Wednesday 1 February 2017

Two fantastic draw-a-story tales from Yasmeen Ismail. Here's "Inside, Outside, Upside Down" and "Push, Pull, Empty, Full" (Laurence King Publishing)

If there's one thing you can be sure of, sticking a pencil into a child's hand and giving them a blank piece of paper is like uttering a magic spell...
We, as adults, have so many distractions in life that get in the way of our more creative sides (unless you're one of those super-fortunate folk who manages to do something creative for a living).

Kids though, they're completely unencumbered by that sort of hangup and though quite often kids don't get to be kids for long - and they have tons of homework and other pressures on them from an early age - there's still always time for them to indulge in a spot of doodling.

Yasmeen Ismal, artist and children's author, has come up with a fabulous pair of books that will give your child a fantastic boost to their creativity.

Inspiring children to doodle and draw while telling their own stories, meet "Inside, Outside, Upside Down" and "Push, Pull, Empty, Full" - Two books that positively invite kids to draw inside them (something Charlotte still gets quite uppity about!) to complete drawings and doodles to help a story along.

Engaging animal characters encourage kids to discover the world of opposites, and to complete brilliant doodles and page spreads that will help them learn and enjoy the two themes core to the books.

Examine the world from every angle, or learn about how we interact with our world and the objects within it.

What we loved best about these books is that the art prompts and ideas never feel too intimidating. Yasmeen's fantastic flowing and easy illustrative style is great for showing kids that they can be artists, and they can use their own unique style to help complete the book's designs.

It's a rather genius idea, and will definitely prove popular when your kids are winding down after a hard day at school and just want to doodle something fun.

Both "Inside, Outside, Upside Down" and "Push, Pull, Empty, Full" by Yasmeen Ismail are out now, published by Laurence King Publishing, and we think they're utterly fab!

(Kindly sent for review).