Archives for January 2006

Colin Thompson

Hutchinson Children’s Books Ltd

0091884861

Jan 2006

Part rant, part review, part plea for revolution’

Rant
Whatever else, we are surrounded by stories. News stories – national and international, gossip from gathered groups on street corners, astrological predictions, scientific assertions ‘ an essential constituent of our civilisation is concern with what happens next‘ We have unique capacities to communicate lives and surroundings, to make ourselves feel secure in the safety, or shocked and scared ‘ possibly scarred ‘ by stories’ With ancient petroglyphs and paleoglyphs as ancestral heritage, picture books show wonderfully dynamic ways of capturing and recording tales through dialectics of text and illustration.
It is easy to see the present always as sequential within development, as the zenith of achievement. The ‘Golden Age’ of children’s literature is symptomatic of such thinking. Children’s literature being located in a ‘Golden Age’ necessitates a culture whereby its contributions and worth are valued by all. Central to this, all exponents bringing literature ‘ in its many modern guises and forms ‘ to the masses must realise their respective positions working together to provide unilateral and unfragmented environs so supporting not only readers, but also the many producers who, through shared visions, bring us the range and diversity of literature now considered commonplace. When successfully achieved this is remarkably potent and powerful, when misaligned ramifications are far-reaching and arguably catastrophic. The decision of one major chain of bookshops to drastically restrict its selection of picture books sends ripples across the whole of the children’s literature world, impacting most dramatically upon children whose access to the range and diversity of styles and approaches to storytelling becomes restricted to that which is made visually available.
Review
From the symmetry of end-papers inwards, ‘Castles’ is most carefully crafted. Delineation between that which is made visible and that constructed as out of view forces dynamism in the acts of reading, interpretation and imagination. A framed doorway invites us into the body of the book proper and readers are instantly propelled into the self-referential world of Colin Thompson with vignettes from previous work ‘The Violin Man’ ‘ a wonderful Honour Book in the Australian Children’s Book Council Awards that remains despairingly unavailable in the United Kingdom ‘ biographical photos from Thompson’s childhood (see www.colinthompson.com for details)and the ever-familiar Caf’ Max.
Fairy tale allusions abound with references to Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses and a quest is placed before adventurous readers as the voyage around the fantastic and fantastical castle begins proper!
Animal, vegetable, mineral’ earth, fire, air, water’ all are explored as potential sites for the structuring and later sightings of castle. There are mythical and magical feels to this epic picture book. Readers are provided with worlds whose inhabitants have crafted their surroundings from things that matter and hold meaning for them. There are puzzles, mazes, a myriad of minutiae for discerning readers to perceive.
Castles are seminal architectures in the history of the United Kingdom; Celtic strongholds, Roman Forts, Norman Castles these stalwart buildings mark many defining moments in forging the fundaments of nationhood. It is apt therefore that Thompson should explode these outwards into the realms of the possible, the potential and the perhaps impossible also’ Like Italo Calvino in ‘Invisible Cities”, Colin Thompson in ‘Castles’ re-structures logocentric truths and fantasies to create impressive landscapes comprising a multiplicity of narrative strands.
‘Castles’ is a book that demands reading and re-reading rewarding this with its richly good-humoured verbal and visual play. Careful readers will spot sea-saws, gravyboats, references to almost all Thompson’s previous work and much, much more also… Here is a book that encourages exploration, that enriches and enlivens all imaginations. Colin Thompson has crafted his Magnum Opus.
Plea for Revolution
This is truly a book that deserves home on every book-shelf across the land, in every heart of every child and adult. I have a dream that ‘Castles’ might start a quiet, bloodless and bookish revolution, people power for the picture book’

Madonna

Puffin Books

1904442714

Oct 2005

When is a children’s book not a children’s book? The question is neither as facetious nor as frivolous as it might first appear. With the publication of an increasing number of ‘celebrity’ written stories purportedly for children, the alleged new ‘cross-over’ market and the production of collectors’ editions of children’s books with a pricetag way beyond the means of the average child, when is a children’s book no longer for children?
One answer might be when it is written by Madonna! Yakov and the Seven Thieves is the third of Madonna’s five picture-books and sports the adage ‘for children (even grown up ones)’ – presumably because otherwise it might not be easy to discern. It is not difficult to criticise Yakov and the Seven Thieves. Even the title does not convincingly match the story, in which only five true thieves are depicted. It would be callous, however, to criticise too harshly as, whatever else, one suspects that the writing of these books was genuinely important to Madonna.
The stories, though overtly moralistic, are doubtless well-intentioned. Yakov and the Seven Thieves posits the thought-provoking idea that the ill-deeds of others are external manifestations of areas internal to us that we should seek to change, or that the text somewhat predictably tars as ‘bad’. The idea itself is intriguing and one that certainly warrants both consideration and debate. Whether a picture book in the United Kingdom (where, sadly, such books are seen on the whole only as an intermediary step towards learning to read) is the best milieu for such discussion is doubtful.
Has Madonna, the Queen of popular re-invention lived up to the reputation she has acquired for challenging her audiences? Both yes and no. Despite being resplendently illustrated, there is none of that good-humoured interplay between text and illustration that makes successful picture books at once stimulating and dynamic. Here. the relationship between both can only be described as sterile. The area in which Yakov and the Seven Thieves succeeds so laudably, alongside Madonna’s other children’s titles, is not only in drawing question to the nature, definition and indeed parameters of children’s literature ‘ always a worthy cause, if discussion and development in the field is to remain meaningful and responsive ‘ but also in bringing the marginalised picture book in the UK to a less strictly age-segregated audience. For both reasons Madonna should be praised.

Benedict Blathwayt

Hutchinson Children’s Books Ltd

0091892937

Feb 2006

Change allows us to meet our surrounding circumstances and thereby to survive’
Dinosaur Chase! is the fantastic new picture book by Benedict Blathwayt that allows small children’s imaginations to both soar and roar!
Fin and his dinosaur friends are playing – learning about the ways they can use their bodies. A gang of pre-historic bullies spoil the friends’ games and Fin leads them a chase across vistas and views of his prehistoric panorama. Gradually, through a process of elimination as members of the gang discover they can’t jump, swim and climb, the numbers diminish until there is a literal cliff-hanger for hero Fin!
What happens next is wonderfully liberating as Fin spreads out his arms to discover feathers and thereby to find that he can fly. Two beautifully detailed double page spreads celebrate his first ascent.
Blathwayt will be familiar to readers for his popular ‘Little Red Train’ series. What makes his books so accomplished is the multilayering of the stories. Each page of illustrations features detail to the n-th degree meaning readers can visit the book again and again each time discovering more.