Showing posts with label Phil Amara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Phil Amara. Show all posts

Tuesday, 5 February 2019

"The Discovery of Ramen (Asian Hall of Fame)" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle (Immedium Publishing)

There's nothing quite as satisfying as whipping up a bowl of steaming hot Ramen to guzzle down on a cold winter's night.

As Chinese New Year is being celebrated today across the world, we're taking another look at Immedium Publishing's fantastic "Asian Hall of Fame" series with another brilliant book chronicling the history of something that we probably take for granted, invented by innovative folk in the far east.

"The Discovery of Ramen" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle is another fast-paced whizz through history with a charming historical host and his two young friends.

You may remember us reviewing "The Discovery of Fireworks and Gunpowder" in the same range of books - now Dao, Ethan and Emma are on the trail of something tasty. Ethan's tummy is rumbling but before he can discover where the delicious smells are coming from in a local Ramen cafe, they're whisked off through history to meet amazing innovators who brought this tasty dish to the world, made in so many different ways but always with tasty noodles at the heart of the dish.

Dao details how wheat-based noodles were first combined with tasty broth and sold in street stalls, and how one amazing fellah Momofuku Ando - who was born all the way back in 1910 - revolutionised the creation of instant packet noodles, flash fried, dried and later made with hot water into the dish we know and love today.

Cup noodles followed, making the whole process even more convenient. Today, nearly 100 billion servings of noodles are wolfed down by hungry folk like us every single year! Wow!

This is a fantastically illustrated and brilliantly storified dive into the history of noodles and we definitely know what we'll be having for dinner tonight!!

Sum this book up in a sentence: Another fantastic title from Immedium chronicling the history of something we largely take for granted, delicious ramen!

"The Discovery of Ramen" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle is out now, published by Immedium Publishing (kindly supplied for review in digital form). 
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Thursday, 3 January 2019

"The Discovery of Fireworks and Gunpowder: Asian Hall of Fame" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle (Immedium Inc)

With our New Year just passed, and Chinese New Year on the way on the 5th February, it's very easy to take something that is a huge feature of both celebrations completely for granted.

"The Discovery of Fireworks and Gunpowder" is a fantastic picture book in the new "Asian Hall of Fame" series by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle.

Publishers Immedium are very proud of the fact that this is the first time anyone's produced a picture book about this amazing and fascinating subject, that has its roots deep in Chinese history.

Step back in time with Ethan and Emma and their magical Red Panda pal Dao to the 1st Century, 2000 years ago in Ancient China the very first innovators began combining different ingredients to produce gunpowder.

Ethan and Emma find out more about gunpowder and fireworks with a very special magical animal pal!
The book touches on the military applications of gunpowder, of course - but concentrates most on the sheer spectacle of fireworks, and how all those dazzling colours and shapes are produced in the sky.

This is one of our favourite spreads - describing the 'stars' packed into each firework, that explode to produce such dazzling colours and designs
We found this absolutely fascinating from both the perspective of enjoying a slice of Chinese history that made a huge contribution to something that people all around the world can enjoy at different times of the year, but also from the technical perspective of learning some of the intricate secrets of how fireworks actually do their thing.

With a simple yet brilliantly explained set of facts worked into the story, and some really gorgeous illustrations, we'll be keeping an eye on Immedium's fabulous publications from now on (Look out for "The History of Ramen" in the same series by the way.

You can check out Immedium's fabulous range of books over on their website:

Immedium: wonderfully illustrated bookswww.immedium.com/

"The Discovery of Fireworks and Gunpowder (Asian Hall of Fame)" by Phil Amara, Oliver Chin and Juan Calle is out now, published by Immedium (kindly supplied in digital format for review). 
Read More