Art is important in our family. We come from artistic families and greatly value making and supporting the arts. In that vein, our family loves picture books designed to develop and inspire an appreciation for the arts in young children.

We greatly enjoy these colorful board books for the babies and toddlers alike:

We adore this more advanced series focusing on exploring the alphabet and numbers through works of art published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

We’ve recently discovered another fantastic art appreciation series written for children to add to our family library:

Published once again by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, these Can You Find It? books focus on identifying details within works of art. Think of Where’s Waldo but with an educational, historical twist.

Our daughter adores these books and has spent hours pouring over them.

These particular books were written in 2005 and are no longer widely available in stores (we bought our copies at a local used bookstore). Nevertheless, a quick search online turned up many affordable copies in used form, as well as some other books in this series, plus the Metropolitan Museum of Art sells copies online from their store.

What better way to promote art appreciation than by supporting the museum itself?! If you intend to buy this item, please hop on over there and order your copy today.

Did you know that Marvel has published a graphic novel version of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice? (Thank you to Jenny for the info!)

As someone who devours all things Jane Austen, I was thrilled to hear about this. I’m all about bringing nineteenth century literature to the masses.

My copy arrived this morning. I can’t wait to dive right in. Doesn’t Caroline Bingley (above) look deliciously awful?! I abhor Mr. Collins already too:

I’ll provide one last shot, because I know you’re dying to see their interpretation of Pemberley…

I can’t wait to get reading… After this, I’m tackling the Marvel Illustrated Sense & Sensibility.

Our three year old loves her Very Hungry Caterpillar magnets, a wonderful hand-me-down from friends. Unfortunately, these Eric Carle magnets appear to no longer be available for sale.

This got us searching for other magnets featuring beloved storybook characters. You know what we found? Nothing! There were plenty of magnets featuring television or movie characters, but none featuring our favorite storybook characters.

So, in true Spritzer Leyba fashion, we quickly set out to make our own.

We printed pictures from our favorite Kevin Henkes picture books onto plain white paper. Next time we may print the characters directly on magnetic photo paper (who knew such a thing existed?! Brilliant!).

We then laminated the paper (alternatively, instead of laminating sheets you could use packing tape).

After adhering the paper to magnetic sheets, we then cut out the characters.

A simple and quick project! Now we can use and love these literary magnets on our fridge or on the magnetic board that’s waiting to be hung in our daughter’s new room.

Curious about the characters?

From left to right: Jessica (from Jessica), Lilly (from Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse), and Chester, Victor, Wilson, and Lilly (from Chester’s Way). All family favorites! We almost always read each and every one of these books before bed each night. Check them out!

Printables featuring my daughter’s favorite book characters?! Perfect for this little girl.

Lilly, Chester, Angelina, Little Bear, Winnie the Pooh, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Frances…

Every day when we read their stories, we visit with them. To my daughter, these storybook characters are dear friends.

I’m thrilled she loves and admires these wonderful characters instead of drooling over Disney characters or Princesses. (Although that stage is probably just around the corner, knock on wood.)

The best part about these printables? They are free. So many children’s illustrators have wonderful websites and many of them contain fantastic games and coloring pages to download and print to share.

Here are some of our favorites:

+ Kevin Henkes, author/illustrator of Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse and Chester’s Way

+ Tomie dePaola, author and illustrator of Strega Nona

We have two weeks until April when the spring gardening really begins here in Northern California.

Time to say goodbye to the winter garden:

And get ready to plant for spring.

In that vein, we’ve started reading a number of fantastic gardening books. Here’s a glimpse of some of our favorites from this week:

Shown above:
+ Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert (vibrant illustrations and a simple story depicting the process of planning, planting, and picking flowers in a garden that children can easily relate to)
+ My Garden by Kevin Henkes (an imaginative tale about what a little girl would have in her very own garden, such as morning glories that stayed open all night, jellybean trees, flowers that grew back as soon as you picked them (above), and all carrots would be invisible because “I don’t like carrots.”)
+ Gardening with Children by Brooklyn Botanic Garden (a must-read book for family gardeners, full of gardening activities introducing nature’s cycles and earth’s ecology)
+ Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z (not directly about gardening per se but a beautifully illustrated alphabet book about fruits and vegetables; great inspiration for deciding what to plant in the garden!)

Yesterday I wrote about our daughter’s Very Hungry Caterpillar obsession. Today I want to share an in-progress art project that she spearheaded: her Very Own Hungry Caterpillar Board Book.

The blank board book is from Bare Books. The clip art comes from the The Very Hungry Caterpillar Activity Pad that also contains stencils and drawing paper. For more on that sticker maker machine, see our post here.

Three years later and she still loves Eric Carle’s classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar:


February 2008

“Reading” us her version of the book (such a fun coloring book!)