This week's first book of the week is an amazing piece of work, one of the most captivating atlases you'll ever see.

Only this time it's not a non-fiction book, in "An Atlas of Imagined Islands" edited by Huw Lewis-Jones, the title's a bit of a giveaway. All of the amazing maps, wrought in a ton of different artistic styles by an amazingly talented bunch of designers, authors and illustrators, are imaginary, plucked from the creative grey matter of these superb creatives.

Knotted together into a fantastic tome by Huw, who contributes his own map and a little of the inspiration for the Atlas - Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" - a book that captivated me as a kid, each author is given free reign to be inspired by Defoe's work but develop an idea in their own style.

So here's a brief selection. The book is absolutely packed with amazing maps so these will give you just a flavour of what's inside.

"Caligo" by Steph Von Reiswitz

"Moderna" by Ruta Briede

"Kaijuto" by Takayo Akiyama

We love the art, but we really love the descriptive way each author / illustrator develops a mythos around their islands, an idea, and sometimes these are more of a direct homage to Robinson Crusoe - sometimes they're very personal ideas to the creator themselves.

All in all it's absolutely mesmerising stuff, particularly if (like us) you just can't get enough of maps and atlases.

Sum this book up in a sentence: A stunning collection of imaginary lands from some of the top creatives working in and around publishing today, curated masterfully by Huw.

"An Atlas of Imagined Islands" edited by Huw Lewis is out now, published by Thames and Hudson (kindly supplied for review). 

We love books that begin as an idea, a notion, perhaps a project - but spin up into something that could change the way you think and even perhaps (hopefully) one day change the world.

"Migrations: Open Hearts, Open Borders" is one such book, beginning with an idea from two teachers of illustration at Worcester University, emerging at a time when the refugee crisis began to intensify back in 2017.

Their idea was fairly simple, to put out a call to illustrators all around the world to ask them to send an original postcard illustration, to eventually form an amazing installation at the Bienalle of Illustration at Bratislavia in Slovakia.

No one quite expected the huge response that they would get, with hundreds of cards arriving by post and some of the most famous illustrators working in children's literature and beyond all contributing some amazing thought-provoking pictures and messages.


Since then, the installation has been put together and displayed in various places around the world, and will be installed in Amnesty International's London offices in the summer of 2019.

This book gathers together fifty of the postcards, mailed from 32 countries, and reproduces in actual size in this very special book which is available now.

All the works have been donated and the book's royalties will be shared between Amnesty International and IBBY (International Board on Books for Youth).

Leading children's book illustrators from the UK, including Christopher Corr, Neal Layton, Jackie Morris, Jane Ray and Chris Riddell, have contributed cards, along with illustrators from Argentina to Russia, South Africa to Iran, with an introduction written by world-renowned talented illustrator Shaun Tan.

Using the strong imagery and theme of a migrating bird, the book is both thought-provoking and utterly beautiful, with the strong message of acceptance and the dissolution of our preconceptions about nationality and borders emanating from every page.

This really is something stunning and well worth picking up.

"Migrations: Open Hearts, Open Borders" by various artists, is published by Otter-Barry Books (kindly supplied for review)

Once again it's time for one of those glorious "Art of" books. This time it's "The Art of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" curated by Josh Kushins...