Contact: Sara Anderson 206.285.1520  
sara@saranderson.com

Preschool Board Books & Blocks

Colors and Numbers nesting blocks have been a favorite of children around the world since their premiere at Crate & Barrel almost 20 years ago. The attraction is first and foremost their bright colors and good design. Combining many elements of early childhood development such as motor coordination, patterning, sorting, sequencing, and stacking, these blocks encourage learning while inspiring hours of happy play.

Parent's Choice Award

These eye-catching board books with their vibrant colors and unusual page design encourage the youngest child to discover the concept of counting, from one hen to ten cars!

Parent's Choice Award

With bold, fresh palette, and
innovative conceptual design,
this joyfully introduces toddlers to Sara
Anderson’s all-time favorite
subject—color—from fire-engine red to grasshopper green!

Sara Anderson, reconocida diseñadora, autora e ilustradora
de libros infantiles, de forma imaginativa traduce el concepto
de contar para los niños, ¡desde una gallina hasta diez coches!

Sara Anderson, reconocida diseñadora, autora e ilustradora
de libros infantiles, con muchísima alegría comparte con
los niños lo que más le encanta—el color—¡desde el rojo
de un camión de bomberos hasta el azul del cielo.

Pike Place Portraits: A lively art book introduces kids to a Seattle landmark.

By Roger Downey

The Pike Place Market has been a great place to take kids as long as I can
remember. Now you can take the Market home with you and share it with the
nippers without being afraid one of them is going to get lost or fall into a Dumpster.

Author/artist Sara Anderson lives in the Market. She's lived there a quarter-century,
and what she knows about its people and shops, its moods and hours, is abundantly on
view in her A Day at the Market. Printed on stiff, shiny, child-resistant die-cut
cardboard, it provides action-figure portraits of so many Pike Place regulars
(including Dumpster-diver "Three Hearts") that you can lose track of a
particular figure in the dizzy multitudes, making Where's Waldo–like
games a natural for reading with tinies.

The slightly more literate will be able to sound out Anderson's rhyming quatrains,
but words are kept to a bare minimum. What makes the book fun to look at is the flood
of lively images, all rendered—flowers, shops, streets, and people—as though composed of
colored-paper cutouts ingeniously arranged. (Anderson produced artwork using the technique
for decades, and though she now uses a computer, her images still have the edgy, dynamic feel
of collage.) Compositionally, the look resembles Jacob Lawrence's genre pieces, while the
color scheme recalls Matisse, but Anderson renders her Market so assiduously that each lively
page jumps out at you like a portrait of the beloved familiar. All in all, the nicest thing
to happen to the Market artwise since Mark Tobey hung out there, and a lot better adapted
to lap appreciation.

—Review from the Seattle Weekly December 14, 2005

Beginning With Books "Best Books For Babies"

Two board books that are good enough eat!

Board books for babies, full of wholesome, hearty goodness. Market-fresh fruit and
vegetables sumptuous to the eye, named in playful rhyme that's delightful to the ears.
This rhythmic nourishment will set baby on the right path to eating healthy food for
years to come.

"Huckleberry-strawberry-watermelon-plum/ apricot-mango Let's have some!" In this book,
the juicy sensuousness of fruit comes alive and drips down your chin!

Beautiful, colorful, cut-paper style images of vegetables from broccoli to zucchini
are presented in a rhythmic sequence:

"Celery- rhubarb-cucumber-bean / potato-tomato-yellow and green" making vegetables
not only the subject for a but for a sound mind.

Deliciosas.
Nutritivas.

Un riquísimo manjar para los ojos
y los oídos de niños pequeños.

Sara Anderson, reconocida diseñadora, autora e ilustradora
de libros infantiles, con muchísima alegría introduce a los niños
lo que más le encanta—el color—¡desde el rojo de una manzana
hasta el verde de un jalapeño!  

Sara Anderson, celebrated designer and children's book author-
illustrator, joyfully introduces toddlers to her all-time favorite
thing—color—from apple red to jalapeño green!

Both awarded Best Children's Book of the Year from Bank St.

All the color, motion, and sounds of a big city compressed into two marvelous
high-energy board books whose shape echoes the urban skyline.

HONK, HONK!
Rattle roar —
Taxi cab
Slam the door!

HOT DOGS! PRETZELS!
"SODA POP!"
Ride that bike.
"Watch out." "STOP!"

Two oversized board books trace a city across the span of a day and a night-
filled with the people, traffic, parks, streets, stores, and buildings that make
up the town. The breadth of the urban experience may be all found here: from
the bicyclist lazily gliding through the park to the raucous swooshhhh of traffic;
from the clanging crash of construction work to the quiet of a sweeping streets
cape as seen from a high-floor apartment building.

Vibrant colors that zing with the heat rising from a steaming sidewalk are perfectly
matched to a syncopated, sound filled, chant again-and-again text. Ingeniously
die-cut pages reinforce the experience of the city skyline in a stylish pair of books
that represent a tour-de-force performance by Sara Anderson.

A Children's book about a zydeco dance…

When the wind blows through Alligator Acres, in a corner deep in the swamps and bayous
of Crawdad County, it is sure to carry with it a story. This is one of those stories: Eloise,
the gentle zebra, was just a bit too big to join in the jamming down at the juke joint. That's
the same juke joint where Corndog Willie and his Slackjjaws were plain' up a storm. Of course,
it will be up to gracious Cecil, the alligator, and Woo, the considerate armadillo, to set matters right.

Musician and philosopher Doug Anderson have collaborated in a lyrical ballad of community, which
celebrates friendship and loya;ty,, and echoes the neregy, rhythm, and twang of a zydeco band. It is
a tale framed in spry language and the deep greens and blues of the bayou. Its emotions will resonate
long after the moon sets on Frog Bottom Swamp and the only sound is the instant buzz of insects

Brilliantly vivid colors wash each page as the story of a pumpkin seed is told. In Matisse-like
style, illustrations compliment the story told from the perspective of the pumpkin seed. "Spring
rain clouds almost drown me. A growing vine lifted me out of the mud." The little seed eventually
becomes a pumpkin, then a jack-o-lantern: "She opens her jack-l'-lantern knife. She's pulling my
sloppy slurpy insides out. Warn hands. My tummy feels funny." The pumpkin becomes part of the shivaree,
then is taken back to the field after a week or so. "Left inside of me there's a little silver seed."
And the circle continues. Prepared by: Cathy Vance, Librarian Caldwell Heights Elementary

In the spring, a small silver seed is planted in the garden. By fall, it's a full-grown pumpkin on a
long vine. The careful and accurate depiction of the development of a pumpkin — from seed to sprout to
flower to fruit — is followed by a description of a wonderfully raucous Halloween romp so full of ice
and fun that the reader feels like the guest of honor.