Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan and many more children's classics are recreated by these book based babies. The gorgeous photos come via Venture Photography for National Storytelling Week.

Justin Rowe creates these magical sculptures from hand cut books and found images with the help of just a touch of gum arabic and 24 carat gold or palladium leaf. Some are very much in the realms of fairy stories like the one above, but my favourites are the stories below where Justin’s skill brings the book’s own illustrations to life.

An adorable 11-week old lion cub named Karis had a very exciting day playing in a pile of autumn leaves that her keeper swept into her enclosure at the Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park in Scotland. This proved to be a very wise decision on her keeper’s part, as she seems to have had the time of her life frolicking around in the pile of leaves

“If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it”. – Herodotus. “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”. – Plato. Photo: Mandalay, Burma. (Photo by Steve McCurry)

People will spout about impermanence of digital records, but books are really fragile, too. Alexis Arnold from San Francisco wanted to illustrate that with her project The Crystallized Book: collecting books and growing Borax crystals on them. Books range from literature classics to magazines, and there’s even a mysterious and arcane tome called “Linux: The Complete Manual”.

Demonstrators are seen running for shelter from a protest against plans for new austerity measures October 19, 2011 in Athens, Greece. Greece's largest labor unions have called for a 48-hour strike, while the Socialist government is beginning to push through legislation for cost cutting reforms. (Photo by Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)

Refugee children play with a stuffed toy at a muddy makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border, near the village of Idomeni, Greece March 15, 2016. (Photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters)

Farmers clash with riot policemen during a protest outside the Greek Agriculture Ministry on March 8, 2017 in Athens, Greece. Two people were detained after the windows of two police vans were smashed as approximately 1,000 farmers, mainly from the island of Crete, took part in the protest. (Photo by Nikolas Georgiou/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)