Do you believe in fairies? How about high fashion? Enter the exquisite world of fairie fashion – where feathered hats are designed for maximum lift, oak-leaf jackets boast ample wing vents, and flower-petal flats are easily removable for flight. In the fairie world, there is only one top designer of couture and accessories. . . . Prepare to be enchanted! While humans go about their workaday lives, there is a secret world of well-dressed fairies flitting about in fragile fashions that would take your breath away – if only you could see them. Well, now you can. For the first time ever, elusive fairie couturier Ellwand allows mortals a peek at his ethereal designs in Fairie-ality, a catalogue so spectacularly crafted it befits a fairie queen herself. Showcased are nearly 150 creations – including dresses, jackets, trousers, shoes, hats, and delicate unmentionables – fashioned wholly from feathers, flower petals, shells, seeds, and other materials from nature. Consider these special features: Extraordinary production elements, including three specially selected paper stocks; metallic inks; fold-out booklets; vellum envelope with removable fashion card; and numerous half-, third-, and quarter-pages, notably to showcase garments for a playful mix &amp; match, offering dozens of outfits to create. Drawings by celebrated fashion illustrator David Downton, capturing the graceful, but rarely glimpsed, fairie attired in Ellwand’s designs. Witty and delightfully romantic captions by Eugenie Bird. A breathless narrative by a young fairie guiding us from The Season’s start through May Day revelry and a Fairie Tale Wedding. Filled with authentic fairie lore that will lure fairie lovers by the legion, this superbly designed volume also offers many clever nods to human fashion history. Its fun, fanciful costume descriptions will amuse the fashion-savvy everywhere, while the stunning array of fashions themselves – a veritable dress-up dream –will leave readers of all ages spellbound.

Fairie-ality: The Fashion Collection from the House of Ellwand

Arts & Photography

Bird, Eugenie

Graphic Design

Candlewick Studio

When it comes to opposites, it’s all a matter of perspective! Lively text and fun retro art engage kids in the finer points of a favorite concept. Do you know opposites, yes or no? On. Off. Asleep. Awake. Opposites are a piece of cake . . . right? Not so fast! Time for a quick double take. Who knows what’s BIG unless there is SMALL? Does SHORT mean a thing except next to TALL? What is ABOVE and what is BELOW? The answer depends on who wants to know! Writer Susan Hood and illustrator Jay Fleck lead us on a topsy-turvy fun-house journey into the concept of opposites and takes it to the next level — with detours into relative terms and points of view (and a dollop of yin and yang for good measure).

Double Take! A New Look at Opposites

Children's Books

Hood,Susan

Literature & Fiction

Readers will be mesmerized by these surreal and gorgeously rendered alphabet letters, cleverly shaped from flora, fauna, and more. At first glance, this elegant alphabet book showcasing both upper- and lowercase letters seems to follow a familiar formula. There’s an acrobat standing atop a horse to form a big letter A and another curled under herself to make a small one. There’s a colony of beetles attached to the leaves they’ve munched, creating a big and a small letter B. But then comes the letter C, made of sea waves evoking the artist Hokusai. Or a lowercase I in the form of a pen that has left an ink smudge, or two kingly beasts that create the letter K. And what of the many letters, equally fantastical and fascinating, whose associations are left to the viewers’ imaginations? Ingenious and intriguing, beautiful and full of stunning detail, this is an alphabet book sure to invite many repeat explorations.

An Artist's Alphabet

MESSENGER, NORMAN

Arts, Music & Photography

Elaborate pop-ups feature some wonderfully creepy creatures that just might dominate the ecosystem and be essential to our planet’s survival in an eerily realistic future world. Whether or not we know it, the sixth global extinction is already under way, propelled not by a meteor but by human activity on Earth. Take a long step forward into the year 4847 with the help of stunning pop-ups portraying eight fantastical creatures, along with spreads and flaps presenting details about each one. Paper engineer Shawn Sheehy envisions the aftermath of extinction as a flourishing ecosystem centered around fictional creatures that could evolve from existing organisms. Promising high appeal for science-fiction fans of all ages — and plenty of food for discussion — this evolutionary extravaganza offers a time line of the six extinction events in Earth’s history, a “field guide” to each creature, a diagram of species relationships, a habitat map of the (imagined) ruins of Chicago, and an illuminating author’s note.

Beyond the Sixth Extinction: A Post-Apocalyptic Pop-Up

Teen & Young Adult

Sheehy, Shawn

Science Fiction & Fantasy

A lyrical narrative and lovely, graphic illustrations pay tribute to the beauty and importance of the trees all around us. Trees change through the seasons — springing to life, bearing fruit, and losing their leaves before a period of sleep. They clean the air we breathe, provide seeds and homes for creatures, and extend their shade to everyone equally. Throughout all these changes, trees are constant, patiently learning to grow and flourish wherever they might be. Trees is a reverent and poetic homage that invites the reader to take a closer look at these magnificent beings.

Trees

Lemniscates, Carme

Science, Nature & How It Works

Whether you’re a young child or a design connoisseur, the clever associations in this diminutive pop-up will charm you in a big way. A is for Apple, springing up to attention. B is for Book, its pages flapping. F is for Flower, of course, but is that G tucked away in the grass? Hugely enjoyable from the first glance, this small-scale, 3-D look at everyday objects offers many hidden pleasures, such as when adjacent alphabet letters share a spread in unexpected ways — a Letter in a Mailbox, a Pillow on a Quilt, twisty Roots under a Swing on a Tree. Simple and stylish, ABC Pop-Up is an elegant choice for anyone who appreciates artful design, as well as the perfect alphabet learning tool for little hands.

ABC Pop-Up

McCarthy, Courtney Watson

Education & Reference

Full of colorful pieces to pop out and move around, this striking, hands-on book of opposites is one that toddlers will love exploring over and over. To play this game of opposites, press out a shape on each spread and turn the page to complete a new picture. Once readers reach the end, they will be eager to play their way back to the beginning! Not your ordinary board book, Lucie Félix’s highly original novelty title will help very young children practice early motor skills, shape recognition, sorting, and the vocabulary of opposites.

Give and Take (Old Barn Books)

Félix, Lucie

Activities, Crafts & Games

Are you a word person? A curiosity seeker? An explorer? Take a look at these twenty-six extraordinary individuals for whom love of language is an extreme sport. Step right up and read the genuine stories of writers so intoxicated by the shapes and sound of language that they collected, dissected, and constructed verbal wonders of the most extraordinary kind. Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote his memoirs by blinking his left eyelid, unable to move the rest of his body. Frederic Cassidy was obsessed with the language of place, and after posing hundreds of questions to folks all over the United States, amassed (among other things) 176 words for dust bunnies. Georges Perec wrote a novel without using the letter e (so well that at least one reviewer didn’t notice its absence), then followed with a novella in which e was the only vowel. A love letter to all those who love words, language, writing, writers, and stories, Alphamaniacs is a stunningly illustrated collection of mini-biographies about the most daring and peculiar of writers and their audacious, courageous, temerarious way with words.

Alphamaniacs: Builders of 26 Wonders of the Word

Fleischman, Paul

Biographies

With exquisite original photos and boundless enthusiasm, David Ellwand offers a love song to film photography and the vintage cameras that capture it. From the pinhole to the Pentax, Retro Photo: An Obsession is a visual journey through the history of photography, highlighting some of the iconic cameras of the analog era. Appealing to those new to film photography as well as the seasoned professional wanting to explore new avenues, this beautiful keepsake volume showcases more than one hundred cameras from the collection of photographer and author David Ellwand, along with photographs he has taken with them. At once an accessible guide to vintage cameras, a highly personal take on photographic history, and a celebration of classic design, here is a book that takes the fear out of old-style photography and puts the fun back in.

Retro Photo: An Obsession: A Personal Selection of Vintage Cameras and the Photographs They Take

ELLWAND, David

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Know someone who loves creatures? Animal lovers will fixate on this giant book presenting thirty-two big, bold images of friendly beasts. From a star of children’s design in Sweden comes an exquisite array of animals rendered with whimsy and stylish splendor. Every oversize page highlights a different specimen, from an adorable sheep to an elegant flamingo, from an endearing hippo to a silly-looking snake. Each animal’s name appears in a different eye-catching type treatment, making for an attractive graphic keepsake sure to find a prominent place in nurseries and bookshelves everywhere.

Animals

Arrhenius, Ingela P.

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Books by Candlewick Studio