And here’s the book trailer!

Book of the Year in Korea, Waiting for Mummy is a deceptively simple story of a child’s patience rewarded. The little boy in the story waits for his mother at a tram-stop while trams come and go, people alight, yet her devoted son waits stoically and patiently, even as a snowstorm gathers.

Will Mummy ever return? The reader must be as patient as the child, as the story is subtly resolved—for those looking closely—in the final magical illustration. – Reading Upside Down Blog

A universal celebration of the love children feel for their Mum!

To find out more about the book or purchase a copy for someone special to you, click here.

A positive response from the children’s book blogging community about Davide Cali and Maurizio Quarello’s Little Eskimo and his companions. Here are some snippets to tempt you to read the articles in full!

This fable-like story is an homage to the child within us all – who looks to the future, brimming with questions and perhaps also fear about What Will Be. Author Cali has written a timeless, thoughtful and beautiful tale that reminds children the future is very much in their hands.

Maurizio Quarello’s striking illustrations of Arctic wilderness and its fauna has been lusciously-rendered, showcasing a darling main character and his animal friends in a way that will charm readers of all ages.

Simply gorgeous. – Tania McCartney, Kids Book Review

The Little Eskimo is a beautiful parable about identity and becoming in an exotic Arctic setting. - Angela Crocombe, Readings St Kilda

This is a book which is perfect for dreamers, thinkers and those who love to wander through the ‘what ifs’ within their imaginations. – My Book Corner Blog

This heart-warming allegorical tale, with folktales cadences, goes to the heart of what it is to be a child, with life’s wonderful possibilities laid out before you. - Stephanie Owen Reader Blog

If you would like to find out more about Janet Frame and her works published since she passed away in 2004, listen to the ABC Book Show interview ‘Posthumous Publishing – Janet Frame’s Poetry’ with her niece, Pamela Gordon, the Chair of the Janet Frame trust and literary executor.

Janet Frame: Biography

Twice shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Janet Frame was born in Dunedin in 1924.

She was the author of eleven novels, five collections of stories, a volume of poetry and a children’s book. She is perhaps best known for the autobiography An Angel at My Table, which chronicles her early years, several of which were spent in and out of mental institutions.

Famously, she was only saved from a lobotomy when her surgeon read in a local newspaper that she had won an award for her first novel.

She was a Burns Scholar and a Sargeson Fellow, and won the New Zealand Scholarship in Letters and the Hubert Church Award for Prose. She was made a CBE in 1983 for services to literature, awarded an honorary doctorate of literature from Otago University in 1992.

She received New Zealand’s highest civil honour when she was made a member of the Order of New Zealand.

Janet Frame died in January 2004. Her award-winning last work,The Goose Bath, is now published posthumously by Wilkins Farago in Australia, while her novels and autobiography were reissued in standard editions in 2007.

The Janet Frame Literary Trust

Janet Frame on Wikipedia

One of the books they talked about was Davide’s story I Like Chocolate illustrated by Evelyn Daviddi. We thought, with Easter fast approaching, and all the chocolate day dreaming going on … you’d enjoy this part of the interview:

I Like Chocolate is an enticing title, and the preponderance of chocolate colours is relieved by the illustrator’s choice of coloured backgrounds. It’s a fun book, so I couldn’t resist asking Davide which is his favourite chocolate – the answer is bitter black, although he pops in some white for a change. As to the type of chocolate-eater he is, he told me he discovered the pleasures of the Well-Mannered Nibble whilst researching, but after a couple of weeks reverted to The Production Line (you really must see the pictures to appreciate these).

An aspect of the illustrations in his book that is of vital concern to him is to check the expressions in the eyes of the characters – in this book they all needed to be changed to achieve the effect he wanted. He is amused that for the Egyptian edition the mother had to be redrawn flat-chested!

- Interview by Jo Goodman, ‘Know the Author Davide Cali‘, Magpies Volume 27.

If you like to sign up for this excellent industry publication visit the Magpies website here. 

If you LIKE Wilkins Farago Facebook page before midnight on Easter Sunday you will also be entered into a prize draw to win this exceptional Easter book bundle: a signed copy of I Like Chocolate, a poster from our new book The Little Eskimo (also by Davide) and some delicious Easter chocolates from Monsieur Truffe (our most loyal stockist of I Like Chocolate).

Being a publisher of children’s books I’m often asked if I know of any literacy resources I could recommend. As well as suggesting our title, Teaching Kids to Read by Fay Tran, which focuses on learning to read with phonics, I’ve also been directing people to blog, Planning with Kids, and their fantastic posts throughout February focusing on Literacy.

In this series of blog posts, topics covered include: What is Phonics?, Early Literacy For Children With Additional Need, Is your child being taught to spell well? and Decodable Books. The last post in the series is a more personal perspective from blog owner Nicole Avery.  With her permission we have included this as a guest post below:

Guest blog by Nicole Avery, originally posted on  Planning with Kids, March 8th, 2013.

Supporting Kid’s Literacy

by PLANNINGQUEEN on MARCH 8, 2013 in CHILD DEVELOPMENT

This post is the final in my literacy series which has been running over the last few weeks.  The other posts in the series were:

• What Is Phonics?
• Early Literacy For Children With Additional Needs
• Is your child being taught to spell well?
• Decodable Books

I was pleased to have a number of experts contribute to the series, but for today’s post I wanted to share what I do at home with our kids to support their literacy. This is the stuff beyond reading to them daily, talking to them, pointing out letters, signs etc. I am not writing this to say that this is what everyone should do nor that is even best practice. It is the reality of how I try my best to support five kids at differing levels with their literacy. To make it a little easier for you to follow I have broken it into stages.

Preschooler

My support of literacy for this age, is based upon games and an introduction to phonics. Our eldest child attended a Montessori kindergarten and I was lucky to learn a great deal about early literacy from his teachers. The first thing I learnt was not to teach preschoolers the name of the letters of the alphabet, but the sound.

The first game I have played with all our preschoolers has been the “I Spy” game. You can see full details on how we play it here, but in short you choose a small number of objects and once the preschooler can name all the items correctly you can start the game by saying “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with D”. “D” being the sound of the letter not the name.

I also very happily use technology to help support the preschooler. Two of my favourites resources are:

Alphablocks – Online Game

Alphablocks is a fun game which has videos to watch, games to play all of which are phonics based.

It is aimed at three-to six-year-olds and its simple purpose is to entertain and show that wordplay can be a lot of fun. It is based on best-practice phonics teaching, helping young children to develop confidence and encouraging engagement with reading and making words.

I will let the four year old have 10 – 15 minute sessions on this when I can sit with him. While he can easily operate the mouse, there are many options and distractions, which I guide him through.

abc Pocket Phonics

Possibly one of my favourite all time kids educational apps. This link will take you to the lite version which is free, but only has limited letters. It is great to be able to try it out, but we have the $2.99 full version and I highly recommend it.

Again our preschooler has 10 – 15 minute sessions on the iPad, but the way this app works, it will only let him move up once he has mastered sets of letters first. I will let him play this game when I am working with the older kids on their homework. He will often then have 10 minutes of free play on other apps of his choice.

Primary School

I have two key resources I use to work on literacy with the primary school kids.

Simplex Spelling Phonics 2 Syllables – Spell To Read

The first is an app, Simplex Spelling Phonics, and it is one of the more expensive apps I have bought at $5.49, but I think it is worth every cent. You can have user accounts for each child, so they can work at their own level. It is recommended for kids aged 6+. And we have just purchased the Simplex Spelling Phonics – Advanced Phonograms which is also $5.49 and recommended for kids 9+.

Toe by Toe: Highly Structured Multi-Sensory Reading Manual for Teachers and Parents by Keda Cowling

Toe by Toe (aff) is a very specific approach to helping kids learn to read using syllable division and phonics. You can see example pages here.

You don’t need to be an educator to use this book as each page has instructions for you, but it does require commitment and discipline from you, just as much as the child, to be fully effective.

My goal is to work with the primary school kids for about 10 – 20 minutes a day each Mon – Fri, but this doesn’t always happen as extra curricular activities get in the way. The app obviously doesn’t need my input like the book, but I need to be aware of what they are doing on the app and any issues they may be having.

Secondary school

It is a very different ball game at this end. My support is less frequent but still needed. A tip from a friend was to read the set texts he needs to read for school, so I can engage in literary discussions with him about the books. This has been very helpful. The discussions don’t even happen necessarily around homework requirements, but more often just general discussions around the home.

I still make sure he has access to a wide variety of texts and engage in conversations with him about those texts even if I dislike the books. In our conversations I am aiming to increase ability to critically analyse what he is reading. He does love to read and will read widely – sometimes very simple books and other times incredibly complex works. Both can provide excellent opportunities assess his comprehension and understanding.

Educating myself

And I read as much as I can about literacy and kids. I am always on the look out for blog posts on literacy, new research and events I can attend to learn more myself. Highlights I have come across are:

• Teaching Kids to Read by Fay Tran, is a great book for parents who are trying to get a handle on where to start with kids learning to read.
• Literacy, families and learning blog from Trevor Cairney.
• And of course Alison’s blog Spelfabet is an amazing resource for both free and low cost tools to help your kids with literacy.

Each child is different though and I tailor what work I do with them based not only on their ability, but also on their personality and temperament.

Would love to hear how you support kids literacy and any tools and resources you use.

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Maurizio Quarello, Illustrator of The Little Eskimo

We have interviewed illustrator Maurizio Quarello about his inspirations and methods in creating the stunning artwork for our new picture book, The Little Eskimo (written by Davide Cali). We hope you enjoy the interview below as much as we did!

1. What materials did you use to create the illustrations for this book? Do you always use these materials or did you choose them for this book?

The illustrations made for this book are oil paintings (oil on paper). Recently, I have worked a lot with oil paints whereas in the past I mostly used acrylics. I am keen to experiment with different mediums, according to each book’s subject.

2. At what stage did you become involved in the book? How did you work with Davide Cali and the book’s French publisher, Sarbacane?

Davide Calì is my fellow country-man who now lives in France. I have known him for many years – before I started my career as a children’s book illustrator, Davide had already been publishing his stories in Italy and in France. I remember him contacting Sarbacane and recommending me as the possible illustrator of his story The Little Eskimo. I have a good relationship with both the author and the publisher, who have always been very open minded and full of respect for the artist’s liberty of rendering of a subject. The only limitation in the case of The Little Eskimo was the technique: the publisher insisted on painted illustrations.

3. Did you have to do any research to draw the world of the Little Eskimo or did it come from your imagination?

I did quite a lot of research before and during the story-board-phase: the Nordic landscapes, the light atmospheres… and I was looking for pictures of the animal-characters (the elk, the walrus, the polar hare etc.) too. The documentation is very important – children have to be able to make out everything they see in a picture book.

4. What was the hardest thing about working on this book? Which illustrations are you most pleased with?

The biggest challenge ever was to create the Nordic glare, to render different moments in the day with light/shadows and particular combinations of colours. The technique helped me a lot: thanks to 2-3 semi-transparent layers of colour, the light atmosphere is very credible – the icy, crystallising air, the sense of coldness and the bright sunlight, so typical for Scandinavian or polar areas. My favourite illustration shows the encounter of the main character with the polar hare for its well-rendered sense of motion.

5. Which children’s illustrator and authors do you admire most?

There are two German artists I really look up to: Michael Sowa who is a sort of an old master painter and Wolf Erlbruch who is a world-famous illustrator. I particularly like the writing style of Irene Cohen-Janca who is a French author (“Les arbres pleurent aussi”, Le grand cheval bleu”). Since my childhood, my favourite non-contemporary author has always been R. L.Stevenson.

Illustrations by Michael Sowa

6. Which book of yours is your favourite?

I am quite proud of one of the recent publication (2012) I made for the Italian publisher Orecchio Acerbo – “Janet la storta” (by R.L.Stevenson) – a ghost story I really enjoyed illustrating.

7. Are you working on any new projects?

I am working on an assignment for an U.S. company (Sterling) – illustrations for “Rumpelstiltskin” – and on an interesting picture book project with a social subject, inspired on the real story of a famous Austrian football player.

Sincerely, Maurizio Quarello

And here is a sneak preview of the ad for The Little Eskimo which will be in the March edition.

March Edition of Magpies Magazine

While you are ordering listen to this cult classic from the Cure… Friday I’m In Love.