Book of the Week — Gallop!

Design Mom Reader Shannon J, sent me an email recommending the book Gallop! I finally made some time to check it out and now I simply must add it to the family library. It sounds/looks amazing.

Since I still haven't seen it in person, I'm going to grab the well-written (anonymous?) review right off of Amazon:

"There's never before been a book like Gallop! Employing a patented new technology called Scanimation, each page is a marvel that brings animals, along with one shining star, to life with art that literally moves. It's impossible not to flip the page, and flip it again, and again, and again.

A first book of motion for kids, it shows a horse in full gallop and a turtle swimming up the page. A dog runs, a cat springs, an eagle soars, and a butterfly flutters. Created by Rufus Butler Seder, an inventor, artist, and filmmaker fascinated by antique optical toys, Scanimation is a state-of-the-art six-phase animation process that combines the "persistence of vision" principle with a striped acetate overlay to give the illusion of movement. It harkens back to the old magical days of the kinetoscope, and the effect is astonishing, like a Muybridge photo series springing into action—or, in terms kids can relate to, like a video without a screen. Complementing the art is a delightful rhyming text full of simple questions and fun, nonsense replies: Can you gallop like a horse? giddyup-a-loo! Can you strut like a rooster? cock-a-doodle-doo!

Every child who opens the book will be amazed—and so will every parent."

Are you with me? Does Gallop! sound awesome or what?

And speaking of awesome and books, the 2008 Caldecott and Newbery winners were recently announced. I'm a collector of Caldecott books and look forward to finding out the winners every year. (This year's Caldecott winner is The Invention of Hugo Cabret — a great choice, and one I reviewed here.)