I’ve been getting a few mail with zines and books to review lately and separate posts will take too long, so I’m going to collect them all in one post for your enjoyment! 🙂
I’ll be doing quick reviews of the following books/zines:
+ NO! A Lesson in Love by Sam Hepburn
+ The Weird Fish Factpedia by Martyn Warren
+ 2 zines by Atem Books
+ Anorak’s Activity book + Happy coloring book!
No! A Lesson in Love by Sam Hepburn
The full name of this book is NO! A lesson in love — which got my imagination into hyperdrive a little, since Sam hasn’t yet released pictures of her book a few weeks ago (images of gender issues immediately came to mind!) I was really surprised when I got the copy of the book though — it’s a really fun tribute to Sam’s dog: a schnauzer named Gunnie (also known as Jang Gun).
The book’s premise is a simple one — Sam describes the book as an allegory of good dog ownership, and shows how dogs show only unconditional love no matter how we interpret their little quirks. Sam initially drew the illustrations in black and white, but decided to scrap her original plans and drew with crayons instead to experiment with color, which I thought turned out perfect for the book and set the tone that would reel in both children and adults alike.
The Weird Fish Factopedia
When Martyn Warren approached me about the Weird Fish Factopedia, I was intrigued. As a person completely devoid of knowledge about fishes of any sort, I was interested to know what made a Weird Fish, well, weird. Turns out Martyn didn’t need to convince me a whole lot about Weird fishes (who swim alongside their other cousin, Normal fish) — I want one of my own now.
Filled with funny anecdotes and facts (all made up, just in case you were confused 😉 Martyn sure does a good job of entertaining this reader. I found the drawing of fishes mating particularly hilarious! (I’ve neglected to see if this is how some fishes do the deed, but I digress…) It also has some political satire woven in between its pages as well, and you can actually glean from this review is that Martyn has quite the imagination. I can’t wait for more!
Atem books
Atem books is an independent publishing house based in Catalunya, Spain that focus on artist books. They’re also the publisher of Carpaccio magazine — a magazine about illustration, photography and art. They’ve sent in two zines: De posible a imposible, 20 veces by Maria Mantella and A Quiet Stage by Daniel Mendoza.
Maria’s zine reads more like a showcase of her past works — with captions in Spanish (that I couldn’t quite understand). The zine was perfect bound and in full color — beautiful, save for the fact that a saddle stitched format would have made a better choice. (the thin zine lacked the amount of pages necessary to go through with perfect binding, so it showed signs of strain easily).
Daniel’s zine is entirely in black and white; his illustrations are detailed and so are the characters depicted. It’s a symbolic story, and the reader is ultimately left with their own conclusion to make. I interpreted it as still frames, each bearing a glimmer of hope for their character. If you’re into photography, illustration and art, there’s plenty more to choose from over at their site!
Anorak Books
Anorak from the UK is making waves in the children’s publishing industry with their excellent books — not surprising since their tagline reads The Happy Mag for Kids and I’m hard pressed to find anything otherwise. They sent me a couple of their coloring books (featured here are the ones illustrated by Tad Carpenter (featured previously ) and Adam Higton) and their first ever Activity Kit (with a lovely cover by Supermundane.)
I really love the energy of these books. Though printed in one color (and black’s not it) they’ve managed to set a fun canvas for kids’ imagination to run wild. I wished that Anorak was around when I was a young ‘un, precisely because these are the kind of books I’d want to read along with my kids.
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If you have a zine that you want me to see, drop me an email at amy{AT}pikaland.com (I can’t promise that I’ll feature each and every one though!)
Have a great weekend everyone and I’ll see you back on Monday!
