All posts by Jenny Vaughan

Several Nibweb members attended the 2017 London Book Fair, meeting up with publishers and each other, and looking out for new ideas and opportunities. Several have offered pictures – see above and below. The LBF blog said ‘Day two of #LBF17 was once again a hive of activity. As industry professionals filled the halls of this global marketplace for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels.’

Nibwebbers meeting up at the end of that very Day 2 (Wednesday) add: ‘Escaping from all that action, a select gathering of said professionals took refuge in the upper regions,  near the end of the day.

‘And, below, here we are: (L toR) Brenda Williams, looking cheerful, Phil Steele busy, Lionel Bender relaxed, and Brian Williams reflective (while giving advice to the photographer on how to work the camera – a woman from the SoA stand kindly took the photo).’

Nibweb member Anne Rooney says: ‘Best book I’ve worked on this year – the dinos make an outing to LBF (on Lonely Planet stand).’

When the owner of Splosh Art Gallery calls in sick, it’s up to a scrawny, bespectacled boy (looking a bit like a young Andy Warhol) and readers (age range 7-10) to prepare for an exhibition in time for the annual gallery competition. So readers are on a quest to make the judges believe that the gallery deserves to win the prestigious competition. Readers will find out about and prove that they know Munch from Magritte, Pollock from Picasso, Kandinsky from Klee and more. They will search for a counterfeit painting, spot an odd one out, decide what’s ‘real’ art and more. Meanwhile, they almost constantly have to outwit devious Don (who has an uncanny resemblance to Salvador Dalí) as he tries to trip them up.

Rather than progressing through the book chronologically, author Susie Hodge leads readers on with questions, riddles and puzzles, and depending on their answers, progress in different directions. Clues are dotted along the way and wrong turns are redirected. So the book is a fun game as well as a way of learning about modern art; a novel introduction to dozens of influential artists.

It was a fun book to write and plan – with great designer, illustrator and editor who all helped to make sense of the non-chronological confusion where necessary. More to follow in the series.

Modern Art Mayhem by Susie Hodge, published by QED

Nibweb writers are published in a vast number of countries, and in many different languages – it’s something we’re especially proud of. We sometimes make a point of looking out for our work in foreign bookshops. Member Clare Hibbert found these books by fellow-member, Cath Senker, in Italy:

As usual, this was at the House of Commons (very occasionally, it’s in the Lords) and, this year, doubled with the new Ruth Rendell Award for Services to Literacy. The event was on 6 December.

The winner of the Educational Writers Award was This Is Not a Maths Book by Anna Weltman, illustrated by Edward Cheverton and Ivan Hissey, published by Ivy Kids. The judges said of it that it’s ‘just not maths as you thought you knew it …it makes you itch to take up a pencil and get started on the designs … it taught us more about [maths and art] than we’ve learned in aeons!’

Runners up were: The School of Art by Teal Triggs and illustrated by Daniel Frost, published by Wide Eyed Editions; and The Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary by David and Ben Crystal, illustrated by Kate Bellamy, published by Oxford University Press.

The Ruth Rendell Ward winner was Andy McNab, who sent a video explaining how as a once-reluctant reader, now turned best-selling writer, he has worked to encourage young people to overcome struggles with reading and learn to enjoy it.

An interesting footnote is that two of the winning publishers – Ivy Kids and Wide Eyed Editions – are part of the Quarto group, though they began as small independents. And both books are distinctly one-off and unorthodox. Can this mean that the straitjacket of illustrated non-fiction in series is now a little looser than it used to be?

Nibweb members are likely to be keen to oblige if imagination, originality and idiosyncrasy are high on the agenda in future!

The English Buildings blog is an online diary of meetings with the remarkable buildings that Philip Wilkinson sees on his travels around the country. It began in 2007 as a continuation of Philip’s The English Buildings Book, which was first published by English Heritage in 2006. The blog has since taken on a life of its own, with short pieces on all kinds of buildings, from the very large (big churches and country houses) to the very small (well houses, gazebos, even the occasional public lavatory!). The emphasis is usually on the unfamiliar – on structures that aren’t much covered in books or online – and all the text and nearly all the photographs are by Philip himself.

Asked at the Awards Ceremony how he felt about winning for a second time, he replied, ‘Honoured, totally unprepared, and amazed!’ – but the supply of interesting English architecture seems almost endless, so he continues blogging in his dazed and grateful state.

http://englishbuildings.blogspot.co.uk

Susie Hodge’s latest book – Art in Detail – is about just that: the details we can easily miss when we visit a gallery. She says:

‘This book is intended to be a bit like taking some of your favourite works of art home so you can study them in your own time and in close-up. As well as that – someone will be nearby, unobtrusively pointing out inside information about each artwork.

‘When you go to an art gallery, the more information you have about a work of art, the more you can enjoy it. So this book gives loads of fascinating and intricate insights about various aspects of 100 works of art. With close-up pictures, the information given includes backgrounds to the artists, complications and problems they encountered, materials and methods used, palettes, materials, underlying symbolism and any changes or alterations made. External influences are also considered, such as political, social or economic issues, and personal factors affecting each artist.

‘It’s as if some of the world’s greatest works of art are put under a magnifying glass. Artists featured include Giotto, Gauguin, Rousseau, Rego, Klimt, Klee, Bourgeois, Bacon, Caravaggio, Constable, Manet, Millais, Hogarth, Turner, Poussin – and eighty-five others!’

Art in Detail: 100 Masterpieces, Susie Hodge, 2016, Thames & Hudson

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LXLH66Z/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tm.

It’s a hot topic. The Darknet is part of the Deep Web, the largest part of the Internet, which is not indexed by regular search engines. It’s where public databases are found, along with subscription-only and password-protected services, and the content of social networks and messaging sites. The Darknet can be accessed via the Tor browser and Tor Hidden Services allow you to find anonymously run websites. No one uses their real name on the Darknet.

Nibwebber Clare Hibbert was co-writer on Dorling Kindersley’s 100 Events that Made History along with Andrea Mills, Rona Skene and Sarah Tomley (each writer took a chapter – Clare’s was ‘All Change’). The book recently received a Parents’ Choice Silver Honors in Nonfiction. (For the full list, see:  http://www.parents-choice.org/award.cfm?thePage=books&p_code=p_boo&c_code=c_nof&orderby=award.)

The Parents’ Choice Awards is the USA’s oldest nonprofit programme created to recognise quality in children’s media and to help parents make informed purchases for their children.

Architecture in Minutes, by Nibweb member Susie Hodge, is a chunky little book intended for anyone who is interested in architecture and wants to know more, or who simply wants to refresh their knowledge.

Highly illustrated, it’s an accessible guide to the history and theory of architecture, and explores a broad range, from the earliest structures to some of the latest concepts and developments. Included are details about significant buildings, historic styles and movements, and information about celebrated architects from various periods and of different nationalities.

It includes details about the Greek orders, Roman engineering, Gothic architecture, the Renaissance, the Baroque, Revivalism, Art Nouveau, Modernism and Postmodernism, Futurism and Dynamic architecture along with architects like Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren, Gaudí, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Frank Gehry – and loads more.