Archives for January 2007

David Wiesner

Clarion

0618194576

Sep 2006

With artists such as Anthony Browne, Dave McKean and Joel Stewart as its main proponents in the United Kingdom, surrealism is an under-represented style within the picture book form. A peculiar occurrence given the creative thought and imaginative freedom that surrealism’s ‘seeded’ style nurtures and develops’
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 His latest picture book, ‘Flotsam’ sadly like so many of his picture books unpublished here in the United Kingdom, is a tour-de-force.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.

Sibylle von Olfers

Floris Books

0863155626

Sep 2006

Born in East Prussia in 1881, Sibylle von Olfers’ highly adept naturalist style places her work firmly in the vein of Beatrix Potter, Kate Greenaway and Elsa Beskow. On publication of ‘The Story of the Root Children’ in 1996, Floris Books in Edinburgh made this classic of European children’s literature available in the United Kingdom. It seems fitting that ten years following this they should reaffirm commitment to Olfers prestige in the children’s literature world through publication of ‘The Story of the Wind Children’.
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.