Fotoplay!

As you know, the purpose of my blog is to share awesome books with anyone who reads with children.  On my page entitled "Book Reviews," I invite new or aspiring authors to share their work with me with the hope that it might help them generate more of an audience for their work.  I make no guarantees that these books will make my list of "365," but I do promise to provide an honest review.  I know it is quite difficult to break into the world of publishing, so if I can help a worthy author spread the word about their book, I'm more than happy to help.

A few months back, I was contacted by M. J. Bronstein, author of Fotoplay!, who asked me if I might like to receive a copy of her book for review.  I checked out her website and was rather intrigued, so excitedly replied that I would.  Within a few days, her book arrived in my mailbox, and my son loved it from the start.  Fotoplay! not a story, but a book filled with 50 fun photo-based prompts that invite children to channel their inner artists and create fabulous works of art!  Each page contains different photographs and quirky prompts for inspiration -- cats who need hats, meerkats who need fancy outfits, an empty art gallery that needs filling, a tunnel that leads to a field full of butterflies.  Some of my son's creations appear here:

I love the way Fotoplay! invites children to use their imaginations and create fun works of art without the pressure of trying to figure out where to start.  My son is what I would call a reluctant artist.  He likes to draw -- sometimes -- but usually his art involves a few quick lines and scribbles and he is done.  If an artistic activity holds his attention for more than 5 minutes, I'm impressed.  When he first opened this book, he sat down with it for almost an hour, filling in the first half of the book in one sitting!  (I actually had to cut him off so that he didn't go through the whole thing in the first day he had it.)  Granted, his drawing still consisted of a lot of scribbles, but he was excited about doing it and loved the art he was creating.  And isn't that the whole point?  Fotoplay! got him excited about art in a wonderful way, and I just loved watching him create with this book.  I mean, doesn't this picture just explain it all?

If you're looking for a fun, interactive, creative book to share with an artist of any age, I encourage you to check out Fotoplay!  It's the kind of book I would have loved as a child, and I'm definitely going to have to get another copy for my daughter at some point. To read more about M.J. Bronstein's book and work, you can visit her website at www.inthisplayground.com.  She also has some free printables available on her site here, which I might just have to print out for myself to do sometime alongside my kids.  If you are interested in purchasing Fotoplay!, you can buy it on Amazon or by clicking the picture here: