The (increasingly popular) process of digital photo printing, on canvas or heavy art paper, seems like a responsible alternative to ripping the book apart. (Especially if it wasn't especially well printed in the first place! Sorry, Ladybird.)

(click to enlarge)

One of the more interesting choices on the Ladybird Prints site must be the classic The Computer. How about one of these at A0 size -- that's over a metre high -- on 'watercolour paper'! (more images after the jump).

After that, life begins and the rest of the greenhouse walk snakes through a seriously dramatic evolution landscape with dinosaur tracks, towering crazy trees (horsetails, ferns etc.), sheer 'rock' faces, various forest sounds and waterfalls; very entertaining, if a little tight (bit unfair to compress 3500 million years of plant evolution in a such a moderately sized greenhouse…). Luckily, you emerge back in the present era at the other end.

The title page reads: ‘The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid in which coloured diagrams and symbols are used instead of letters for the greater ease of learners.’ Byrne was a surveyor, mathematician and teacher, and the contents of the book, which covers the first six books of Euclid’s ‘Elements of Geometry’, covers topics that made up the basic mathematics curriculum for many students at the time. These pictures are ones that I took of the copy held in Special Collections at the University of Reading.

(click on the spread for a larger view; more spreads after the jump)

The Horrible approach, if you don't know it, is a sort of irreverent antithesis of a school textbook, and makes up one of the key trends in British children's non-fiction in recent years (it's also what I'm writing my thesis on).

There are some really interesting examples out there. Perhaps the most high-profile is the junior book version of An Inconvenient Truth. How's that for crossing media? Lecture to film to book, and adult to kid. There are also a growing range of guides to saving the world today, and don't get me started on the cultural politics of How To Turn Your Parents Green. There's a basic review of such literature published in Nature last December, and a run down of US equivalents can be found here.

There are tonnes of really interesting questions we could ask about these books and I could be all day writing this post. To start with a single point though, I wonder whether it is useful to class them as 'science' books?

There is a long tradition of children's nature guides, which I guess the non-fiction books could fit into. But there is both an analytical tone, and normative force, to these books which the more traditional 'spot the birdie' publications (rooted in Nature Study or similar) would shy away from. Are they politics then? Maybe. But they suggest themselves as factual information, as much as opinion; so are they science? In terms of the fiction and the fictionally-inclined (a lot are purposely in-between fact/ fiction boundaries), children's literature scholars have long argued pro-nature stories in kids SF generally paints science in a bad light, as if nature and science were somehow opposed. Personally, I think that axis is changing slightly, especially within steam-punkish forms of (tech)nostalgia and in some of the fantasy/science fiction genre fusions from writers like Eoin Colfer. Still, Noga might disagree!

Maybe the business of eco-crit for kids is its own small genre (or section of cross-genres). And I don't think we should get carried away assuming this is especially new - just looking back as far as the early 1990s, who remembers Captain Planet? Not to mention Nature Study (again), the Really Wild Show, David Bellamy...

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago some friends and I were bored, and I dug them out for a game. So, some observations based on our lazy Sunday evening game.

BRITISH IBBY/NCRCL MA CONFERENCE, NOVEMBER 15TH 2008 (Roehampton University, London)

I chose to bring along some the Max Parrish Isotype books for children that are part of the Otto and Marie Neurath Isotype archive held in the Department of Typography in Reading. These were developed by Marie Neurath and published by Max Parrish in London from the late 1940s to the 1960s. The books are innovative in their approach to picture/text integration and characterised by a very systematic approach to pictorial information, colour, layout and writing -- excellent examples of integrated design and layout.

This is just a beauty shot of the covers. 2-page spreads are after the break!