Are you a busy parent or grandparent, a teacher or librarian looking for the next best read for your kids? Are you an established or emerging author or illustrator looking for inspiration? Perhaps neither of the above, you might just be a picture book enthusiast looking to browse quality books. Whoever and whatever you are, welcome! You shall find a lot of great leads here.
This blog’s mission is to help kickstart or maintain a love affair with literacy, reading and promote the appreciation of illustration art through engaging with illustrated children’s books. Every book reviewed here not only appeals to my inner child, but has a seal of approval from my son (now a teenager) or other children in my life. This is the best validation I know of when it comes to book choices to inspire the love of reading.
I share the view of C.S. Lewis (the author of “Narnia”) who proclaimed that “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest”. Therefore, all reviews in this blog are for books that appeal to my inner child and adult connoisseur.
Kids Book Explorer blog (formerly known as Book Illustration Art blog) has been included in Feedspot’s “Top 20 Art Book Blogs To Follow” in 2018, 2019 and 2020 (read more on Feedspot’s top blogs selection process).
A great deal of my passion for picture books is fueled by aesthetics of illustration art and intelligent book design. “There’s so much more to a book than just the reading”, goes Maurice Sendak’s famous reflection. I could not agree more and this must be why some years ago I started collecting original picture book art.
My collection consists of watercolors, drawings and sketches by some of the greatest Australian illustrators (Robert Ingpen, Shaun Tan, Anne Spudvilas to name a few) as well as Russian masters like Alexei Reipolsky and G.A.V. Traugot. The ‘curiosity’ of the collection is a complete set of illustrations for two Wilhelm Hauff fairytales – “Little Mouk” and “The Dwarf called Nose” – executed by a lesser-known Australian illustrator Harry Reade.
I hope you’ll hang around.
My bio can be found here.
Thanks for stepping by,
Natalia Bragaru
