The Comical Hotch Potch Doll


As you may have seen in the past couple of years, I have been collecting book-related toys and thingamajigs. A couple of months ago, my brother brought home a wonderful Mini Hotch Potch doll to add to my growing collection!

The Hotch Potch doll is inspired by The Comical Hotch Potch, or The Alphabet turn’d Posture-Master, a hand-colored print created by English publisher Carrington Bowles in London in 1782.

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More Maurice Sendak

I’ve been a Maurice Sendak fan ever since the book Where the Wild Things Are was read to us in grade school, and for years now, I’ve been trying to complete my Maurice Sendak collection.

I’m a little bit closer to that goal this year, as I’ve lucked out on a bunch of Maurice Sendak books in the past months: Alligators All Around: An Alphabet; The Moon Jumpers; The Miami Giant; I Saw Esau: A Schoolchild’s Pocket Book; and finally, Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation, books #56-61 for 2011.

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Picture Book Roundup: letters, numbers, and apostrophes


I’ve missed doing picture book roundups, and I don’t think I’ve done a proper one yet this year so here’s a bunch of picture books I’ve enjoyed recently: Stephen T. Johnson’s Alphabet City, its companion book City By Numbers, and The Girl’s Like Spaghetti (Why, you can’t manage without apostrophes!) by Lynne Truss (illustrated by Bonnie Timmons).

The books were shamelessly scavenged, as usual — I’d been wanting a copy of Alphabet City for a long time and finally got it via BookMooch, and shortly after found a copy of City By Numbers for a very cheap P40 (less than $1) at a bargain bookstore. Then a few weeks back, I found Girl’s Like Spaghetti for P35! Wonderful additions to my ragtag picture book collection, none of which I buy brand new or full-priced, tee hee hee.

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Disney + Robert Sabuda

I got a new book for my growing pop-up collection — I just couldn’t resist a mashup of two guilty pleasures: Disney and Robert Sabuda (and you can see I couldn’t resist the Happy Meal either; that’s my talking Gingy figure guarding the book!).

It’s a pop-up alphabet book featuring stylized Disney characters and Robert Sabuda’s fabulous paper engineering.  But enough said — I will let the photos do the talking.

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A-Z Challenge

Flipper friend Gege started the A-Z reading challenge this year (check out the full mechanics here), and I’m participating, because it’s a fun way to start reading authors I haven’t read before, and make a substantial dent in my TBR.

Basically, the objective is to read 26 authors with surnames from A to Z between January 1 to December 31, 2010. The more  obsessive-compulsive participants are reading in alphabetical order, but I’ve always gone against the rules when it comes to reading so I’m striking off the names on my list as the mood strikes, until I finish the list off before the year ends.

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