To find out childrens’ favourite books there is no resource better than the International Reading Associations Children’s Choices Project (http://www.reading.org/Library/Retrieve.cfm?D=10.1598/RT.62.2.8&F=RT-62-2-CChoices.html)
What Is the Children's Choices Project?
Each year 12,500 school children from different regions of the United States read and vote on the newly published children's and young adults' trade books that they like best. The Children's Choices for 2008 list is the 34th in a series that first appeared as “Classroom Choices” in the November 1975 issue of The Reading Teacher (RT), a peer-reviewed journal for preschool, primary, and elementary levels published eight times a year by the International Reading Association (IRA). This list is designed for use not only by teachers, librarians, administrators, and booksellers, but also by parents, grandparents, caregivers, and everyone who wishes to encourage young people to read for pleasure.
Children's Choices is a project of a joint committee supported by IRA and The Children's Book Council (CBC). IRA is a nonprofit educational organization whose members include classroom and reading teachers, school administrators and supervisors, parents, college/university faculty, and others who are dedicated to improving reading instruction and promoting literacy worldwide.
The CBC is the nonprofit professional association of U.S. publishers and packagers of books for young people. It encourages childhood literacy through sponsorship of national initiatives including the annual observance of Children's Book Week and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature program, as well as cooperative work with other professional associations.
In 1969, IRA and CBC formed a liaison committee to explore areas of mutual interest to reading teachers and publishers. Among the committee's initial charges was the development of a core selection of trade books for the classroom. This list of Children's Choices has remained an important activity of the committee, which each year produces this child-selected bibliography identifying titles that can be used successfully in reading programs, can be related to the classroom curricula, and are known to engage children.
How Are Books Selected and Annotated?
More than 500 books were evaluated by children for Children's Choices for 2008. The books to be tested were selected by publishers from the books they published in 2007 and were sent to five review teams located in different regions of the United States. Each team consisted of a children's literature specialist plus one or more classroom teachers, who in turn worked with other classroom teachers, school librarians, and more than 2,000 children. Throughout the school year the books were in classrooms, being read to or by children.
Children's votes were tabulated in March, and the top 94 titles for 2008 were announced at the annual International Reading Association Convention in May. The review teams provided an annotation for each title on the list.

This rendition of White Christmas was recorded by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters in 1953. It was #2 on the charts in 1954. Animation is by Joshua Held in 2002. I love the minimalist line and movement in the characters, reminds me a bit of Quentin Blake's style of illustration. The sync between the vocals and the movement is exquisite. Hope this brings some more merry to your Christmas.

I recently had an assignment with an educational publisher to illustrate a native American tale - how the heron gained the right to all the fish in the rivers. The pencil work was done on the Wacom Cintiq tablet and then, once approved by the Art Director and Editorial Committee, printed directly onto 90 lb hot-pressed Arches watercolour paper on an HP 2600 colour laser printer. Winsor and Newton watercolours were applied directly onto the linework and then scanned back into the computer for touch up, additions and finishing on the Cintiq tablet.

Ah yes, those were the days! Researching the traditional tales for The Kerala Collection has resulted in some interesting images that tell the tale of the mythical King Bali. A great, benevolent and popular King he none the less ended up irritating the gods due to his enormous prosperity and insatiable appetite for more kingdoms. The gods feared that theirs would be the next on his list of places to conquer. Consequently they approached Lord Vishnu for his help in reigning in the great King. Utimately Vishnu complied and came up with a clever scheme to put Bali in his place.

The illustrations completed nearly two years ago for Pokiri Parrot and the Needle-nosed Ojha have finally been published by Katha, and they did a great job of it. The colour reproduction is great, the book design, paper and binding are excellent. My only complaint as that due to the decision that the story is told visually as a set of postcards from the heroine to the narrator, some of the spreads that were highly detailed are shown as quite small images on the page. However it's always great to see the finished book after all that work.

Moving along Mudpie and Bananaleaf fulfill a lifelong dream to visit Varanasi also known as Benares or the traditional name of Kasi . But those storm clouds brewing up are giving Mudpie the shivers. What if it rains? What will happen to him?