Book Review - Tinder

If a book has a pretty cover, I'm pretty much sold. I do buy books if the story sounds good but this book by Sally Gardiner, I pretty much bought it because I loved the art work.

Tinder is a dark fantasy horror, haunting and mystifying at some parts, with a tragic ending. It was a very enjoyable story with dramatic twists, horrid characters and gruesome events. Death, despair and a bit of romance included.

The illustrations really brought the plot to life, I enjoyed flipping the pages to see the next drawing. They are all done in black and white with red being the only colour.

I wont give the story away and let you read it for yourself. Definitely worth splashing out the 9.99 that I paid for this.

Dag and Daga and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain

I bought this book recently.

It has lot's of stories in it about trolls, monsters, princesses and princes. My favorite things to draw! There are 29 stories in this book, all are illustrated by John Bauer. I think they were written in the 19th Century but I'm not sure, the book doesn't say. John Bauer, born in Sweden, 1882 - 1918 was one of the world's greatest illustrators of fairy tales. As it states in his biography and I quite agree. I discovered Brian Froud before John Bauer and you can definitely see that Froud was highly influenced by Bauer. If you've seen the Dark Crystal or The Labyrinth then you will agree.

These are some illustrations in the book, he used mainly neutral tones, not a lot of colour at all but I love the way he used the watercolour and especially the way he did the trolls.

You may or may not know I did children's book illustration projects in college. I'm almost finished my first year of HND Illustration, it's flew in! I liked this story so much and felt so influenced by John Bauer's illustrations, I thought I would illustrate 'Dag and Daga and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain' myself. 

I will be posting my progress on here.

Nicola x

Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children - Book Review

Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children - Book Review

I picked up this book and saw this creepy as hell cover and then that the book is filled with weird and eerie vintage photos and I thought it looked really spooky! It has had some great reviews so I was looking forward to reading it.

 The main character is sixteen year old Jacob. His Polish grandfather liked to tell these stories about how when he was a child during the war, he was sent away from home to an orphanage on a Welsh island, he was accompanied by other peculiar children and supposedly kept safe from 'monsters'. As Jacob got older he realized that his grandfather's tales are probably just tall tales. Then his grandfather is horrifically killed in an 'accident' and Jacob heads off to Wales to visit his grandfather's old home as a form of closure. But it soon appears that his grandfather was telling the truth all this time. Jacob goes on to discover more about his grandfathers stories. This book started off as a really creepy and intriguing story, along with the eerie vintage pictures it worked well. But as I read the story became less and less gripping. Overall I'd say more went into the cover and interior of the book rather than the actual story. Nonetheless I'd still give it a read as I did enjoy it, I was just disappointed with the last quarter of it.