Lots of prettiness for this post. I went for a look round Ross-on-Wye today, and found an amazing second-hand bookshop and in the book shop there was a beautiful old copy of The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck. One of my favourite stories is Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield and one of the productions they do is The Blue Bird, was so thrilled to find such a beautiful copy.
I've been on a bit of a book spree recently, I have two new favourite children's books, Red Sings from Treetops: a year in colours by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski. It's simply beautiful, I could look at it all day, there is so much detail and lovely texture in the painting / collage effect of the illustrations.
My second favourite is Grandpa Green by Lane Smith, it's also beautiful, in a very different way, the illustrations are delightfully detailed in a limited range of colours lines and stippled green texture. The story is just so poignant and deals both sensitively and cleverly with the subject of age, memories and memory loss. I love it and have made everyone in the house read it! I even read it to the cat!
The fourth and final prettiness for this post is, or rather, are, the new Penguin covers by Jillian Tamaki for The Secret Garden, Emma and Black Beauty (incidentally they are for three of my favourite stories). They're all embroidered by hand and are simply exquisite. I don't know how they've been printed, whether the stitches are in relief or not etc, I should be trying to save at the moment but I may have to splash out just so I can add these books to my book shelf and see how they've been produced, id I do I will post more about them!
The fourth and final prettiness for this post is, or rather, are, the new Penguin covers by Jillian Tamaki for The Secret Garden, Emma and Black Beauty (incidentally they are for three of my favourite stories). They're all embroidered by hand and are simply exquisite. I don't know how they've been printed, whether the stitches are in relief or not etc, I should be trying to save at the moment but I may have to splash out just so I can add these books to my book shelf and see how they've been produced, id I do I will post more about them! 
