Books fall open, you fall in

I once had a bookmark with a a picture of a turtle and a rabbit on it that read, "Books hard or soft, I love them all." As cheesy as that sounds, I love books and although I missed the Festival of Books last week at UCLA, I thought I'd share some of my favorite illustrated books that I currently own:

I Can Fly - illustrated by Mary Blair


This is a classic Little Golden Book that captures the spirit of a little girl's imagination and Blair's exuberant and bright illustrations. For those of you not familiar with Mary Blair (shame on you), she was a very important artist and Disney animator and also designed Disneyland's It's a Small World. For less than three bucks, you can own some of Blair's vibrant artwork.

The Ancient Book of Myth and War





*i'm too lazy to rotate this picture*

Nate Wragg. As one of the contributing authors of this book, he is also one of the most talented illustrators from the Pixar family (and one reason why I bought this book). He created a lot of concept sketches for Ratatouille and even illustrated a children's book called Too Many Cooks. I like this book because a lot of the artists that contributed their drawings and paintings about their favorite mythological creatures share some insight that went into creating the piece.

Limited Edition: Art and Design of GAMA-GO



Over 300 pages of the distinct style of GAMA-GO illustration, this book is worthy of being part of any design library. Whether you're a fan of DeathBot or The Yeti(I personally like Dirty Bird), Tim Biskup and gang started GAMA-GO cuz they were bored with their day jobs and wanted to turn their basement hobby into something more. This book is filled with rare images and early designs and provides endless inspiration for creating characters!

*most of these pictures were borrowed from other sites, the only picture that's mine is the one that's not rotated :P

**title of the post came from another bookmark. Obviously, I collected corny bookmarks as a kid, too.