An Open Letter to Oliver Jeffers

Dear Oliver Jeffers,

     Your books are quite simplistic.  And sometimes strange.  And always fun to look at.  For that, I love you. You first won the hearts of my children when one of them found the book The Incredible Book Eating Boy. They were horrified that the child who'd checked the book out previously from the library had taken a bite out of it and then had the audacity to return the book-- unpaid!
     Still, though the book was a fun little diversion, we didn't bother noticing the author's name on the cover. Your artwork wasn't the classically beautiful Robert McCloskey or Jan Brett type after all. It takes a quirky heart to appreciate both the figures and the humor you play with. It wasn't until we chanced across the video of you reading Stuck, that we finally woke up, recovered from our giggles and went searching for more of your titles (having a soft spot for author/illustrators, see). And then, we feasted. The kids enjoyed The New Sweater, likening it to Max Lucado's If Only I Had a Green Nose in chronicling the perils of peer pressure. I especially loved the page of the Huey who had the word "Want" written above him when he first saw the sweater.  After this, we delved into the adventures of the Boy and agreed that we liked him best in How to Catch a Star.

But the manner in which you really won my heart Mr. Jeffers, came about quite unexpectedly and in an improbable title.  It happened in the book This Moose Belongs to Me.  The book itself is absurd of course and makes no sense and I was about to miss the whimsy train when all of a sudden, I read it.  What may be the very best line ever written in children's books since the ridiculous "Goodnight Nobody" line from Goodnight Moon. You wrote:

But in his haste, and miles from anywhere, he tripped over his string and got tangled up.  And there he lay.  Wilfred was beginning to get a little bit worried.  It was getting late and the monsters would be out soon.  He had just ruled out the last of his options... when along came the moose...

 Just like that.  In passing.  In an extraordinary sense of the perfect understanding that monsters are a real phenomenon (as any child knows of course) and could be brought up casually in a story that had nothing whatsoever to do with monsters.  For that, and for this super excellent video on how you make your books, I will forever count you among my favorites.


Love, etc.

A Fan

The Birthing Process of a Picture Book

This is a really interesting video about how the extraordinary David Wiesner came to envision and create his book Art & Max. Incidentally, the book is bargain priced right now on that link. But even if you don't buy it, check it out from the library or at least watch this video with your kids. On the amazon website, if you scroll down there are some neat images of Wiesner's preliminary sketching for the story. It's pretty neat to learn how a book was conceptualized and subsequently developed for publication:

Be still my trigger finger

My long-suffering husband has put a moratorium on spontaneous Amazon buys until I pay off my library fine (*grumble, hiss*) so I must pass along this bargain book deal to you:

Quantities are limited on these sweet, excellent, and well priced titles:

    

Here Comes Jack Frost

This isn't exactly new (2009) and it isn't exactly obscure but I wanted to give a plug for a new addition to our Winter Basket this year: Here Comes Jack Frost by Kazuno Kohara.  Kohara made waves in the picture book world with her Halloween title Ghosts in the House but I think Jack Frost is really where she shines best.

The books screams WINTER through and through because of its crisp two toned blues and whites and it's sharp linocut illustrations.  It's lighthearted, sparkly and a fun addition to the mid-late winter category of books. Jack Frost visits a bored little boy and they have all sorts of fun until the hint of spring chases Jack Frost away.  The book would make an excellent springboard for resist-art based projects with children.  I'm particularly fond of this winter birch tree art project (then again, I'm particularly fond of birch trees in general...) which seems very, very easy to do! Enjoy the book!

Photo of the Day

I have seen many closet book nooks but none that were converted for grown ups!

A Lost Book of Thanksgiving Art

This year, we are doing artist studies in a way that highlights just one artist per school term... a new painting each week.  In our home, it looks a lot like this.  Anyway, to get my boys excited about art in general, I knew I had to introduce them to a very boyish, exciting artist first, before getting into things like Degas and the ballerinas.  Enter N. C. Wyeth.  He is an extremely prolific and wonderfully exciting artist for young boys (think pirates, cowboys and knights) and we had a lot of fun appreciating his work.  The problem is that there exists very little literature that tells us about the artist himself in a child-friendly way, and no real compendium of his work in the picture book world.  Or so I thought.  I just discovered N.C. Wyeth's Pilgrims which is an out of print (but readily and economically available used) story of Thanksgiving from the perspective of his happy paintings and cheerful characters (Wyeth was a consummate American, even if this meant overlooking some of the darker realities of the Thanksgiving story).  We actually have a number of Thanksgiving books and weren't necessarily looking for more-- but this popped onto my radar just last week-- and I had to buy it.  Even if we have moved onto Rembrandt (to correlate with a visiting exhibit coming to the Seattle Art Museum soon), the boys were excited to peruse the book and see some more paintings by this artist, larger than the 4 x 6's I've been pinning on our board.  The story itself by Robert San Souci is fairly typical.  But the art is classic, and the notes about Wyeth in the end are great.  I'm surprised to not see it mentioned more often either in conjunction with artist studies, or with Thanksgiving itself.

Butterfly Tree: Pick of the Week

Often when an author makes a children's picture book based on a memory he or she had, the result falls flat.  It's hard to convey sometimes the significance and specialness of an event in a way that complete strangers (and young strangers to boot) will appreciate.  In the picture book world, there are exceptions to this of course. Authors like Allen Say or Barbara Cooney for example, both excel at making lovely stories out of personal memories.

Sandra Markle's Butterfly Tree is a book in this vein.  The text, though not rhyming, is written in stanzas and the fuzzy (oil paint?) illustrations give the book a somber tone and set a thoughtful pace.  The story is about a girl witnessing a giant migration of monarch butterflies: it looks like it's raining black pepper from a clear blue sky.  She is confused and frightened at first as she and her mother go to investigate in the woods.  All her senses seem heightened as she goes through the trees noticing things until suddenly An explosion of golden-orange bits fills the sunlight streaming between the branches.

 I especially appreciated the endnotes in this book as it fills in the gaps on a personal level with the author and shows an informative map illustrating the migration routes of Monarchs.  The book would make an excellent fill in on a butterfly study or general winter preparation/migration/hibernation studies for animals.

From the Good Mountain: How Gutenberg Changed the World

Every now and again, a really, really special biographical picture book comes along that makes me giddy.  By now, you know I love this genre of picture books best of all and I wanted to highlight one really excellent book that was just published last month: From the Good Mountain: How Gutenberg Changed the World.  What makes it great is the delicate balance it has mastered in a genre where so many others fall short-- bringing the subject alive without weighing us down with facts and details.  See, some non-fiction picture books seem to be written as little more than textbooks with pictures.  Boo.  I appreciate the effort, but children's books ought to contain stories first and foremost and if the author can't manage to create a story out of his subject, he ought to exit the children's book world.  That said, there are many fantastic living, story books out there.  I am so happy to add From the Good Mountain to the list.

The text is poetic while still staying informative and grounded.  It is rhythmic in a most satisfactory way.  James Rumford (the same author who brought us the wonderful Seeker of Knowledge: The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs) wrote this book as a series of riddles: "What was made of rags and bones, soot and seeds? What wore a dark brown coat and was filled with gold? What took lead and tin and a mountain to make?" The pictures are superb; all the little characters from medieval Europe come alive with vibrant colors and details.  Such a delight to hold and read.

Perhaps best of all, is the fact that the author resisted any temptation to get into biased or spurious historical tales about the printing press and its relevance to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church.  The book, even down to the informative footnotes, sticks to the aim of honoring this wonderful achievement with a clear and focused story.  Another excellent point about this book is that Rumford created a companion guide to go with it.  The guide offers even more details on the printing press machinery and times and would make for excellent "living history" reading for anyone studying the late Middle Ages.  Click to see images from inside the book on amazon's site, especially on the hyperlink "Surprise Me" to give you an idea of what you can expect.

Apple by Nikki McClure

Washington State has produced a couple great children's book author/illustrators (including my very, very favorite, Doris Burns), with the latest being from Olympia-- the excellent Nikki McClure.  She is famous for her intricate, yet deceptively simple looking paper cut illustrations in her titles for very young children.  Her first attempts at paper cut illustrations gave birth to a little, homegrown book that was distributed locally in 1996. Apple is the new reprint of that effort, now available to the masses!  It is lovely, and begins with the play on words: "Fall"... as you see an apple falling from a tree.  The book continues with a single word on each page, documenting the life of the apple as it goes through autumn and is composted into the ground before giving new life the following spring.  The book would make a great springboard to inspire budding artists or writers with the art of paper-cutting.  Here is a great little tutorial on that. The little write ups in the back about the life of apples and about composting are just as excellent as this juicy, little morsel of a book itself and I highly recommend it for your early reading pleasure.