Picture Books: March 2006 Archives

Just as Kenneth Grahame’s opening to the “The Wind in the Willows” with mole scraping, scratching, scrabbling and scrooging, “muttering to himself, ‘Up we go! Up we go!’ till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight…” marvellously evokes the long awaited onset of spring, Koopman’s use of intensely bright light in the forest, the vivid fresh greens of the foliage and the irreverent chattering of little bird brilliantly capture that first sense that spring has sprung.

Amongst his chatterings, bird mentions to snail the snows that fell in winter, their depth, their whiteness and cold. Entranced by this description, snail asks his friend bee about snow, but bee has spent the winter in her hive so snow is unfamiliar to her also. Through a series of exchanges, snail, bee and frog – traversing at once between them dominions of land, sky and earth are unable to find out about snow. So begins an adventure, an epic animal voyage in a quest for knowledge… Moving through the seasons from spring to summer, to autumn, the trio remain still unable to find out about snow, exhausted by their efforts they fall asleep only to awake to an unknown world in white…

Koopmans illustrations of nature are wonderfully rendered and are brilliantly accurate. His use of lighting brings each spread to life helping to create a beautiful book with an unexpected, yet a holistic ending.

This lavishly illustrated story opens in springtime. Just as many of the animals of Africa are able to welcome new babies to their family enclaves, so too are the elephants with the birth of baby Esme. Whilst struggling to stand on her own four feet, Esme finds she has a problem – something continuously trips her up, something odd that dangles from the middle of her face…

From here-on-in, the story focuses around Esme’s needs and wants as she encounters the world around her and its manifold inhabitants… When Esme is thirsty, she sees zebras drinking and wonders “What do elephants do?” When Esme is hot, she sees tortoise shaded by his shell, but, “What do elephants do?” This simple, yet clever framework forms the base for the remainder of the story as Esme learns just what it is that elephants do and the importance of her trunk, thereby realising her own identity.

An elephant’s proboscis is a strange, peculiar and fairly alien appendage, through sensitively examining its role and importance to the identity of elephants, Hazel Lincoln creates a valuable message as to the importance of assessing actions rather than mere appearance. Here is a beautifully consistent picture-book whose world is safely outlined within its first double-page spread and given character and brought into context thereafter.

Cheerfully combining poetry with expansive pastoral landscapes viewed at the eye-line of little people themselves, this book takes us on an imaginative and magical tour of the countryside depicted through the seasons. There is nothing incongruous in the fact that fairies, elves, mermaids and nymphs form a part of the populace on the pages and the loose descriptions of their actions and lifestyle leaves readers to piece together their own ‘take’ on this world-view provided in miniature.

Daniela Drescher’s short book leaves one pensive in contemplation as to belief and the experiential evidence of the senses.

Media reportage over the past year has brilliantly emphasised the role a well-balanced diet of food-stuffs plays towards children’s development. Raising the profile of nutritional requirements has created a focal-point for an agenda of change which hopefully will mean – in educational settings at least – that no child will be malnourished or starved of the building blocks that fuel their development…

At this point, we need to speak up – loud and proud – as to the valuable roles that diverse narratives and indeed narrative forms play in our emotional development. If picture books are to remain merely as an educative preserve - nothing more than a transitional stepping stone towards independent reading - as a society we are depriving our children of rich visual and textual tapestries and of the resultant dynamic story-sharing that can and does accompany such weaving and unpicking! Stories form the vessels through which society passes down its learning, its history and its sense of self… we must take care our actions as sensitive, sentient beings do not lead to the emotional emaciation of our future generation...

“No Room For Napoleon” with its vibrant and engaging illustrations and narrative typifies the kinds of adventuring and exploration imbued within successful picture-books. Aptly named Napoleon, a little dog with big ideas, at once fulfils the role of hero and anti-hero and constitutes both conflict and resolve within the book. His arrival, with telescope, on a Utopian island is initially welcomed by its inhabitants - Crab, Bunny and Bear - however, cracks in the animals' friendship begin to appear as Napoleon’s ideas grow in size, breadth, depth and impact…

As well as exploring issues of friendship and of the unwitting bullying, or manipulation that arises through the story, illustration and text operate on dual and dialectic levels exploding into other arenas to create a neat summation of Colonial intent, comment on environmental conservation through the island’s shifts from Utopian paradise, to Dystopic nightmare, and arguably of patriarchal dominance also – symbolised here through Napoleon’s telescope, a phallic construction utilised primarily as his access-point to the island and secondarily as his power-stronghold over Crab, Bunny and Bear.

If that sounds unlikely fare for the double-folds of a picture book, look at the story, think about its themes, subtleties and nuances and decide for yourself. Through empowering the use of picture-books regardless of age, ability or background, we are opening the door to infinite interpretations of visual and textual narrative strands, we are allowing readers to invest their own experiences, rationale and world-views, we are creating a base for infinite interpretation and discussion and are thereby realising just what makes reading such a singular recreational activity!

Needless to say Adria Meserve has crafted a story that motivates, inspires and truly does show the ‘dog’ in the dogmatist!

Ostensibly a book about wolves, this book brilliantly charts the mimetic processes of reading undertaken by the poor, unfortunate rabbit who finds himself the hapless protagonist in this post-structural work having curiously just borrowed a familiar looking book about wolves from West Buckinghamshire Public Burrowing Library!

If this sounds staid or unappealing, it is the dynamism between the crisp, clear, well-defined illustrations and the sparse, informative text from whence, between both, the resultant meta-narrative blossoms, that brings this highly original three-tone book to life…

This truly is a book to be loved, cherished and adored by all who value reading because it wonderfully maps the way words and pictures hold that remarkable ability to fuel our minds and imaginations, drawing us gradually further into their clutches until the boundaries between reader and what is read become blurred at the edges!

The intense preoccupation and determination of the rabbit brings to mind John Tenniel’s interpretation of the White Rabbit in Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Here is a rabbit who is so intent upon doggedly continuing his reading and his quest for knowledge about wolves, that he is oblivious to the fact that first his ear, then his posterior and gradually his entire body becomes consumed within the narrative of the book, ultimately to be consumed by the wolves therein…

If that sounds frightening the author quickly asserts:

“no rabbits were eaten during the making of this book”

and an alternative ending is provided for sensitive readers. If this sounds like pandering towards readership in pursuit of the ubiquitous ‘happy-ever-after’, it is worth noting this comes after the book within the narrative is laid down and is itself pieced together from scraps of the ravaged book – a concession, or something further to think about? The choice is yours! Roll on Emily Gravett's next book, "Meerkat Mail" published in August this year...