Happy Potato Press – Miss Read

Happy Potato Press

Happy Potato Press is the publishing platform from Dutch visual artist and writer Martijn in 't Veld. Since 2019, we have been putting out books, prints, printed matter and other potatoes, that sit somewhere between graphic design, poetry and children books. Among our titles are cook books with one ingredient recipes, collections of weather obituaries from famous artists, writers and musicians, dark haiku-like poems written on the soles of socks, and many more. Many of our books are produced by hand in our studio in Berlin in a limited edition.
Potato Bones
Martijn in 't Veld, Potato Bones, Happy Potato Press, 2024 © Martijn in 't Veld

Potato Bones is an illustrated collection of text works, poems, and prose that I wrote between 2016 and 2024. During this period, I published a wide variety of books under the name Happy Potato Press. Those books, or better said, potatoes, took many forms and ranged from poetry to picture books and from art books to children’s books. The writings in this book never fit into any of those publications, yet they feel essential to them, like the bones inside our bodies—invisible, but without them, we would be mere mush, sliding through the streets.

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Good Reviews
Martijn in t Veld, Good Reviews, Happy Potato Press, 2024 © Martijn in t Veld

Written in the familiar language of online reviews and social media comments, Good Reviews offers an absurdist take on modern review culture.

This little book contains 134 fictional book reviews. And contrary to the title, only a few of them are good, others are bad, straight-up terrible, surreal, or simply weird. But I guess, the best way to describe this book is to simply read the reviews and see for yourself.

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The Girl and the Fish
Martijn in t Veld, The Girl and the Fish, Happy Potato Press, 2024 © Martijn in t Veld

A young girl sees a big fish all alone in the ocean, crying. A moment later, she sees a lot of small fish locked up inside books at the bookstore, also crying. What’s going on? And how can she help them? Lying awake in her bed at night, she comes up with a plan. Inspired by seeing thousands of animals locked up inside picture books at the Children’s Book Fair in Bologna, The Girl and the Fish is a story about releasing animals from books. But it is also a metaphor for setting free anything that is kept in boxes: animals, people, dreams — especially if it requires secretly climbing out of your bedroom window at night to break into a bookstore.

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