Chronicle Books Blog

Collecting natural objects with your children is a great way to foster curiosity and initiate the habit of close observation. Every scientist or artist needs these skills, honed over many years. A collector’s passion for something specific in nature will also engender a respect for the natural wonders of our earth and generate interest in how to preserve habitats and the environment. Now is a great time to start noticing the amazing objects of our world and choose some favorites. Once you get going, your child will become the initiator.

Treasure hunting on the beach is one of the great joys in life. Whether it is stones, shells, seaweed, driftwood or sea glass, beachcombing is not only a gift to give your kids but a great addition to their elementary science education.

An important note before you start: Be sensitive to your surroundings. Do your research. Do not take anything that is living or still attached to the rocks or sea-floor. If you are in a national or state park or in a nature conservancy area, be sure to read any rules they have about taking natural objects from the park. Most national parks and many conservation areas do not allow any objects to be taken. But this is where your camera, sketchbook and note-taking can be very handy!

1. Get a tide chart: Buy a year-round tide calendar for your area or peruse your local paper’s weather page to see if they list the tides. There is probably a website that lists the local tides. It is helpful to know what to expect when you get to the beach. If the tide is low, there will be much more to find. If it is a full moon low tide (much more extreme on both high and low ends) you have a special treat. It is a bummer to get to the beach and have the tide so high there is no beach at all!

2. Bring an extra bucket to carry your finds and/or wear a jacket with lots of pockets that you don’t mind getting sandy. I have a windbreaker type jacket that has five different pockets…it is my beach jacket. If your kid hands you things to carry, make sure you have a designated pocket so his/her treasures don’t get mixed up with yours. A backpack is also handy. Bring a notebook or sketchbook to write down the place and conditions of finding your treasures.

3. Edit your treasures before you leave the beach. Lay what you have found out on a log or rock and make yourself an exhibit. Take a photo of your exhibit. Then edit it down to one or two objects to bring home. Return the rest to the shore.

4. Give yourself categories: If you have been collecting stones or sea glass for a while maybe you look just for square stones or heart shaped stones one day or blue sea glass. Perhaps there is a graphic element that ties your objects together like a color or line.

5. Make a place at home for your collection. Whether a dish in the kitchen or a shelf in your child’s room, make a space where the collection can be laid out and viewed and edited and rearranged. Remember that just the act of choosing how to lay out your treasures is a very creative act.

6. Research your treasures: Get a field guide to what you are interested in. Although not specifically field guides, my books have great information in them and are easy to understand. There are field guides to help identify rocks and minerals, shells, bugs, fossils, leaves, pine cones, bones….you name it. Have these handy at home or go on line or to your local library and get some information on what you have found.

7. Draw pictures: Draw an individual object you have found or make a still life arrangement and draw that. Look very closely at the nuance of design and shape and texture of your treasure….isn’t it amazing? That sketch-book is handy to take with you as well.

8. Take photographs: of an individual or group of your objects. Get in as close as your lens will let you. Again, isn’t what you see amazing?!

9. Find other people as obsessed with your obsession as you are. There are on-line groups and blogs and books and magazines on every subject there is. Research artists that use materials you love.

10. Tell your science teacher about your collection. Odds are, she or he will be thrilled and will reveal their own collecting obsession. My kid’s elementary school science teacher collects sand from around the world.

11. Give Back: Pick up the trash along with the treasure. Bring an extra bucket or bag if necessary.

Have loads of fun, be sensitive to your surroundings, and feel the great rewards of learning some of the processes that generate the extraordinary objects of our world. I hope my books will inspire—they are also a great gift for your kid’s science or homeroom teacher!

Josie Iselin
Author/photographer of Beach: A Book of Treasure

To read more about Josie Iselin and her work, visit www.josieiselin.com.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tell us what you think of this recipe–does it make you want to try it? Or have you tried it out and have some insight to offer? Enter to win a copy of the book by leaving a comment letting us know!

“Meatball” Sliders

The idea here is to take a slider—or mini burger—and give it all the rich flavor and appeal of a meatball, but none of the fuss. We form ground meat, grated Parmesan, fresh sage, egg, and panko breadcrumbs into 2-inch sliders and then grill them over high heat. They are served on crunchy toasted slices of French bread spread with a spicy tomato ketchup, relish, or chutney.

1 pound ground round or sirloin
2/3 cup panko or regular dried breadcrumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons minced fresh sage or 1 1/2 tablespoons dried and crumbled
1 large egg
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
12 slices French bread, 3/4 inch thick
2 tablespoons olive oil
About 1/2 cup spicy ketchup, tomato chutney, or a spicy tomato-vegetable spread like Ajvar (see Note)

In a large bowl, thoroughly combine the ground meat, panko, Parmesan, sage, egg, and a generous amount of salt and pepper. Work the meat to thoroughly incorporate all the ingredients and form into 12 two-inch sliders.

Place the bread slices on a plate and drizzle both sides with the oil.

Preheat a grill for high direct heat, about 425 degrees F. Place a clean grill rack on the grill and let it get hot for about 3 minutes.

Cook the sliders for about 4 minutes on each side, covered, for medium-rare and up to 5 or 6 minutes for well done. During the last minute, place the oiled bread on the grill for about 30 seconds on each side, or until golden brown and lightly toasted.

Place the toast on a large serving plate. Spoon 1 teaspoon of the tomato ketchup or chutney on each piece of bread and spread. Top with a slider and serve hot.

Makes 12 sliders

Note: You can find spicy ketchup, tomato chutney, and Ajvar or Lutenica at specialty food shops. You can also simply spike a store-bought ketchup with hot pepper sauce until it is spicy.

Purchase Stonewall Kitchen Grilling.

Click here for more great recipes.

Peter Perez
Senior Marketing Manager

Popularity: 1% [?]

Some write them, some design them and others invent new ways to display them. Books might not be conceived as pieces of decoration, but that doesn’t mean that the way you store them can’t be. Dutch designer Kriz lifestyle in Eindhoven designed a book case where each book can have its own cubby:

For Brooklyn Designers Colleen & Eric the idea was much simpler, a bookshelf with a built in stopper that can move to fit the quantity of books:

This bookshelf by Pieter de Leeuw uses the letterforms found inside of books as loose containers for the books themselves:

dbd Studio took the idea of the built-in bookshelf to a whole other level with this floor to ceiling undulating structure:

It’s exciting to see such creative design solutions, from the expressive collapsing bookshelf, to the invisible, to the BooxStore, which is not actually a bookshelf but a cardboard box designed to look like a stack of books:

The See-Saw Bookshelf by BCXSY seems more like a work of conceptual art, but also really fun to use—and not without function. Imagine the play with physics every time you needed to pull a book out?!

For more example of bookish industrial design wonders check out these 20 Brilliant Bookcases on Incredible Things. Once you’ve found the right container to showcase your book collection, next comes the fun with sorting: by color? Subject? Title? Book fiends and designers unite! Either way, there are many ways to have fun with books. After reading them, of course.

Suzanne LaGasa
Designer

Popularity: 2% [?]

Our newest Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Weird Junior Edition is full of dozens of how-tos, tips, advice, and instructions for dealing with paranormal and supernatural turns for the worse, from fending off vampires and zombies to enhancing your ESP and navigating a haunted house, and it’s a darned good read, if I do say so myself. I am the co-author, after all. Even if you’re a non-believer, you’ll find it fun and entertaining. And, it’s thick enough to fend off many different varieties of biting monsters.

In honor of the launch of this new book, I wanted to share my own “weird” story from my youth.

As a kid, I was pretty much a non-believer when it comes to supernatural stuff. I didn’t really even believe in Santa Claus much past the age of 5 (although I suppose being Jewish didn’t help).

But I have to admit that I’ve always sort of believed in life after death. It’s just difficult for me to think that whatever inexplicable thing makes us alive just completely disappears when we die and goes into nothingness. I have no idea what it is or where it goes, whether it’s the “soul” or what—but I do find it hard to think that all this energy that gives us life just goes away. Even science agrees that energy can only get displaced or dispersed, but never truly disappears. And those feelings were only confirmed one holiday season when I was about 10 years old.

My out of town cousins were over for dinner. We were talking about what we’d gotten present-wise, and I mentioned the new “game” I’d gotten but hadn’t tried out. My cousin Andrea, who was about six years older, knew exactly what it was—not a game at all, but a “Ouija Board”—a mysterious looking board with letters, symbols, and numbers on it, and a plastic heart shaped pointer. Andrea told us how to use it—that we all had to lightly put our hands on the pointer (or “planchette”), close our eyes, and ask to speak to someone who had died.

(more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Phew! Stationery Show is over! What a whirlwind week we had at the Javitz Center. Chronicle’s booth was bustling with business. I thought I’d share a few pics from our trenches.

We had a lot to be excited about in our booth, from kids books to cookbooks to stationery, depending on the buyer’s needs and tastes. With buyers I spoke to, some standout packages were: Silhouette Art, 642 Things to Draw, All My Friends are Dead, Rosie Flo’s Kitchen Coloring Book, Taro Gomi’s Play All Day, and Tartine Bread. (All of these are coming out this summer or fall and available for pre-order now on our site. Get ‘em while they’re hot!)

There’s some terrific NSS trend reporting from bloggers I follow. Poppytalk did a comprehensive roundup of the stationery artists who showed their wares this year, including shout outs to artists we work with: Hello!Lucky, Yellow Owl Workshop, and Hammerpress.

(more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]