guest post: author spotlight: alan ahlburg

One of my favorite things is discovering new authors and illustrators. This week, Amy, of Maker Mama will be sharing a series of posts about one of her favorite (and new to me!) children's book authors: Alan Ahlburg. She has quite an extensive collection, so I thought I'd let her share a little bit each day. I hope you enjoy this peek into another book-lover's home collection!

Hi, I'm Amy, a crafty mama of four blogging over at Maker Mama. I've been a long-time fan of Silly Eagle Books and I'm thrilled to be sharing my favorite children's book author with all of you today--thanks so much for having me, Vanessa!

Allan Ahlberg is a British author and illustrator who I was introduced to way back when I was little a girl. But it was only until recently that I began hunting down his books for our own family collection after coming across that first childhood favorite at the library.

Cinderella on the stairs, I spy the three bears...

Each Peach Pear Plum is a book I could recite to you by heart. Ahlberg teamed up with his wife Janet in illustrating the book, both an eye-spy and lyrical poem, and it is impressively simple and intricate at the same time.


Featuring familiar fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters, each page takes you through a little hunt to see what everyone's up to with a surprise at the end. This is one of those books with charming secrets to discover throughout the illustrations.

My three-year-old daughter Eleanor absolutely adores The Jolly Postman also illustrated by Janet. 

The reader follows the postman on his deliveries to familiar characters such as Goldilocks and the three bears (that's her birthday card above), with actual letters and cards that you can pull out and open--the best part, of course! I was worried that it would get torn to pieces, but Eleanor takes such care in putting each letter back that it's still holding up wonderfully.

The Baby's Catalogueis a fun picture book that follows the lives of different babies and their parents, illustrating everything from the different breakfasts they eat to all the little endearing mishaps babies find themselves in. It's a sweet, whimsical look into family life that both you and your kids will enjoy looking through.

Similar to The Baby's Catalogue is Starting School, which follows eight children through their first day of school all the way to Christmas break. It's almost like watching your own child's classmates growing through the year. With my second son getting ready to start kindergarten in the fall, this is a perfect book for talking about all the new things he'll experience.


Hi. Vanessa again. After reading this, I am thinking, "Where has The Jolly Postman been all my life?!!! It looks fantastic and so much fun for me my kids! They love any sort of interactive pieces to books and especially letters. I can see hours of fun with this one--definitely putting it on my wishlist/bookhunting list. The Baby's Catalogue looks like a good one for my baby-obsessed 20 month old, and Starting School looks perfect for my upcoming kindergardener. Let's hope my library has these...


As you can tell, Amy is a fellow book-lover. She is also an avid thrifter and crafty soul who is constantly sharing beautiful glimpses of her life with her kids on her blog Maker Mama. She has an etsy shop filled with delightful handmade goodies and currently she is selling some of her treasured vintage book collection. 


Stay tuned for Part II of this post and more about her favorite books tomorrow!

how to repair damaged children's books

Recently, Wendy asked me how I repair damaged children's books. I didn't have anything revolutionary to share with her, so I thought I'd write a post about it and get your input.

Around here, we just use tape. However, after doing a google search on the topic, I found several sites saying things like, "NEVER use tape to repair a damaged book!"

So, maybe I shouldn't recommend that, but it's what we do around here.

My girls are pretty gentle on books--so there isn't much damage to speak of or deal with. Mostly, our lift the flap books are the ones who sustain the most damage due to their interactive nature.

But I do frequently buy lightly damaged books from thrift stores. Mostly, I just clean them up with a bit of my secret book cleaning potion, erase pencil marks, and tape minor damage.

That usually gets them good to go for our purposes.

In general, I find hardback books to be more long-lasting than paperbacks, so if I can find them, I try to buy those instead of paperbacks. However, thrifters cannot always be choosers, so I do have quite a large collection of paperbacks. 

If I could find the rest of the phone's receiver, I'd totally tape it together.

How do you repair damaged books in your house? Tape? Contact paper on the covers? Any thing else we should try?

(Image from one of our well-loved favorites The Telephone Book (Touch-and-Feel) by Dorothy Kunhardt of Pat the Bunny fame. )

raising caterpillars and releasing butterflies

Juliet received the Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden for Christmas this year. She's been waiting all year to order the caterpillars so we could watch them change into butterflies. 

With spring finally here and temperature warm enough to release the butterflies, we got our caterpillars and had them in our home for the past several weeks. 

It was quite exciting and Juliet enjoyed checking on their changes and recording them in her observation journal every day. 

I have to admit, I've never seen a caterpillar change into a butterfly either, so it was just as exciting for me. 

We just released the butterflies and are back to just having our cat for a pet. 

We've been reading a lot of butterfly books lately (due to our recent guests). 

A Butterfly Is Patient is from our home collection--beautifully illustrated and we always love reading it.

Fun With Nature: Take Along Guide (Take Along Guides) is from the library (at a reader's suggestion) and is full of all kinds of information, but in particular, the first section is about butterflies and moths and has several activities suggested for more observation opportunities.

Have you ever raised caterpillars/butterflies? Also, please leave a comment with your favorite butterfly books!

how to build a butterfly garden

Juliet has been very interested in butterflies lately, so a few weekends ago we spent a Saturday turning a part of our backyard into a butterfly garden. 

There were a few overgrown bushes and plants here, so Ben worked hard to dig them out. After it was clear, he tilled the soil for us and then we added generous portions of garden soil to the beds. 

Juliet and I had the fun task of picking out the plants!

We looked on the labels to see if they were butterfly attractors and picked our favorites. 

I'm sure it varies by where you live, but here's what we found available for our garden: 

Lavender

Phlox

Coneflower

Cosmos

Zinnias

Heliotrope

Yarrow

We also have some catmint, a butterfly bush, speedwell, and bee balm in other parts of our yard. 

Here's a link to some more flowers that attract butterflies if you want create your own butterfly garden. 

The girls and I planted our plants, watered them, and even sowed some seeds. We are hoping that in a few years, we'll have a nice full garden full of flowers and butterflies. 

So far, we have had one butterfly visitor! We are hoping for a few more. :) 

The girls have had fun watering their garden and checking on the seeds growth and progress. In the fall, we will plant some bulbs, so we can have even more spring color next year. 

We are on the hunt for this book: Butterflies in the garden. Our library does not have it, but maybe I will find it at a thrift store. 

Have you done any gardening yet this spring? What flowers are your favorite? 

linking to Someday Crafts

kids desk revamp

I found this old desk at goodwill a few weeks ago and have been busy working on transforming it into a perfectly pink princess desk for Juliet. 

We recently moved the girls into the same room, painted the walls pink, and are in the process of hanging things on the wall. 

With two girls' trinkets and toys to display, we were running out of space on the one bookshelf. So, when I saw this desk, I thought we could really use the surface area for display and also the drawers for extra storage. 

Of course, blue would never do, so after spray painting the body of the desk white, Juliet and I have been painting the doors pink. 

Each drawer is a different shade of pink, so it is that whole ombre effect (saw it on pinterest, thought I should give it a go!) 

It's almost done, I'm just trying to figure out what to do with the hardware now. 

I'll post more photos when it's complete--just wanted to share a bit today. 

shell keepsake wall art DIY

After our recent beach trip, the girls had gathered several bucketfuls of shells. And while it is always fun to collect shells, sometimes it is difficult to figure out what to do with them once we return home. 

In the past, we have just put them in our sandbox and garden and played with them there. But since they are outside, they do get lost and dirty and worn down. 

Since Juliet is older now and she found some particularly pretty shells this trip, I thought we could display a few in her room. 

I found this old art piece at goodwill and thought it would be a good size and surface to use. To prep it, I painted the sides an antique copper (spray paint). 

Then I mod podged a piece of scrapbook paper on the front. I tried getting all the air bubbles out, but somehow there were still a few after it dried. (Any tips on how to get it really smooth? I've heard a brayer works well, so I might be getting one for our next project.) 

Once it dried, I let Juliet pick out as many shells as would fit on the front in three rows. She had fun looking through her collection picking her favorites. 

Then she arranged them in the order she wanted them to be on the board. 

I used a hot glue gun to affix the shells onto the board for her. 

We are working on a gallery display (collection of frames) in her room, so as soon as I get that figured out, the shells will go on the wall!

We have several vintage shell guide books that we like to look at, but this is one that we checked out from the library before our trip.

Shells! Shells! Shells! is a really great book full of all the shell information your curious preschool or early elementary aged child will want to know.

Any favorite shell books, crafts, or activities you want to share with us? I'd love to hear. :)

linking to craft, made by you monday, 

when I grow up, I want to be gail gibbons

Long ago, I professed by love for Gail Gibbons' books when I made this hanging lovebird valentines craft to hang from our kitchen chandelier. I think Juliet was 2 when I made it and now that she is 5--we still have it and hang it up every February. 

I had just discovered the wonder of Gail Gibbons' illustrations and had to recreate one of her designs from Valentine's Dayfor myself. (Bookspiration can strike at anytime, right?) 

After loving the Valentines day book so much, I sought out other holiday books she had written. They are all lovely, but at the time, Juliet was not quite ready for non-fiction reads. They was a little too much text for her and no story line made it hard for her to concentrate and enjoy. 

I stopped checking them out and put them on my list for "when she is older." I knew one day she would love them. 

What I did not know, however, is that Gail Gibbons writes so much more than holiday books! She has a whole arsenal of non fiction books from everything to shipwrecks, to frogs, vegetables, to how to build a house! Seriously, if you are looking for a certain subject, she probably wrote a book about it. 

I was clued into her other works by one of you when I asked for non-fiction recommendations. (Thank you for your comments! They are so helpful to me!) 

I typed in her last name into our library's search catalog and up came several pages of titles. I can only request 10 at a time, so I got 5 of hers and 5 others this week. 

I wanted to share them with you because we loved them so much! At 5 years old, Juliet is now ready to enjoy and learn from these beautifully illustrated non-fiction works. 

The Berry Book is probably our favorite of the ones we checked out this week (mostly because the girls and myself are quite fond of berries of all types, but especially strawberries.) Who knew there was so much to learn about berries? It also was a great tie in with a favorite activity of ours: making blueberry paint. (Great backyard fun for a spring day and toddler friendly as well. Find the recipe here.)

Sunken Treasure was SO interesting! At the end of the book, Juliet looked at me and said, "Is this a TRUE story?" And it was so fun to tell her, "YES!' Real treasure, real sunken ships, real treasure hunters--what more can you ask for?

We also enjoyed Emergency and How a House is Built. I can't remember which ones I requested for next week, but it's safe to say I will be trying to get a few every week until we read all our library has to offer from her.

Do you have a favorite Gail Gibbons book? What should we check out next?