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The Penguin books that helped us through hard times

An Adventure into the Unknown

The Line

A deceptively simple adventure into the unknown using only paper, a pencil and a single line 
 
Wreck This Journal had a simple premise: destroy the book in all the ways you can imagine. 
 
The Line is even simpler: find pencil, start a line. 
 
As you move through the pages of Keri Smith's newest book, you'll be asked to let your line meander, explore the book's gutter, and jump around the edges of the pages. You'll hide your line, cut your line and even let someone else take over your line for a bit. The farther you get into the book, however, the more you'll discover that maybe things aren't as simple as they first seemed. The line has a mind of its own, and it's up to you to discover what's at the end of the line (hint: it's just the beginning).

Keri Smith is an author/illustrator turned guerilla artist. She is the author of several bestselling books about creativity, including This Is Not a Book, How to be an Explorer of the World, and Wreck this Journal. She conducts workshops based on her books, and has illustrated for various journals, including the Washington Post and the New York Times. Keri spends her days playing with her husband and son, and divides her time between western Massachusetts and the countryside of Canada.

Wreck This Journal: Now in Colour

Now in spectacular full colour throughout, a special 10th anniversary edition of the internationally bestselling journal that started it all--with more than 7 million copies sold! 
 
Perhaps you're a seasoned Wreck-er, having made your way through one or more copies of Wreck This Journal. Or maybe you're new to the phenomenon (little do you know, this experience might just change your life). Whatever the case, you've found the perfect book to inflict damage on... 
 
The revolution is now in colour. Why colour? Because it's dangerous. And if it isn't dangerous, then it isn't worth doing. You are hereby challenged to now try everything you've never done with colour. Everything. Mixing, ripping, spewing, streaming, hurling, blowing up, throwing, dropping, exploding. 
Welcome to an all new-edition of Wreck This Journal, now in spectacular full colour! With a mix of new, altered, and favourite prompts, Wreck This Journal: Now in Colour invites you to destroy with colour. What colours will you use to &amp;*%$ it up?

Keri Smith is a best-selling author, illustrator, and thinker. Her books include Wreck this Journal, This is Not a Book, How to Be an Explorer of the World, Mess, Finish This Book, The Pocket Scavenger, Everything Is Connected, The Imaginary World of . . . as well as Wreck This App, This is Not an App, and the Pocket Scavenger app.

Perhaps you're a seasoned Wreck-er, having made your way through one or more copies of Wreck This Journal. Or maybe you're new to the phenomenon (little do you know, this experience might just change your life). Whatever the case, you've found the perfect book to inflict damage on... 
 
The revolution is now in colour. Why colour? Because it's dangerous. And if it isn't dangerous, then it isn't worth doing. You are hereby challenged to now try everything you've never done with colour. Everything. Mixing, ripping, spewing, streaming, hurling, blowing up, throwing, dropping, exploding. 
Welcome to an all new-edition of Wreck This Journal, now in spectacular full colour! With a mix of new, altered, and favourite prompts, Wreck This Journal: Now in Colour invites you to destroy with colour. What colours will you use to &amp;*%$ it up?

The Wander Society

You are electing to join a secret underground movement. 
 
Membership will require you to conduct research on your immediate environment and complete a variety of assignments designed to creatively disrupt your everyday life. That is all you need to know for now. All else will be revealed in time. 
 
Society wants us to live a planned existence. The path of the wanderer is not this! The path of the wanderer is an experiment with the unknown. To be idle, to play, to daydream. The Wander Society offers us all a way to experience the joys and possibilities of unplanned time.

The Imaginary World of

'What kind of world would you like to inhabit?' Here, Keri Smith begins with a list. Writing down everything the reader is drawn to, from things they love or collect to things that fascinate and excite, including objects, colours, sounds, textures, memories, places and people, the list serves as the building block for the creation of a new world. This world is based entirely on who the reader is as an individual, and as such is completely unique. 
 
Prompted to think about landscape, place names, maps, currency and more Keri Smith encourages everyone to push their imaginations to the limit.

'What kind of world would you like to inhabit?' Here, Keri Smith begins with a list. Writing down everything the reader is drawn to, from things they love or collect to things that fascinate and excite, including objects, colours, sounds, textures, memories, places and people, the list serves as the building block for the creation of a new world. This world is based entirely on who the reader is as an individual, and as such is completely unique. 
 
Prompted to think about landscape, place names, maps, currency and more Keri Smith encourages everyone to push their imaginations to the limit.

Wreck This Journal Everywhere

Featuring dozens of new activities as well as some of the most popular prompts from the original, Wreck This Journal Everywhere will have you travelling the city streets and country byways, filling the pages with man-made and natural objects, recording what you see, drawing, doodling - and destroying pages as you go. Perfect for sliding in your pocket or stuffing in your bag, Wreck This Journal Everywhere is the ideal creative companion!

Featuring dozens of new activities as well as some of the most popular prompts from the original, Wreck This Journal Everywhere will have you travelling the city streets and country byways, filling the pages with man-made and natural objects, recording what you see, drawing, doodling - and destroying pages as you go. Perfect for sliding in your pocket or stuffing in your bag, Wreck This Journal Everywhere is the ideal creative companion!

The Pocket Scavenger

Welcome to the highly inspirational world of Keri Smith. Within the pages of The Pocket Scavenger, readers will be instructed to collect a spectrum of quirky items: something that is miniature, a stain that is green, something from the year you were born, a used envelope, and more.Then, once their quarry is in hand, they'll apply an alteration dictated solely by chance: create a funny character, conceal it, add polkadots, remove a section, add stripes, scribble on top, duplicate it (make a copy), fold, cut into pieces &amp; rearrange, turn into an article of clothing, trace it/use the shape as basis for a new drawing, make it 'pretty', and so on. It's funny, moving, silly and serious. The way you look at things will never be the same again.

To Create is to Destroy, Now With Even More Ways to Wreck!

Wreck This Journal

A new edition of Keri Smith's bestseller, with updated material 
 
Think of Wreck This Journal as the anarchist's Artist's Way -- the book for those who've always wanted to draw outside the lines but were afraid to do it. 
 
For anyone who's ever wished to, but had trouble starting, keeping, or finishing a journal or sketchbook comes Wreck This Journal, an illustrated book featuring a subversive collection of suggestions, asking readers to muster up their best mistake - and mess-making abilities to fill the pages of the book (and destroy them). 
 
Through a series of creatively and quirkily illustrated prompts, acclaimed artist Keri Smith encourages journalers to engage in "destructive" acts - poking holes through pages, adding photos and defacing them, painting with coffee, colouring outside the lines, and more - in order to experience the true creative process. With Keri Smith's unique sensibility, readers are introduced to a new way of art and journal making, discovering novel ways to escape the fear of the blank page and fully engage in the creative process.

Finish This Book

Dear Reader, 
One dark and stormy night, I found some strange scattered pages abandoned in a park... 
I collected and assembled them, trying to solve the mystery of this unexpected discovery, and I am now passing the task on to you. 
Your mission is to become the new author of this work. You will continue the research and provide the content. In order to complete the task, you will have to undergo some secret intelligence training, which I have included in this volume. Since no one knows what lies ahead, please proceed with caution, but know... 
This book does not exist without you. 
Yours truly, 
Keri Smith

Dear Reader, 
One dark and stormy night, I found some strange scattered pages abandoned in a park... 
I collected and assembled them, trying to solve the mystery of this unexpected discovery, and I am now passing the task on to you. 
Your mission is to become the new author of this work. You will continue the research and provide the content. In order to complete the task, you will have to undergo some secret intelligence training, which I have included in this volume. Since no one knows what lies ahead, please proceed with caution, but know... 
This book does not exist without you. 
Yours truly, 
Keri Smith

How to be an Explorer of the World

From the author of Wreck this Journal, Keri Smith's How to be an Explorer of the World is an invitation to rediscover the world around you. 
 
Artists and scientists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways, by observing, collecting, documenting, analyzing, and comparing. In this captivating guided journal, readers are encouraged to explore their world as both artists and scientists. 
 
The mission Smith proposes? 
 
"To document and observe the world around you. As if you've never seen it before. Take notes. Collect things you find on your travels. Document findings. Notice patterns. Copy. Trace. Focus on one thing at a time. Record what you are drawn to." 
 
With a series of interactive prompts and a beautifully hand-illustrated two-colour package, readers will enjoy exploring and discovering the world through this gorgeous book.

Artists and scientists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways, by observing, collecting, documenting, analyzing, and comparing. In this captivating guided journal, readers are encouraged to explore their world as both artists and scientists. 
 
The mission Smith proposes? "To document and observe the world around you. As if you've never seen it before. Take notes. Collect things you find on your travels. Document findings. Notice patterns. Copy. Trace. Focus on one thing at a time. Record what you are drawn to." 
 
With a series of interactive prompts and a beautifully hand-illustrated two-colour package, readers will enjoy exploring and discovering the world through this gorgeous book.

This Is Not A Book

You will discover that this book can be: 
 
A secret message - tear out a page, write a note on it for a stranger, and leave it in a public place. 
 
A recording device - have everyone you contact today write their name in the book. 
 
An instrument - create as many sounds as you can using the book, like flipping the pages fast or slapping the cover. 
 
This Is Not a Book will engage readers by having them define everything a book can be by asking, 'If it's not a book, what is it then?' - with a kaleidoscope of possible answers.

Particular Books are very excited to welcome the creative talents of best-selling author Keri Smith. Her books are huge word-of-mouth hits in the US: where four years after publication, Keri's first book Wreck This Journal continues to sell a thousand copies a week... 
 
This is Not a Book takes a uniquely skewed look at the purpose and function of 'a book', Keri Smith asks readers to creatively examine all the different ways This Is Not a Book can be used. With intriguing prompts, readers will discover that this book can be: 
 
A secret message - tear out a page, write a note on it for a stranger, and leave it in a public place. 
 
A recording device - have everyone you contact today write their name in the book. 
 
An instrument - create as many sounds as you can using the book, like flipping the pages fast or slapping the cover. 
 
This Is Not a Book will engage readers by having them define everything a book can be by asking, 'If it's not a book, what is it then?' - with a kaleidoscope of possible answers.

The Manual of Accidents and Mistakes

Mess

In Mess, Keri Smith, creator of Wreck This Journal, asks readers to explore what it feels like to throw themselves off balance -- on purpose. 
 
Smith dares readers to drop some kind of coloured liquid (ink, tea, coffee) onto a page from a good height (at least five feet); draw in the dark (or with eyes closed); creatively misspell words; paint a picture in a water-based medium (pen, marker, watercolour, etc) and leave it out during a rain or snowstorm; and bury this book, then dig it up. 
 
This book is unlike any other you've encountered and will allow you to open yourself up to the possibility of creating something new and unexpected.

Keri Smith

What if there were a book that changed every time you read it? 
 
Actually, every book does this. We are all part of the books we read, because our individual reactions, ideas, and emotions make the book whole, and these things are changing all the time. 
 
Keri Smith has helped millions of people free their creativity and find their own voice with her interactive books, and now she brings that sensibility to children and to the act of reading. This picture book is an invitation to honour your own vision and to welcome imperfection. Kids will discover that reading can engage all five senses, and that what they themselves bring to a book is an important contribution. (And of course they'll be invited to do a bit of harmless wrecking!) 
 
Praise for Keri Smith: 
 
A conceptual artist and author luring kids into questioning the world and appreciating every smell, texture and mystery in it." --TIME 
 
"Keri Smith may well be the self-help guru this DIY generation deserves." --The Believer 
 
"Not gonna lie, this is probably the coolest journal you'll ever see. . . . Wreck This Journal is here to inspire you." --BuzzFeed 
 
"Smith pushes kids (and adults) to break convention by seeing the world as inspiration, rather than simply 'things.'" --GeekDad (of The Pocket Scavenger)

Keri Smith

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