the book was..." and "I will recommend this book to a friend because..." There are fill-ins where kids can list their favorite books, draw scenes from a story, and write about the pleasures they get from reading. Throughout are full-color embroidered illustrations based on real children's drawings about their love of books. Also included are five pages of stickered bookplates that kids can customize and use to personalize their own books.For children, Books Make Me Happy is an invaluable tool to inspire first-time readers to become lifelong readers. For parents, it's both a keepsake and a rare window into the mind of their child at a particularly interesting time.