The Bedtime Boat by Sital Gorasia Chapman and Anastasia Suvorova

Children and bedtime are an issue that most parents will have had to deal with at some time or another.  But this is also an issue for adults, who in this fast paced world of ours, find it very difficult to find that calm feeling that will allow them to sleep.  Over the last few years and particularly since the pandemic, we have all become more aware of our well being and mental health.  The importance of a good night’s sleep is well known, but giving yourself the sense of calm that is needed to sleep, that is not so easy.  thankfully there is advice out there to help us and our young people to relax and sleep.

In this delightfully engaging story we get to meet the young Chandan and his mother as they go through their nightly ritual to bring calmness and relaxation to the end of the day.  It has been a hectic day with lots of adventures, including a visit to a fun fair; but now is the time for those comforting activities such as a bath, brushing teeth and snuggling down with favourite toys and blankets.  However, even for a small child it is not always easy to relax from the excitement of the day.  The brain has a habit of repeating the events of the day and questioning what has happened.  Thankfully Chandan’s mother has a method of helping him calm down and this is a technique which uses the concept of a boat (placed on the tummy) in order to calm and soothe breathing.  But Chandan is a child with a lot of imagination and he envisages a range of sea based problems that need dealing with; from pirates, whales,  and sharks all of these fears have to be dealt with.  His mother uses the constant repetition of  “Watch the boat, Chandan, it floats on the ocean.  It rises and falls with your breath’s gentle motion.”  This helps bring a symmetry  to the flow of the story and also a gentle rhythm  which becomes really obvious and calming if you read the story out loud.

The illustrations really bring this story alive with the vivid, yet quite mellow, colour palette.  The layout on the pages varies a great deal and even  the phrase “watch the boat” is  used in a multitude of ways, so that there is no chance of boredom.  We have images  in vertical and horizontal alignment as well as those taking the whole page, or even a double page spread.  There is always something to discover and this should work beautifully as a bedtime story, or a calming afternoon read for foundation age children.  the love of the parent and child comes through both the text and the images and makes the book feel like a warm and cuddly blanket.

The back of the book gives instructions on how to make a paper boat and though it seems quite easy, you do have to keep in mind which is the back and which is the front!  Yes, I have made a first attempt and will give it another go, to see if I can improve!!  I think I might read the story whilst listening to Enya singing “Sail away”

Sital Gorasia Chapman, author

Sital left a career in banking, trained as a yoga instructor, and then started writing. She studied Writing for Children at the City Lit, and her picture book submission was commended at the FAB awards in 2019. Sital was commissioned to write a poem for the CBeebies children’s television series Colours. She writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry for children and lives in London with her husband and three young daughters.

Website: https://sitalgorasiachapman.com/

Anastasia Suvorova, illustrator

Hello! My name is Anastasia Suvorova. I am a freelance illustrator based in Limassol, Cyprus.
I specialize in artwork for picture books, covers, advertisements, animations and game projects. I aim to create poetic, philosophical, deeply felt and permeated by a sense of magic illustrations. I love creating new and beautiful worlds through my projects, especially in stories about nature, dreams, travel, attention and kindness.
Represented internationally by Illozoo | the visual communication agency.
anastasia@chaosego.com

Bear and hare

Bear and Hare by Emily Gravett

Macmillan, 9780230745391

2014-02-20 13.47.33

 

A lovely new book by this favourite author.Bear and hare go fishing and bear catches a wide variety of objects, much to the consternation and                       discomfort of hare.

Finally they are successful, but not in a way you would imagine.

This is full of humour and colour and a great book aimed at Emily’s younger readers.  I look forward to reading this to younger members of the family.

 

 

Let’s Celebrate

Yet again we have a bumper crop of anniversaries this year and there is a little bit of something for almost everyone.

Picture book characters that are celebrating include:

 

Product Details

 

Elmer, the beloved patchwork elephant from David McKee, who will be 25 years old.  He is such a favourite not only in  the UK but right across the world and particularly in Japan.  I have to say I am very proud of my ipad case with a picture of Elmer on it.

 

 

 

Katie, by James Mayhew, who has introduced so many children to the world’s greatest artists, is also 25 years old.  The books can be read as beautifully illustrated stories, but they have a real place in  schools helping pupils understand and appreciate art and artists.

 

Kipper, by Mick Inkpen will be 18 years old.  Mick Inkpen has produced some of the most loved children’ s characters over the years and Kipper is possibly his most well known creation.  My particular favourite is Kipper’s Christmas Eve but that is so much younger than the original.

Clarice Bean is 15 years old. This character has developed as the years have gone on and we now have the Ruby Redfort books by Lauren Child, based on a character found in the Clarice books.

Geoffrey in “Giraffes don’t dance”  by Giles Andreae is also 15 years.  This has always brought out the extrovert in me, quite difficult really, but you just want to dance and share the enjoyment of finding your own particular way of doing it.

“We’re going on a Bear Hunt” by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury is also 25 years old this year.  This is a true classic, with so many children able to tell you the story, even if they only remember the images and rhthms.

I find all of this quite traumatic as I remember them all and it only seems like yesterday since they first appeared at book selection or as a flyer from the publisher.

 

Books for older children start with

 

“Charlie and the Chocolate factory”.  Can you believe that he is 50 years old this year, whilst Dahl’s “Dirty Beasts” will be 30 years old.  See my article about the celebration for this wonderful book.

Also celebrating 50 years is “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” by Ian Fleming.  It has also been so much of our lives for so many years that we think it has always been around.. However for many people their memory is of the Lionel Jeffries and Dick van Dyke film, rather than the book itself.  I can remember seeing the actual car parked outside the cinema in Weston-super-mare, publicising the film showing; happy days!

 

 

Other books published in 1964 which were very popular but are no longer so easy to find are “The book of three” by Lloyd Alexander and “Harriet the Spy” by Louise Fitzhugh.  I have to admit that I found these books when I started work in a library because as a teenager in the 1960s I had been transferred to the adult library and was discovering Georgette Heyer and Agatha Christie, as well as more intellectual writers.

 

 

 

 

Christmas is coming

Where does time go to?  The older I get, the quicker time passes and I am faced with another Christmas just around the corner.  However this time is slightly different as I have my first grandchild to welcome to the festivities.  This led me to think about the picture books that I can introduce him to over the next few years.  There are some fantastic ones out there, ranging from the very early years to the more sophisticated retelling of stories such as a Christmas Carol.  Here are a few of my favourites

2013-12-19 11.16.55 2013-12-19 11.17.45 2013-12-19 11.21.34 2013-12-19 11.17.30 2013-12-19 11.17.52-1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There should be something for everyone

in this collection.  The only other one I would

put in is “Kipper’s Christmas eve” with the

lovely surprise for the children on the last page.

Happy Christmas and good reading.