Category archive: books

May 12, 2013

Max And Gaby's Alphabet, By Tony Fitzpatrick

Chicago artist/dj/dad Tony Fitzpatrick was quizzing his 4yo kid to come up with things that begin with each letter of the alphabet, and he decided to make an illustration project out of it. Two+ years later, in 2001, Max...
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April 22, 2013

Happy Punks 123!

Oh, hi there, Happy Punks! John and Jana's new book, Happy Punks 123 A Counting Story, looks as awesome as their last title, A Rule Is To Break: A Child's Guide to Anarchy. I confess, my kids' punk education...
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April 18, 2013

Library/Stairway/Home Theater/Slide By Moon Hoon

There is a LOT to love about this awesome space at the energetic center of architect Moon Hoon's Panorama House, built in Chungbuk, South Korea. I mean, it's a family room, a stairway, a library, a home theater [with...
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April 8, 2013

Project OBJECT's Mid-Century Kid Sale At Fab.com

Remember last fall when that sweet, mime-lookin' Antonio Vitali puppet turned up? Well, he's back. And now he can be yours. Georgia-based design aficionado Aaron Cohen, who found the puppet, just launched a week-long, kid-design-themed sale at Fab.com, and...
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April 5, 2013

Kids Cardboard Lifestyle: The Cardboard Collective

Seriously, kids go through so much stuff, so quickly, it really all should be made of cardboard. And then it's like, seriously, just make that yourself. Which is a severe underselling of the awesomeness of Tokyo expat Amber's kids...
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April 3, 2013

Tokyo Street Art Coloring Pages By A Small Lab

Gaijin-turned-Edo-ko anthropologist Chris Berthelsen has spent years documenting the stickers, stencils, tags and graffiti of various neighborhoods around Shinjuku and Shibuya for his Tokyo Street Art Research Project. Until now the best way to see the fruits of his...
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March 4, 2013

Here Come The Cubies' ABC

History is not written only by the winners. Sometimes the losers get to add a cutesy ABC book with well-crafted, parodic rhymes to the record. The 1913 Armory Show opened 100 years ago last month in New York, and...
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February 27, 2013

Bear In Space: The Truth Is Out There

Bear In Space is a 1970 Russian children's book about a bear who fakes a moon landing. It shows all the neat camera tricks and stuff the bear used to make it look like he really landed on the...
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January 22, 2013

From Doll Library To Doll Hospital

Like any reasonable person, I despise American Girl dolls almost as much as I love libraries. Which makes this is a net positive story. [nyt]...
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December 24, 2012

Bun B's Rap Coloring & Activity Book

"Game is sad. He wants a new tattoo. Draw him one that covers up his butterfly." If ever a tumblr was destined for a book deal, it's Bun B's Rap Coloring Book. And of course, it happened the week...
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November 28, 2012

Every Overparenting Generation Must Have Its Goodnight Moon Parody

And here's ours, in the New Yorker, courtesy of Jen Nessel and Lizzy Ratner:Goodnight non-slip socks And goodnight sustainable-wood blocks Goodnight friends with unique, unusual names And goodnight brain-development gamesGood Night Nanny Cam [newyorker] Previously, and uncannily similar, from DT...
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November 12, 2012

Nathan Heller On Andrew Solomon On Difference, Disability, Identity, Parents, Kids

Nathan Heller will get your attention in his review of Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon's amazing-sounding new book on parents, kids and difference grappling what he terms, "horizontal identity": wherThe secret history of sex is not a story of...
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'I Refuse To Lie To Children.'

The whole time I was reading Emma Brockes' 2011 interview with Maurice Sendak this weekend in The Believer, I kept thinking how rare it is to hear the word schnooks these days. And how awesome it would be if he...
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Eric Carle X Game Of Thrones

I don't watch Game of Thrones, but this is how I imagined they talk, and I'd sure like to send Eric Carle and his band of marauding ladybugs there. So win-win. If Westeros had a picture book [mrstater's tumblr...
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November 9, 2012

Coppernickel Goes Mondrian, By Wouter van Reek

On a more upbeat, and slightly more abstract, book note, here's Coppernickel Goes Mondrian, an "artist tribute" featuring Keepvogel, a hoodie-wearing bird character created by the Dutch animator Wouter van Reek. Coppernickel/Keepvogel is apparently famous in Holland. The bird,...
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Jake & Dinos Chapman's Kid's Book WTF

British artists Jake & Dinos Chapman have been working their creepy, shocking, disgusting, puerile, warped, deviant, unsettling schtick for so long now, the kids born when the duo first started making mutant Nazi penis-nosed baby hell sculptures are now...
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October 8, 2012

Manners Can Be Fun (1938) By Munro Leaf

If the only thing you know about Munro Leaf is that he wrote Ferdinand The Bull, oh brother, are you missing out. Over at Stopping Off Place Michael posted some spreads from one of the amazing books Leaf wrote...
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October 1, 2012

Pappa The Rapper: Hatarake ECD

I don't read Japanese, but I smell DadWagon's influence... — Dadwagon (@dadwagon) October 1, 2012 Smells like Dadwagon spirit? Right generation, wrong genre. ECD is Yoshinori Ishida, one of the pioneers of underground Japanese-language rap. That's him up top...
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Scrollable Harold And The Purple Crayon

In the spirit of that incredible, single-pane XKCD comic the other day, and because, inexplicably, no one else seems to have done it, Matt Haughey turned Harold and The Purple Crayon into a single image. Harold & The Purple...
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September 27, 2012

Wake The F**k Up

Considering the Obama administration's disastrous handling of medical marijuana and decriminalization, and that before he did the drawings for the insta-classic, illustrator Richard Cortes was also the creator of It's Just A Plant, I don't know if he and...
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September 26, 2012

That Is A Button Well-Pushed, Free Range Kids Lady

Ancient Playground, Central Park, by Richard Dattner You remember Lenore Skenazy; she wrote that book, Free Range Kids, the one you kind of guilt yourself for not reading every time you drive your kid to a foam-lined playdate. Well,...
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September 15, 2012

Bob Staake's Golden Book Of Inappropriate Children's Books

You might remember illustrator and children's book author Bob Staake from his version of the freaky German classic, Der Struwelpeter. Or from about a million books and graphics he did all over the place, holy smokes, though hm, some...
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August 28, 2012

The Age Of Placental Enlightenment

I really have no idea, but how can I not quote this passage of Joshua Mostafa's review of Bubbles, the English translation of the first volume of German philosopher/tv intellectual Peter Sloterdijk?The manner in which the newly-born child is detached...
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August 24, 2012

Jake Dobkin & Amy Sohn: The Remodeled Eat-In-Kitchen Debate

Oh man, fresh off of selling his gently used Bugaboo, Gothamist's dad in chief and OG Park Slope proletariat Jake Dobkin sat down for a Q&A with Amy Sohn, who wanted to promote her new book about the Whoremoms of...
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July 30, 2012

Wookie The Chew On A TeeFury T-Shirt

There are no kids' sizes, and the Deathstar-ish landscape, though inventive, kind of underwhelms me, but if you're a Wookie The Chew compleatist, you'd best hurry up, because you only have about 5.5 hours left to order this James...
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July 29, 2012

Not Simply Oblivious But Actually Damaging

Judith Warner's NYT review of Teach Your Children Well, Marin County family therapist Madeline Levine's nuclear takedown of hyper-competitive Boomer parenting, is a thing of depressing beauty. The end of this sentence:Other kids cheat, take drugs, drink, shut down or,...
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July 27, 2012

Baby Mama Courtroom Drama

Judging from the cluster of dumbass Amazon reviews in April 2012, Cathy Middleton, Esq.'s 2006 book,Girl, Get that Child Support has taken a while to reach the LOLZ section of the internet. But RAWSISTAZ.COM gave it a generally solid...
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July 26, 2012

D Is For D'oh! S Is For Steampunk ABC Book.

When I set out to find a compelling Steampunk themed ABC book, I was shocked to find there wasn't one. I've been doing steampunk art for several years in the video game industry, and now I'm on a mission...
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July 18, 2012

Kingsley Amis Children's Books

Here's an anecdote about Roald Dahl meeting Kingsley Amis at Tom Stoppard's party, and suggesting he write some children's books because, "the little bastards'd swallow it." Alas, Amis never tried to found out. Roald Dahl and Kingsley Amis [ivebeenreadinglately via...
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June 24, 2012

Billy Manbo, WWII Flying Ace

This is pretty extraordinary. During World War II, Los Angeleno Bill Manbo and his family were imprisoned along with thousands of other Japanese Americans in an internment camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. But he somehow managed to take photos--Kodachrome slides,...
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June 23, 2012

Luke, I'm Your Involved Father

Jeffrey Brown made this book about Darth Vader taking "an active role in raising his son" that is surely as "sweet" and "hilarious" as its publishers promise. It is non-canonical, but from the title, you can see it has...
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June 1, 2012

ZOMG Dadwagon Reading In Brooklyn June 13

This is so awesome. You should totally go. Dadwagon is starting a monthly reading series, which, right?? And the first installment features dad-related stories from Peter Meehan, Paul Ford, and Jeff Yang. Like I said, you really, really should go....
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May 31, 2012

WTFantastique: Terrifying French Kids Books

Where the toes have no names. British writer Jenny Colgan's list. is photoblogging her way through the kids' section of the library in Antibes, documenting France's unparalleled selection of terrifying children's books. So far she hasn't found one with...
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May 28, 2012

Roland Barthes On French Playthings

There's a new, complete translation of Roland Barthes' 1957 Mythologies out. Haven't seen it yet--the Times review is awesome in itself-- but Barthes' brief smackdown of French toys was in the earlier editions:French toys always mean something, and this something...
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May 18, 2012

The Mary Blair Treasury Of Golden Books Is Near

Well, you can stop grubbin' around in library sales and shelling out the Hamiltons on Abebooks. Because a fresh, crisp, digitally remastered copy of A Mary Blair Treasury of Golden Books can be on your doorstep by August:I Can...
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May 8, 2012

Maurice Sendak Has Sailed Off In His Private Boat

At 83, and given his recent health, it's not like it was unexpected. And I swear I was fine with this until I wrote the headline. Maurice Sendak, Children's Author, Dies at 83 [nytimes] image via inandoutofweeks.com, a project...
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May 2, 2012

U.N.C.L.E.

K2 so desperately and hilariously needed to go to the bathroom, but she also wanted to know rightthisminute why they had canceled "that movie," The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Because we found this coloring book in a box outside the library...
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April 25, 2012

It'll Look Great On Her Pre-K Application

I showed this to the kid last night, and she was all, "Kickstarter? Back when I was 4, all we had to self-publish our homemade storybooks was blurb.com!" Actually, she said, "See, that kid gets to chew gum, and...
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April 21, 2012

Edward Gorey's The Black Doll Plush Toy

Awesome fur coat-wearing, goth weirdo writer/artist/illustrator/playwright Edward Gorey used to make stuffed animals for friends and the cast and crew of his plays. Rarely, he also made them for sale, like the 26 handsewn, rice-filled Figbash dolls that accompanied...
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March 30, 2012

Playscapes Reissue Of Friedberg's Handcrafted Playgrounds

This is pretty amazing. Paige from Playscapes, the playground design and history blog, has acquired publication rights to M. Paul Friedberg's long out-of-print 1975 DIY classic, Handcrafted Playrgounds, and has made it available again as a PDF. It's just...
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March 21, 2012

My First Patti Smith

From Oslo designer Anders Hansen's series of record cover book covers. The only way this Patti Smith Horses X Dorling Kindersley remix could be better is if it were a boardbook. Correction: Thanks to Anders for pointing out that...
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March 12, 2012

Bezos Is His Middle Name

I'm going to name my first child Amazon. I'm incredibly grateful to them. There's no other way to put it but that working with Amazon totally changed my life for the better.writer/bartender-turned-writer Mishka Shubaly, talking about his experience making like...
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March 8, 2012

I Have No Idea What To Expect From What To Expect

Good gravy, I've been at this thing for years now, and for the life of me, I can't figure out what the hell is going on in the trailer for What To Expect When You're Expecting: The Movie. A...
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March 2, 2012

My Name Is The Truax, I Speak For The National Wood Flooring Association

While visiting a 4-H camp once, Terri Birkett, an employee at the Stuart Flooring Corporation ["A Berkshire Hathaway Company"] saw "some college students were using The Lorax to preach a liberal environmental message to children," and knew she had...
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March 1, 2012

My Name Is The Lorax, I Speak For My 70 Marketing Partners

As if the only reason all the other Dr. Seuss-based movies were so shitty was because they didn't have enough product tie-in "launch partners." Movies That Are Destroying America - The Lorax [colbertnation.com]...
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February 27, 2012

RIP Jan Berenstain

Daddy Types is sad to relay news of the passing of Jan Berenstain, at the age of 88. Our thoughts are with her family, and we take comfort in knowing that Mrs Berenstain has joined her late husband Stan in...
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February 24, 2012

The Children's Literary Group

Wow, This glimpse at ur-Yuppie parenting is only one of the many gems in Maria Bustillos' piece on 1970s child publishing prodigy Alexandra SheedyIn June of 1977, when Sheedy was fifteen, a piece on "A Young Writers Salon" appeared in...
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February 22, 2012

I Am A Book Deal (And So Can You! If You're Stephen Colbert)

For those keeping score at home, the total elapsed time between Stephen Colbert pitching his parody children's book about flag pole identity politics to Maurice Sendak and the announcement of his actual, in-real-life book deal is 29 days. Hachette will...
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February 20, 2012

Lisa Larson Boardbooks And Kids Stuff

So I gather that Lisa Larson is the ceramic Kay Bojesen of Sweden? Or maybe the Marilyn Neuhart. Either way, her decades of crunchy, crafty modernist designs have a Japanese following strong enough to support new spin-off merchandise. Like...
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February 17, 2012

DT Friday Freakout: Sleep Edition

Because you've got enough to freak out about already, Daddy Types collects headlines from the worlds of science, health, and parenting designed to freak you during the week, and compiles them into one big, weekend-ruining list, the DT Friday Freakout:...
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