The Secret Life of Books

Where do books come from? How do they reproduce? And what exactly has to be done at the birth of a book?

These are just some of the questions Anne Mikus whimsically addresses in "Das Geheime Leben der Bucher", the wonderful children's book on the secret life of books she recently produced together with the designer, Ron Heussen, and the illustrator, Farid Rivas Michel.

A longtime collaborator of ours on projects such as the Berlin Zoo exhibitions, Anne is a talented German copywriter and author, and clearly much more gifted with words than she is with a scalpel. (Anne once offered to help with the late-night preparations of a presentation and promptly went about slicing off her fingertips. Well, nearly. Luckily, we got her to a doctor before she bled on any of the work. But that's a story for another day.)

For now, we wish her and the others all the best with this beautiful little book – hopefully there's an english translation somewhere on the horizon. But even if there isn't, the German edition is worth buying alone for a thermographic cover that changes colours when in the grip of hot little hands.