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  • Posted on May 08, 2012
Rove Beetle-The Beetle Book

Beetlemania

I have late adult-onset beetle fever. Actually, it is the weevil (with their admirable snouts) who really rock my boat, but any beetle will do. I used to be scared of beetles, bees, and buggery of any sort, but now I am pleased to report that I live in amiable companionship with all insects. Must be the walking. After 17 years of tramping around the ravines and trails of my city, I’ve learned to be at home with the tiny lives that populate the world in numbers far greater than human.

As a sometime illustrator, bugs (as a subject matter) are about as good as it gets, and I believe Steve Jenkins would agree. In The Beetle Book, Jenkins is clearly besotted with all one million of the species, 650,000 of which have yet to be named. According to Jenkins, if you lined up every kind of plant and animal on earth, “…one in every four will be a beetle.” That’s a lot of beetles, and while only a few if these (comparatively speaking) are included in The Beetle Book, the variation in size, colour and design is truly remarkable. And in Jenkins hands, these little, and sometimes not so little guys are works of art. Works of art with antennae. Hey, one man’s antennae is another man’s haystack. Step aside, Mr Monet.

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  • Posted on April 29, 2012
Good Caramba hugs Henry

Ay Caramba

My cat has a few skills. She is a master of food procurement, especially the hunting and gathering of fish-flavoured snacks. The white expanse of her impressive belly absorbs the heat of the sun, keeping the house cool in summer. The vibrational pitch of her purrs make fly swatters and wasp repellants entirely unnessary.

Nevertheless, in spite of her talents (and pretty face), my cat cannot fly-a fate shared by Caramba, the star of Marie-Louise Gay’s Caramba and Henry, the second in her series of picture books about a plump, flightless cat. In Caramba’s world, all cats can fly. They are also very colourfully attired, but then…every creature in Marie-Louise Gay’s impressive list of publications, feline or otherwise, sports a crayola-hued pair of trousers, or some other equally bright fashion accessory. And that’s just the clothing. The story is important, and so are the characterizations, but first…always first…is the glorious application of paint to paper. Flying cats are just the bonus.

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  • Posted on April 11, 2012
House Held Up By Trees Klassen

Held Up By Trees

Another book by Jon Klassen. This time, it is Pulitzer Prize winning poet Ted Kooser providing the words, but visually, House Held Up by Trees is classic Klassen. The 60′s flavoured, flat-toned illustrative style is reminiscent of the much-lauded I Want My Hat Back (minus the bear), while the story is firmly planted in the urban, or suburban, experience. Conveniently, the subject matter is apropos to my previous post on the apparent abandonment of nature and natural imagery in picture books. In a House Held Up By Trees, people do indeed abandon nature (although the illustrations remain gloriously tree-infused), but the great thing about this book, and about nature in general~it finds a way. Trees find a way. Life, in all its exuberance, finds a way, and Kooser & Klassen find a way to make this heroic story of nature exerting itself a stirring, beautiful thing.

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  • Posted on April 03, 2012
Following the yellow-paved road

Nuturing Nature

This blog is exclusively for the review of new and older picture books, and yet I feel compelled to comment on an article I read a few weeks ago on the interwebs. It’s not for lack of opinions on other topics, but the findings in this study seemed contrary to my observations as a former bookseller and as a long-time collector of picture books. One proviso: I am fairly focused in my picture book predilections. It’s all about the illustration, in other words, although to be fair, great writing usually goes hand in hand with great art. Also, up to this point I had not made particular note of setting, at least within a sociological context. As a result, there is a lot of stuff I simply don’t see, because the visuals of most books do not resonate (for me.) It is therefore possible, and perhaps probable, that I’ve missed patterns and trends in my multi-national, multi-genre search for illustration excellence. Trust me, it wouldn’t be the first time a trend has passed me by…

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  • Posted on March 25, 2012
More!!!

Materialism & the Magpie

I love magpies. They’re my favourite bird, which is a good thing because my northern city is teeming with these sturdy, yet beautiful corvids. Magpies overwinter with us, and their almost tropical plumage is often the only colour in our blanched landscape. Like their human companions, magpies are omnivores. They are not picky where dinner originates, be it a robin’s nest, a peanut from my feeder, or some greasy fries in a discarded McDonald’s bag. Again, like us, they love stuff. All stuff. And they will beg, borrow and steal to get it.

More, by I.C. Springman with illustrations by Brian Lies, is the story of one such acquisitive magpie.

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  • Posted on March 18, 2012
Old Coyote by Nancy Wood

Old Coyote

Old Coyote had me with the cover, surely one of the most poignant, and beautifully observed illustrations of an animal I’ve ever seen. It’s in the eyes; heavy with sleep, closing in on one world, peaceful. They are like my 17 year old cat’s eyes, no longer round with anticipation, but tired and soft, resonant of a life lived, perhaps a life that is close to the end. I could not help but think of her as I read Old Coyote. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure she would not appreciate being compared to an old dog. Not even a little bit.

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  • Posted on February 26, 2012
A House in the Woods

A House in the Woods

At some point during winter, when the landscape is daubed in grey and Spring is still in the abstract, I turn to the golf channel, not because I have a fondness for rich, white men (or at least not the married ones), but because I crave the green. And when the inevitable boredom hits (approximately 15 minutes in), I turn to picture books- a dose of bibliotherapy to soothe my seasonal affective disordered brain. Of course, this only works with the really colourful books, such as A House in the Woods by Inga Moore. The snow is piling up in drifts outside, but it doesn’t matter. I am following moose, bear, and two little pigs through an autumnal wood as they gather building materials for their project, a cozy house where all four will eventually live. The illustrations are so vibrant, I can almost smell the spotted mushrooms, and the thick undergrowth of the forest. Say what you want about golf, other than the green of the grass, it just doesn’t have the sensual impact of a great picture book.

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  • Posted on February 15, 2012
Fantastic Flying Books Of Morris Lessmore

Picks & Tweets from the Illustrated Word

The best thing about February is that it’s a short month. Not as short as it could be (I’m talking to you day 29), but still brief enough to delude myself into thinking spring is just around the corner. It’s not, but I’m fully prepared to live with my delusions awhile longer, or at least until the Easter Bunny makes his annual appearance. Contributing mightily to the percentage of sane-like particles in my brain is the daily, sometimes hourly, occasionally minute to minute forays into the wonderful world of the interwebs. And chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.

Along with the caloric content of a large bag of M&M’s, the most thought-provoking thing I read this week is a report that U.S. kids’ books lack a Connection to Nature. Is it different in Canada? Well, we have a maple leaf on our flag and a beaver on our nickel so it’s fair to say the natural world looms large in our national psyche. More on this soon…

Loved this article entitled Do Book Bloggers Really Matter? I guess it depends on what is meant by ‘matter’, but as a former bookseller, I know that advocacy does make a difference. A blog is a pimped up staff selections section, with a spotlight and a megaphone. Instead of hand-selling a book one person at a time, potentially, I have a much bigger audience, which is especially gratifying when I’m writing about a loved but perhaps less well-known title, or one that’s been ‘resting’ quietly in the dark for far too long. Do bloggers matter? I dunno, but books matter.

To William Joyce, storyteller, illustrator extraordinaire, and now Oscar nominee for best animated short~The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore…um, seriously dude. Is there anything you can’t do, cause you sure know how to write and illustrate gorgeous picture books, and…make one of the most beautiful and moving animated movies ever. Ever ever. Download it on iTunes.

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  • Posted on February 11, 2012
Hug Time

A Day in February

With Valentine’s Day (or Tuesday, as I like to call it) just around the corner, and in the absence of any new mushy picture books for the occasion (other than the usual dreary selection of pink and/or heart-shaped books permeating the children’s section), I am revisiting my post from last year, with one addition. It’s not new, just a new format: Patrick McDonnell’s sweetly unconventional Hug Time, issued this February as a board book. As the title implies, Hug Time is about hugs, and the procuring thereof, but among the beautiful illustrations and feather-light storytelling is a subtle environmental message. Nothing heavy-handed, just McDonnell’s characteristic gentleness and wit, now in a more chewable format.

For a full review of Hug Time, and other unconventional Valentine’s reads, please check out my post from February 2011.

Happy Blue Muffin Day!

Hug Time by Patrick McDonnell published by Little, Brown 2012

Listen to Patrick reading Hug Time.

 

  • Posted on January 30, 2012
snow elephants

Snow Elephants of Canada

Unequivocally, The Collector of Moments is a work of art. It is a picture book yes, sold in the children’s section of a bookstore, but it defies categorization, like Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, or The Arrival by Shaun Tan. The illustrations are enigmatic, a sort of visual poetry caught mid-stanza before the swirl of imagery has settled. Not quite as obtuse as Magritte, or as twisted as Michael Sowa, but with the same weird juxtopositions of reality and fantasy. Or…I think it’s fantasy. I live in Canada and I’ve yet to see snow elephants, but perhaps my powers of observation are not as keen as Quint Buchholz, the German creator of this beguiling book. I’ll have to take a closer look.

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