Comfort Books

As most of you know I love children's illustrated book and I have a quite a little collection of carefully selected books. They all have beautiful illustrations and quirky stories from people such as Shaun Tan, Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Emily Gravett, Gris Grimly and Toni DiTerlizzi. I love all my books but there are a few special ones that I reach for on grey days that lift my mood. I call them my comfort books, and I thought I would share them with you.




The Red Tree by Shaun Tan is a beautifully illustrated book about what having a grey day is like. Shaun uses wonderful imagery to capture the feeling of simple phrases such as: "sometimes you just don't know what you are supposed to be", "all your troubles come at once", wonderful things are passing you by.

This picture depicts the phrase:
"nobody understands"

Although the book seems dark and depressing from this description, it has a wonderful message of hope. That at the end of the day things will turn out alright and good things will come.

My next book: The Tale I told Sasha is a a poem about a girl that has a yellow ball that her mother gave to her "because the day was wet and dull."
Through following her yellow ball through the rooms in her house she discovers many wonderful things and we see into her imagination the beauty

of

make believe. This story again has a message of hope and joy in small things. The end of the poem states:

Our house is quiet, small and plain

and yet it's rooms run far and wide

A hundred pencils, swift as rain,

writing on sheets of beaten gold

would not be quick enough to hold

the strange adventures shadows hide.

My last book, You Are My Sunshine, is a Toot & Puddle book by Holly Hobbie. This book is simply written and has an important message: Sometimes people are sad and there might not be a good reason or much you can do about it and that's okay. In this story Toot wakes up one day and is

"moping". As his mopey days continue his best friend Puddle tries to cheer him up by doing everything he can think of that will make Toot happy. But Toot continues to

mope. I'm not going to spoil too much of it for you but in the end Puddle learns that sometimes all you can do is love someone and Toot learns that friends are very important.