Books about books: join in with the next Nosy Crow Reading Group! - Nosy Crow Skip to content
Posted by Tom, April 30, 2014

Books about books: join in with the next Nosy Crow Reading Group!

Next month the Nosy Crow Guardian Reading Group will be meeting to discuss a trio of fantastic picture books (with the unifying theme of “books about books”), and we’d love for you to join in!

The group will be taking place here at the Nosy Crow offices – 10a Lant Street, London, SE1 1QR – on Thursday, May 15 at 6.30pm. Although places for the physical event have now all gone, we can add your name to the waiting list for cancellations if you’d like – if so, send an email to [email protected]. And if you can’t make it here, you can still join in online – either by leaving your comments underneath this blogpost, or sharing your thoughts about the book on Twitter with the #NCGKids hashtag.

We’ll be talking about It’s a Book, by Lane Smith – here’s a trailer:

We’ll be looking at one of our own titles: Open Very Carefully, illustrated by Nicola O’Byrne with words by Nick Bromley. Here’s a look inside:

And finally, we’ll be discussing Press Here, by Herve Tullet – here’s a trailer:

We’ve prepared a few discussion points to get you thinking in advance – here’s some of what we might talk about:

1) A theme of all three of these texts is “the book as physical object”. How effectively do you think each book takes advantage of the physical format?

2) Do these books sacrifice “story” at the expense of the book-about-a-book meta-conceit? Do you think this matters?

3) Who do you think the intended reader is for each of these books?

4) How present is the authorial voice in each text? Do you think the texts interact successfully with the artwork?

5) All three books rely on a striking degree of repeating imagery. What effect do you think this has?

We have a few copies left of Press Here (currently only available at a hardback price of £9.99) for sale for £6.99. You can buy a copy from us in person at our offices, or, if you’re coming to the book group, we can post you a copy and you can pay us on the night – email [email protected] for more details.

And you can buy It’s a Book online here and Open Very Carefully online here.

We hope you can join us!

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