Design Books (and More) for Kids
December 13, 2013
The third of our holiday gift guides offers a selection of the year’s books and games for the design-inclined child or child at heart on your gift list.
This symbol indicates that the book is available on the Designers & Books Online Book Fair—a great place to discover and buy (with some significant discounts) even more books for kids as well as those in a variety of design disciplines for adults.
We’ll be adding to the list, so check back often!

Gloria Fowler
From AMMO Books. The Alexander Girard: Color board book celebrates the vivid, playful, and sophisticated world of 20th century design icon Alexander Girard. Especially known for his textile designs for Herman Miller, Girard’s wide-ranging repertoire also spanned many disciplines, including interior design, graphic design, and furniture design. This chunky board book is another wonderful addition to our series that features both design greats and up-and-coming new talent. Alexander Girard Color features the vintage 1972 illustration “Girls” on the cover, as well as 26 classic Girard designs.

From Phaidon Press. Architecture According to Pigeons is a fun, lively introduction for children to world's most beautiful buildings. In this delightful book, Speck Lee Tailfeather reveals that he and his fellow pigeons are in fact great aficionados of architecture. Speck delivers his account of a journey around the globe, offering a “bird’s eye view” of the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, and dozens of other buildings to delight children and parents alike.

John Alcorn
From AMMO Books. Books! by Murray McCain and John Alcorn, the beloved classic children's book originally published in 1962, is now re-released for the first time in a new large format. This 1962 New York Times book of the year is beloved for its charming hand-drawn illustrations, inventive typography, and sweet homage to the very nature of books themselves. The author and illustrator celebrate the importance of books in our everyday lives, through words and graphics that are all beautifully designed and printed with fluorescent inks. This sweet and nostalgic book shares the wonder of language, stories, and imagination that young children can discover through the joy of reading. In our digital age, a treasure like Books! reminds us of how irreplaceable they truly are. This classic example of hand-drawn, mid-century graphic design is sure to find renewed interest in a new generation of young readers.

From AMMO Books. To celebrate the upcoming 40th anniversary of Charles Harper’s Birds & Words, AMMO is proud to present this large format re-issue of the 1974 classic. This exquisite edition is reproduced in its entirety with all carefully restored images. Birds & Words is the ideal book for Charley Harper fans and every bird lover who knows there is more to bird watching than measurements, range maps, flight patterns, and lifetime lists. This book is a true reflection of Charley Harper, who was that special species of man with twinkling eyes and smile, and wit as infectiously keen and lighthearted as his paintings.

From Gestalten. Christoph Niemann’s whimsical hand-drawn animals made his Petting Zoo App an international sensation. The broad range of personalities created by the famous illustrator proved to be popular with children and adults alike. Now, 36 of them can be found on the colorful cards of this memo game. The whole family will enjoy finding matches among the charming collection of characters and training their memories in such an enjoyable way.
The Petting Zoo Memo Game is not only a “must-have” for fans of Christoph Niemann’s work, but also an attractive gift for any occasion. The cards, which are made out of stable cardboard, can be easily grasped by the smallest of hands and are made to last. Combining classic educational fun with contemporary design, this memo game makes a great addition to any household.
Petting Zoo's Christoph Niemann—What's His Game? from Gestalten on Vimeo.

Kids Design Collaborative
Foreword by Marvin Malecha , FAIA
From Paintbox Press. Design Dossier: Architecture is the third book in a series that introduces kids ages 10+ to creative professions. This book reveals how architects work: what types of structures they create—from skyscrapers and bridges to houses and schools. Kids will discover the building blocks of architecture: materials, forces, sustainable design, planning and construction. They will learn how architects draw to scale and create prototypes; explore milestones of 20th-21st century architecture, and become familiar with ten contemporary architects who helped shape today’s built environment. Each book contains templates and instructions for building a paper skyscraper.
See all the books in the Design Dossier series for children, which includes graphic design.

From Workman Publishing. Go, by the award-winning graphic designer Chip Kidd, is a stunning introduction to the ways in which a designer communicates his or her ideas to the world. It’s written and designed just for those curious kids, not to mention their savvy parents, who want to learn the secret of how to make things dynamic and interesting.
Chip Kidd is “the closest thing to a rock star” in the design world (USA Today), and in Go he explains not just the elements of design, including form, line, color, scale, typography, and more, but most important, how to use those elements in creative ways. Like putting the word “go” on a stop sign, Go is all about shaking things up—and kids will love its playful spirit and belief that the world looks better when you look at it differently. He writes about scale: When a picture looks good small, don’t stop there—see how it looks when it’s really small. Or really big. He explains the difference between vertical lines and horizontal lines. The effect of cropping a picture to make it beautiful—or, cropping it even more to make it mysterious and compelling. How different colors signify different moods. The art of typography, including serifs and sans serifs, kerning and leading.
Read the Notable Book of 2013 review.
Also see our interview with Chip Kidd on Go.

Rebecca Sutherland
From Knock Knock. This interactive picture book features whimsical mystery images hidden on each illustrated sheet. To reveal the surprise, turn out the lights and shine a flashlight behind the page or simply hold up to a light source! Best use of flashlights since shadow puppets!

From Black Dog Publishing. Following the unique illustrative style of Visual Aid: Stuff You’ve Forgotten, Things You Never Thought You Knew, and Lessons You Didn’t Quite Get Around to Learning, this book encourages children to draw and complete the pictures themselves while inviting children to get involved in the images they create and help them learn while they doodle.

From The Museum of Modern Art/Abrams. MoMA’s first storybook for kids follows the adventures of Young Frank, a resourceful young architect who lives in New York City with his grandfather, Old Frank, who is also an architect. Young Frank likes to use anything he can get his hands on—macaroni, old boxes, spoons, and sometimes even his dog, Eddie—to create wiggly chairs and twisting skyscrapers. But Old Frank doesn’t think that’s how REAL architects make things. One day they visit The Museum of Modern Art, and learn that architects can do more than either of them realized. Written by award-winning children’s author and illustrator Frank Viva, Young Frank, Architect is an inspiration for budding architects as well as those who think they’ve seen it all.
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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