DIM’S DICTIONARY OF DYNAMIC READS: Built With Love


Picture books are renowned for tackling a plethora of subjects that illuminate imaginative thought and spark creativity. None more so than those centred around construction, building, making. As an adult, I am constantly moved and enlightened by the ability of humans to design and create homes to shelter in and communities to thrive amongst. Imagine then how enthralling these types of books are for youngsters. This crafty collection of recent releases escorts young readers from architectural triumphs, to design to the notion of ‘home is where the heart (or pet) is’. Enjoy!

Digby & Claude by Emma Allen and Hanna Sommerville

This hefty picture book is a moving tribute to the re-developmental phase of housing in Australia in the late 1930s. It is also a powerful testimony to change, the evolution of friendship and resilience of community spirit. Digby and Claude unite as a change in the appearance and composition of their street begins; new flats are being built. As the demolition of the old and raising of the new takes place, a parallel construction of their own occurs, a wondrous cubby, which homes an unbreakable friendship and precious memories. A moving pictorial snapshot of a time in history that captures the essence of change. Sublime reading.

NLA, September 2018 ISBN: 9780642279279

Jørn’s Magnificent Imagination by Coral Vass and Nicky Johnston

Created and crafted by this well-known duo, this picture book is a truly magnificent tribute to the designer of our beloved Sydney Opera House. To this day, few other building designs match its elegance, iconic uniqueness or colourful history. This book is less of how it was constructed and more of a close up look of the life of the visionary gifted Danish architect, Jørn Utzon to the point of the building’s completion. A classroom staple!

EK Books, October 2022 ISBN: 9781922539144

Home Sweet Home by Mia Gassany and Paula Blumen

This spectacularly presented experience is a journey around the world hosted by a menagerie of pets who diligently describe their humans’ abodes with profound affection and glorious detail. Homes across the Americas, Europe and Asian continent are portrayed in absorbing detail, enough on each page in fact to create a ‘look and find’ scenario. Locating the narrating pets is half the joy. The other, a superb intro into housing styles and conventions illustrating that not all homes are equal. Highly recommended.

Frances Lincoln (Quarto - Imprint), October 2017, ISBN: 9781786031136

How To Build The Perfect Cubby House by Heath McKenzie

Privacy, functionality, fun; these are just some of the essential prerequisites of building one’s cubby house. McKenzie does a marvellous job of juxtaposing family whims and values, dynamics and desires within the walls of one very extraordinary cubby. Kids will love the comedy and absurdity of it all because including a movie room in one’s cubby house is tots normal, right! Brilliantly relayed in bubbled speeches and useful steps, this is fantastic inspo for the family’s next weekend project together.

Scholastic Press, May 2019 ISBN: 9781760152673

Puffin The Architect by Kimberly Andrews

Speaking of family projects, this golden nugget anthropomorphically highlights a pair of precocious pufflings’ requests for a place of their own. Their puffin parent, the erstwhile architect of designs and demands, comes up with dozens of potential dwelling ideas only to receive constant rebuff from said youngsters. Sound familiar? Eventually we learn that home and one’s sense of place is indeed unique to self. Jolly rhyming text and magnificent imagery thrusts puffin magic and a myriad of different housing designs onto centre stage revealing the wonderful diversity of living spaces, needs and wants, not to mention the incredibly photogenic puffin! A unique, entertaining sensory delight.

Penguin Random House Australia, July 2018 ISBN: 9780143793755

Tiny Tradies

 by Tami Sussman and Tom Jellett

Delightfully Aussie in flavour, this metaphoric adventure humorously couples the daily quirks and tribulations of toddlers with those of the tradies who construct and labour for a living. Both occupations of course involve a lot of work, large appetites, a need to dress appropriately and enough stamina to build, create, knock down, wade through disputes, adapt to changes of plan, clean up and … well you get the idea. With the aid of Site, Safety and Project managers, these tiny tradies survive another day – just. Rollicking relatable fun makes this a joyous read for parents attempting to avoid overtime with their own toddlers. Jellett’s use of brighter than bright hi-vis orange to emphasise visual points makes the whole thing utterly wonderful.

Affirm Press, February 2023 ISBN: 9781922848123

The Concrete Garden by Bob Graham

Written during the time of Covid, this meandering tale of change is a marvellous song about community and caring and the amazing inherent resilience possessed by kids. This work of art features a – work of art. It’s birth, evolution and final magnificent magnetic pull that unites a community in a thousand unseen but profoundly felt ways. Graham’s gift with a handful of words and a few supremely executed lines and smudges sings this song with a simplicity that speaks louder than words. The focus being that life can blossom in the most dismal of environments, beneath a towering block of flats with nothing but concrete to grow upon. Sublime.

Walker Books Australia, October 2023 ISBN: 9781529512649

The Lucky Shack by Apsara Baldovino and Jennifer Falkner

Narrated by the shack itself, this is a visually resplendent and linguistically rich tale that allows readers to appreciate the mechanics of a structure but also understand that a building’s heart and soul is the sum of many things not least of which are its occupants. When the shack is abandoned by one occupant, we experience the same despair and decline as it does until the process of time and change brings a renewal of life and colour again. A fetching story about the impermanency of all things including those that are manmade.

Working Title Press, July 2023 ISBN: 978192203154

How Was That Built? The Stories Behind Awesome Structures by Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey

It wouldn’t be a building bonanza without a non-fictional contribution and this one is a standout. Despite the aptitude and skill humans have possessed for building things for tens of thousands of years, it’s not always immediately obvious how we make bridges span impossibly wide divides or create buildings that soar thousands of feet into the air – against the law of gravity! This book takes readers through the art of harnessing nature’s laws and using them to construct things that are long, tall, dome-shaped, strong and stable in every environment on this planet (and some in space and underground too). It is engrossing, enlightening and easy to digest with the use of famous and well-known structures from around the world. Fascinating and factual reading. Perfect for future architects, designers or the curious at heart, like me.

Bloomsbury, September 2021 ISBN 9781526603654

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Goldfish Boy

Image
Twelve-year-old Matthew Corbin is your regular pre-teen boy living in an unspectacular cul-de-sac deep in British suburbia. The major difference between him and the other inhabitants of Chestnut Close however is the state of his red-raw hands and tortured mind and the fact that he barely steps outside his terraced-home second story bedroom. Matthew is afflicted with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, OCD and can barely function as a result. From his fishbowl vantage point, Matthew keeps track of his neighbours, dutifully recording their every movement, their comings and goings, and their habitual rituals in his notebooks. In this way we are introduced to the residents and their characteristic irks and quirks from the get go in a way that is both intriguing and comical. Matthew’s observations allude to his condition; he is both analytical and detailed in his approach. The orderliness of his notations suggest a mind used to repetition and accuracy, an intense desire to ‘get things r...
Read more

Review: Detention

Image
Tristan Bancks signed my copy of Detention with a note hoping it kept me turning pages . This book lived up to that promise and then some. Packed with page-turning tension and relentless drama, this is one middle grade novel that may cause a few kids to miss their dinner call. Yet despite the raw gritty urgency that suffuses nearly every page and the elevated sense of dread and desperation that keeps your heart in top gear, the pace is never too manic nor too hectic to enjoy the energising mix of edgy excitement and sincere emotion Bancks does so well. Dan is an inner suburban boy living on the outer perimeters of life. He’s classified as trailer park trash because of his permanent residence at the social-economically deprived Midgenba caravan park. It’s a title that comes with an ineradicable smear of hopeless. Deep down though, Dan’s a good kid, a caring kid. The type of kid who’ll risk his own face to save a vicious dying dog, which he does one day after finding Rosco tied ...
Read more

I've got a dream

Image
Almost a decade of moons ago, I made a serendipitous discovery that forever altered the spin of my world. Falling pregnant after so many years of waiting and yearning was nothing short of miraculous (for me) and a life event definitely worth waxing lyrical about. But did I? Sadly, not as much I as wanted to. There are those who find it hard to exist without sharing the contents of their dinner plates with the rest of  the world, then there are others who worry that a beautifully executed birthday cake photo shared on social media will somehow demean the starving populations of the world. I oscillate between the two but tend towards the latter, always fretting over how others will take good news in light of their own current situations and struggles, thus resorting to a severe downplaying of my own good fortune. The pregnancy of my first child should have been a joyous occasion - it was a joyous pregnancy after all - but I was acutely conscious at the time of another family me...
Read more