Jeannie Baker

Selected for the 2025 Bologna Ragazzi Award's Amazing Bookshelf: Sustainability CategoryIn spectacular and astonishing collage detail, Jeannie Baker captures the deep beauty, mystery, and hidden vitality of the desert landscape – and why it needs our protection.Chico’s grandpa has taken him on holiday where he grew up as a child, out in the desert. Chico has no interest in exploring the land – the desert jungle frightens him, and he’d much rather play on his his tablet. Grandpa decides that it is time to show Chico the secrets and the wonders that the desert has to offer so that he will not fear it but, instead, welcome it, embrace it and help protect it. Grandpa shows Chico paths through the cactus and the scrub, teaches Chico the plants' names – ocotillo, cholla, cirios, pin cushion, fishhook – and, soon, Chico begins to understand the wonders of the wild. He learns the value of watching, waiting and listening for all the life that hums within his desert home.

A how-to guide to making your own collages, brimful of fascinating hints and tips from a master of the genre.Over the course of a 40-year career, Jeannie Baker has perfected the art of collage in the creation of picture-book classics such as Where the Forest Meets the Sea and Window, a Boston Globe-Horn Honour Book. Her stunning pieces, devised by assembling all sorts of different textures, are known all around the globe. Whether it's dried flowers or tiny shells, spaghetti or postage stamps, she uses the world around her to make work that is astonishingly beautiful and deeply creative. And she focuses on a range of important issues including the environment, land degradation, family, society and sustainability. In Playing with Collage, she shares her secrets at last – and encourages her readers to get creative. Within each of this book's four main sections, Jeannie presents an abstract collage of her own and offers suggestions and starting points for beginners. There are no right or wrong answers in this treasure of a book, it's all about trusting your instincts ... and playing!

Striking mixed-media art from the creator of Mirror lights up the Sonoran Desert, revealing--through one wary boy's experience--a habitat that is anything but barren and desolate. In a desert valley, surrounded by mountains of rock and cactus, is the tiny village the boy calls home. He never wanders far, frightened of coyotes and the dusty wilds beyond. On a visit to Grandpa's ranch, he resists the invitation to explore an area where his grandfather grew up, far from any village. The boy would rather play it safe on his tablet. But one of the creatures he fears has other plans for him, and soon the vast desert "jungle" begins to share its secrets--wonders beyond imagining. Inspired by a research trip to the Sonoran Desert in Mexico, and illustrated with richly detailed and layered mixed-media collage, Jeannie Baker's gentle family story of awakening to nature is informed by the concept of nature deficit disorder, a subject she explores in the author's note. Her extensive afterword also illuminates the enormous biodiversity of one of the world's most magnificent--and misunderstood--habitats.

In an infinity of sky, tiny godwit birds follow ancient, invisible migratory pathways, flying on and on for nine nights and nine days, flying without rest… This is their story."A breathtaking picture book" The BooksellerFrom the creator of the critically acclaimed Where the Forest Meets the Sea and Mirror, comes a poetic, eco-conscious picture book which explores the complex, interdependency of nature. This is the story of the little-known Bar-tailed Godwit who, following invisible pathways that have been used for thousands of years, undertakes the longest unbroken migration of any bird, a total of 11,000 kilometres, flying from their breeding grounds in Alaska across the Pacific Ocean to Australia or New Zealand. Facing hunger and treacherous conditions to reach their destination, their flight is one of bravery, tenacity and strength, and Jeannie’s stunning mixed media collages, inspired first-hand by the spectacular landscapes of Alaska and China, will amaze readers, and take them on an extraordinary visual journey to the corners of our Earth.

Two diverse countries and cultures are linked with warmth and charm in this two-in-one picture book.This innovative picture book comprises two stories designed to be read simultaneously – one from the left, the other from the right. Page by page, we experience the lives of two little boys – one from an urban family in Sydney, Australia, the other from Morocco. From busy motorways to desert landscapes, these worlds couldn't be further apart. Yet with the journey of a homemade Moroccan carpet into the Australian boy's home, we can see how these separate lives become intertwined. At the book's conclusion, the family in Sydney can be seen enjoying their new purchase together while the Moroccan family are surfing the internet. A powerful book, Mirror illustrates how our lives reflect each other and that we are all, even in some small way, connected.

An innovative, two-in-one picture book follows a parallel day in the life of two families: one in a Western city and one in a North African village. Somewhere in Sydney, Australia, a boy and his family wake up, eat breakfast, and head out for a busy day of shopping. Meanwhile, in a small village in Morocco, a boy and his family go through their own morning routines and set out to a bustling market. In this ingenious, wordless picture book, readers are invited to compare, page by page, the activities and surroundings of children in two different cultures. Their lives may at first seem quite unalike, but a closer look reveals that there are many things, some unexpected, that connect them as well. Designed to be read side by side -- one from the left and the other from the right -- these intriguing stories are told entirely through richly detailed collage illustrations.

A powerful account of the reclamation of an urban landscape told wordlessly through fascinating, detailed collage artwork.Observed through the window of a house, a city street gradually becomes a place to call home as the inhabitants begin to rescue their street by planting grass and trees in the empty spaces. Year by year, everything begins to blossom... Told wordlessly and with stunning collage illustrations, Belonging explores the re-greening of the city and the role of community, the empowerment of people and the significance of children, family and neighbourhood in changing the urban environment for the better.

Stunning and unique mixed media collages will amaze readers in this powerful, eco-conscious picture book by the internationally renowned Jeannie Baker.In this visually compelling look at our changing environment by Jeannie Baker, illustrator of the critically-acclaimed Mirror and Where the Forest Meets the Sea, a mother and baby look through a window at a view of wilderness and sky as far as the eye can see. With each page, the boy grows and the scene changes. At first, in a clear patch of forest, a single house appears. A few years pass and there is a village in the distance… When the boy is twenty, will he recognize the view from his window? Illustrated with elaborate and gorgeous collage constructions, Window is a wordless picture book that speaks volumes.

Chronicles the events and changes in a young boy's life and in his environment, from babyhood to grown-up, through wordless scenes observed from the window of his room

When a young boy visits a tropical rain forest, he pretends it is a long time ago and that extinct and rare animals live in the forest, and aboriginal children play there. But how much longer will the rainforest remain, he wonders?

Beautiful collage illustrations take the reader on an extraordinary visual journey to a primeval wilderness, which like so many others is now threatened."My father says there has been a forest here for over a hundred million years," Jeannie Baker's young protagonist tells us, and we follow him on a visit to this tropical rain forest.We walk with him among the ancient trees as he pretends it is a time long ago, when animals that are now extinct or rare lived in the forest and aboriginal children played there. But for how much longer will the forest still be there, he wonders?Don't miss this "exquisitely wrought work with a simple, profound message" (Publishers Weekly).