PAST LIFE LIBRARY
The Past Life Library is a collection of five journals, each with an accompanying soundtrack. Throughout the series, the five heroines: Inka, Charli, Aisa, Rose and Raphaella, come to know their complex, often contradictory thoughts. By writing, singing and drawing their experiences in their journals, we find both their inside and outside stories, and how they find and create radiant lives. The collection is a celebration of life in all of its enchanting colours.
Eternal Inka: Illustrated by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
“Are my paintings good enough to keep on painting?” Inka wants to discover if she is good enough at painting to pursue it as her lifelong dream. But on her quest to discover her fate, she finds herself inter-twisted with the destiny of a high-end art thief and the colourful, terrifying truth of a life worth painting.
Eternal Inka leads to questions around what art even is. Does everyone make something? Are we all artists? What makes something beautiful? What does it mean to see through someone's gaze? Do we all see things differently?
Also available in novel format.
Listen to a sample medley from the album.
Eternal Inka Accompanying Music Album
Everlasting Charli: Illustrated by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
“Does true love actually exist?” Charli Page loves her job as a waitress amongst the misfits in the jiggery-jaggery poetry-laced fish restaurant in the heart of Hallowishes. She is so happy that she never wants things to change. So when true love comes along and threatens to take everything from her, she is shocked to discover that no one really knows what ‘true love’ is. Until they find themselves doing absolutely everything and anything for it.
Everlasting Charli intertwines questions of environmentalism, trust and true or half-true love. Is it possible to love everybody? And what of animals or planet Earth? The book also asks the readers to think about the nature of competition, and what exactly is that thread inside of us that wants to win.
Listen to a sample medley from the album.
Everlasting Charli Accompanying Music Album
Infinite Aisa: Illustrated by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
“No one really liked my revenge business at first …” When Aisa makes a choice that will bruise someone she loves forever, she gets twisted up in the glittering, rainy theatre town of Pestique. Destined to fulfil her dream of being a famous actor and making the world a better place, Aisa finds herself a home in the most rundown theatre of the Khis district, running her own revenge company. What could possibly go wrong if she just wanted to make people’s real life stories better?
Infinite Aisa raises the questions of thinking, of thoughts we are not so proud of, and of general meanness. It examines the nature of being hurt and asks the reader about revenge, envy and forgiveness. Have you ever wanted to be someone else? Have you ever hurt someone you love? Do you forgive yourself easily?
Listen to a sample medley from the album.
Infinite Aisa Accompanying Music Album
YOUNG PHILOSOPHERS SERIES
The Young Philosophers Series is dedicated to listening to and valuing children as natural philosophers. These unconventional and creative books are designed to get children’s imaginations flowing.
The Book With No Story by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
The Book With No Story is a surprisingly quirky creative writing resource for children with wild imaginations. It is filled with 52 creatures who have run away from the author because they got bored with her stories. The eccentric visual art creature profiles are accompanied by some of the creatures’ philosophical thoughts, weaving in and out of their outer worlds and inner emotional landscapes. They are desperate for original thinkers to write them into new inside-out stories. Children can also create their own creatures and stories using the prompts included at the end of the book.
The Book With No Story is a celebration of diversity of thought which leads to questions around what would happen if we all thought the same? Are we alike or are we different? Do people’s needs differ? Is this good or bad or just what is? How often do we find a space and time to just wonder, wonder, wonder and think? Do we think too much? How do we not think? Do we believe everything that we think?
The Fake Dictionary by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
The Fake Dictionary challenges 9 to 12-year-olds to create a series of images of new meanings to everyday words. As the title implies, this is a very original dictionary that becomes a riddle in and of itself. Using family relics, Clare-Rose created a part text and part image book to explore the meanings behind the meanings of words, hoping to open up conversations around the concept of change.
Someone, somewhere, somehow made up a particular word to be meaningful and useful. And so to question — what are the rules around who gets to make up words and why? Who can break the rules? How can the use of particular words twist and change meanings depending on how they're worded? The implications are enormous and the wonder of the kitchen table is a great place to riddle over the complexities of them.
The One Thing & Anothers by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
Perhaps the most quirky philosophical book of all, The One Thing & Anothers tells the story of two aliens, Rio and Huxley, who live on the Planet of Stuff where everyone loves stuff. Everyone except them. They are bored of living in their castle and swimming in their 17 swimming pools. To amuse themselves, they pull pranks but when caught, their punishment is getting locked in a tower of stuff. Trying to escape the boredom, they hitch a ride on a UFO where they find the planet Earthia. It is so beautiful and so perfect, but to them, so boring. When Huxley decides to pull one of his naughtiest pranks yet, what happens next is something they never would have expected.
The One Thing & Anothers asks the questions, where DID humans come from? Why are we so contradictory in our nature? Why do we want to collect stuff? What does it mean to belong and can we feel like we belong in multiple places across time and space? Why are we destroying the planet we live on? Young bright minds are called on to write the next chapter in the story.
Why in the World Are We Here? by Clare-Rose Trevelyan
Eia and Whhat had spent as long as they could remember trying to figure out why in the world they were here in the world. One day, they got so sick of wondering that they hopped onto a rickety raft and set sail across the ocean in search of answers. Finally, after many moon-suns had passed, Whhat spotted an island. After touring The Island of Fun, they were satisfied that the meaning of life was to have fun. Resolved, they returned to their raft and headed home. But on the way, they got lost.
Join Eia and Whhat as they tour the islands of Fun, Progress, Love, Creation, Nothing, Now, Power, Destruction, Me, and Healing, and have a go at creating your own island too, as you and your family muse over the various meanings of life. Are there more meanings, more islands? Could we belong to more than one island? Do we go to different islands at different times in our life? How should we live life and why?
For this book, the author, Clare-Rose Trevelyan, invited nine artists to each create a different island, its history, geography and people: Cassandra King (The Island of Fun), Danica Chappell (Progress), Honor Bradbeer (Love), María Medem Pérez (Creation), Antoine Nogueira (Nothing), Emil Toonen (Now), Patrick Sluiter (Power), Alexander Esenarro Santafe (Destruction), Yongho Moon (Me and Healing).
