Josh Selig -- the brain behind the preschool hit "Wonder Pets" and the weird-and-wonderful "Oobi" -- doesn't have kids of his own. What he does have is one of the most beautifully childlike imaginations to be found outside an actual child. Take his new book, A Book For You. It's a collection of small rhymes, nothing fancy, that brings to mind a bygone era of children's poetry: A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. The book is handmade, printed on thick paper with watercolor illustrations by Stephanie Cleaver. It looks like a labor of love, and it is; when we asked Josh to talk to us about his inspiration, here's what he said:
"A Book For You is a group of short poems for young children. It is about friendship, hope and appreciating the small yet important things that fill up a child's day: a cat, an apple, a star.
I wrote these poems many years ago after an important relationship ended. I was looking for comfort and I found it in myself. These poems are a gentle reminder that beauty, laughter and love are always around us at all times. The hard part is being patient enough to see them."
The book is being sold exclusively in the Little Airplane studio store in downtown NYC -- yet another reason (beyond the studio tour) to pay a visit. -- Gwynne Watkins
