What You Need To Be Warm

In 2019 Neil Gaiman author and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, asked his Twitter followers, ‘What reminds you of warmth?’ He received thousands of replies and from these he composed a freeform poem in aid of UNHCR’s 2019 winter appeal.

The images Gaiman gathered signifying warmth range from clutching a baked potato

to ‘The tink tink tink of / iron radiators /waking in an old house. / To surface from dreams in a bed , / burrowed beneath blankets / and comforters,’ …to ‘the wood burning / in the stove’ .
There is hope though for the poem concludes thus, ‘You have the right / to be here.’
Thirteen artists: Yuliya Gwilym, Nadine Kaadan, Pam Smy, Daniel Egnéus, Beth Suzanna, Marie-Alice Harel, Petr Horáček, Chris Riddell, Bagram Ibatoulline, Benji Davies, Majid Adin,

and Richard Jones each provided an original illustration. Twelve illustrators offered comments printed at the back of the book. Oliver Jeffers created the stirring cover art and this important, compelling book is the result.

A wonderfully warm glow emanates from his cover images: would that such warmth be offered to all refugees and other people displaced of necessity around the world. With both the on-going conflict in Ukraine and now that in Israel and Gaza, its humanitarian message is even more urgent today than it was four years back when the tweet went out.

A donation of £1.55 from each sale of the book in the UK and at least 40p from sales in other territories will be donated to the UN Refugee Agency.

How Colour Works

How Colour Works
Catherine Barr and Yuliya Gwilym
Red Shed (Egmont)

Right from its arresting endpapers, this book that investigates the science of colour and how we see it, simply explodes into a rainbow of bright hues.

Perhaps you’ve wondered how our eyes work, or why some things glow in the dark.

Or maybe you’re curious about how animals see colour – do they see what we see?

and how do they use colour?

Why is grass green, blood red, the sky sometimes blue, and why does the snow look white? The answers are herein.

This surely is a visual treat – Yuliya Gwillym’s dramatic illustrations arrest the eye at every page turn; but author Catherine Barr provides plenty of facts too, facts that will likely have readers wanting to go beyond the information given to learn even more.

Successfully combining science and art to present a veritable STEAM kaleidoscope, this is a book that offers something to youngsters from nursery age upward. What about awe and wonder? Yes, it definitely fits that bill too.