Sheila Graber sent me a copy of her latest book Animation A Handy Guide with a request to review it. The book came at an opportune time, as I was just off on holiday to warmer climes, to escape our cold winter weather. It made excellent holiday reading.

The book comes complete with a DVD. When I got home from holiday I popped this into my computer player and was amazed to find, not only the complete book reproduced page by page, but now the pages were interactive so that many of the examples in the book could be brought to life and the movies mentioned were there to view. More on this later.

The Amazon Kindle is a software and hardware platform for displaying e-books and other digital media delivered by wi-fi download. It has free wireless delivery so you can start reading books in less than 60 seconds from ordering. The screen reads like real paper, with no glare, making it easy to read in bright sunlight as well as indoors.

The screen is in black and white, which is great for reading novels but not so good for books that have coloured pictures in their printed format. However, you can download some free software from Amazon to view Kindle books on your PC or Mac in full colour. That way you have the best of both worlds, an easy portable version for when you are travelling and a colour reference when you are at your computer.

Here is our pick of animation books from the Kindle Store.

Oscar and BAFTA-nominated animation director Barry Purves has written a book that teaches the skills required to develop as a creative stop-motion animator or articulated puppet maker. Basics Animation: Stop-motion explores how all the elements of film-making camera work, design, colour, lighting, editing, music and storytelling come together to create animation.

Preston Blair’s Animation was one of the first books that I added to my animation library many years ago. It is said by many industry professionals to be the best “how to” book on cartoon animation ever published. He went on to produce two more books and all three have been combined into a 224 page book called Cartoon Animation (Collectors).

In the introduction to Animation Preston Blair said: “The art of animators is unique. Animators bring life to their drawings, creating an illusion of spirit and vigour. They caricature the gestures and expressions in the drawings, give them a fantastic array of character and personality, and make us believe that the drawings actually think and have feelings.”

The basics of classic film animation remain the same whether you are creating a flick book or computer animation. Much can be learned by studying cartoon films frame by frame. Things to look out for are: