Picture Books: January 2007 Archives

The decree, however, is broken one day by a small boy who breaks the law by crying. The boy’s isolation through such actions and the strength of his feelings are emphasised through his being, small-in-scale, centred on a blank white page. Nobody is able to cheer him whether with dance, song or food.

Eventually the King’s Guards catch up with him and remove him to the dungeons where it is prophesised he will be tied up in the dungeons and tickled with feathers. Feather in hand, the King greets the boy with the widest smile he has ever seen and asks the reason for his melancholia. The boy explains how his dog has died, upon which it transpires the king is wearing a mask that hides the saddest, most tear drenched face the boy has ever seen.

The King’s own dog died and to cover his grief he made the decree that happiness should be compulsory. Together the King and the boy are able to share their sorrow and their memories of the two dogs. The King then tears up the special order that makes happiness compulsory and everyone has a good cry, the first they have had in many years.

This is an important book that legitimises and validates all feelings. It’s strength in its evasion of the happy ending, everyone cries, is that – at last – the populace are able to express the truth of their emotions. This is to be greatly applauded at a time when as many as one in thirty-three children and one in eight adolescents suffer depression… perhaps, for many, childhood does not represent the ‘best years of life’ as is often purported and that care needs to be given both to listening and to letting tell if the adage is not to shackle and do injustice...

Aunty Bea tries to lure her with the prospects of the singing she will do at school. This is to no avail… Sister Ann tries to tempt her with the promise of cuddly-wuddly toys. This falls on deaf ears… Aunty Mel endeavours to entice her with the prospects of painting. This is futile. Uncle Ben and Gran try to appeal to her through lunchtime and storytimes. This is fruitless…

All ask Beth what she wants to do, upon which she replies she wants to play with friends. When it is explained that Beth’s friends are all at school too, Beth goes and is depicted playing with cuddly-wuddly toys, singing, painting enjoying lunchtime and storytimes. Will she be tempted to return home afterwards, however?

Marie-Louise Fitzpartick carefully introduces young children to what can be expected at school and the types of routine that will be followed in this gentle, affectionate book.

An undoubted bastion of the form in America is the innovative and accomplished David Wiesner. His latest picture book, ‘Flotsam’ sadly like so many of his picture books unpublished here in the United Kingdom, is a tour-de-force.

Told wholly through the visual narrative of illustration, the book opens with a full page close up of a hermit crab and an eye caught in the act of observation – a meta-narrative against the reader’s own active engagement with this scene.

A double page spread then zooms out to show the boy examining the hermit crab through a magnifying glass. A backdrop of play and of observation provides shifting scales and perspectives as we witness sandcastles, parents reading, a microscope and a pair of binoculars. A storyboard of framed images sequentially narrates the boy as he spots another crab, sets off to collect it, chases it and – finally – is caught off guard by a rogue wave.

Narrative flits to another double page spread showing the waves as they ebb away, leaving the boy saturated looking at the evasive crab and also at an ancient underwater camera that has been washed ashore.

The boy removes the film from the camera and his fervent keenness to have this developed is brilliantly captured by Wiesner through a series of framed images inlaid upon the climactic image of this double page spread depicting the boy’s eye in close-up looking at one of the developed photographs – an image from which we are excluded at this point building a real sense of dramatic tension and intrigue as the reader turns the page.

The photographs provide a snapshot into a rich and varied underwater world, inhabited by clockwork aquatics, schools of fish presided over by wise, old, octopi, puffer fish hot air balloons, turtle tenements, starfish spread eagled and submerge but emerging as islands and atolls. The final photograph depicts a girl holding a photograph of a boy, holding a photograph of an image caught in ocular recursion. Puzzling over this, the boy puzzles over this and scrutinises the photograph more closely using his magnifying glass showing a girl holding a photograph of a boy. Time spans and geographical space are transcended through the representation of these photographic images The boy’s microscope offers even greater opportunity for examination first at ten times magnification, then at twenty-five and through until seventy times magnification when we see a boy on a beach dressed in Victorian attire and shown in sepia tones.

The boy sets up his own photograph using the camera to take a picture of him holding the picture. He then casts the camera back into the ocean whereupon it becomes caught up in the marvels of the marine before finally being washed up upon the shores of a palm lined beach and picked up by a girl...

A magnificent expose of the art of observation and representation, Wiesner has created a masterpiece of reflection and imagination.

The confined space of a large hardback picture book is hardly conducive for accommodating the sheer scale of many of the beasts included here and Steve Jenkins has adopted the novel approach of depicting to scale parts of the featured creatures, illustrating the eye of a giant squid, the head of an Alaskan brown bear, the egg of an ostrich etc.

The book is appended with information on each of the featured animals providing location, food preference and other areas of interest. An impressive and innovative approach to introducing some of the world’s many inhabitants.

The story opens as George endeavours to sail his boats amidst still conditions. Willow the wind child watches and cups her hands together blowing and setting the boats bobbing and racing along the stream. Keen to feel the wind on her face, Willow sets off on a sprightly sprint with George. Laughing and exhausted, the two of them arrive in an apple orchard whereupon Willow conjures a gust of wind causing the apples to tumble. These are collected by the mysterious Roeship children who give George some of the juiciest fruits. Further downwind the Leafchildren play, turning somersaults in the wind. Entranced by the sounds of two cloud horses, George and Willow ride these bareback across the sky leading George back home to his garden gate, a reference so familiar it leads readers to postulate whether the adventures have largely been of an imagination that transcends external constraints...

Autumn and nature are brilliantly personified in this beautifully detailed work.