The Way Back » Home » 2010 (Page 6)

  • Posted on March 20, 2010

Louise McKinney Park

Louise McKinney Park in better days. Donna McKinnon, 2009

“Autumn in Arkansas flaunts only its absence.”

This is a line from Knee Deep in Wonder by April Reynolds.

Locally, the line might go something like this: “Spring in Edmonton flaunts only its absence.’”

The quote from Knee Deep in Wonder promises hot, sticky diversions, necessitating a trip to the cash desk and a weekend wrapped in steamy southern prose. The second line, from Knee Deep in Snow Mold, promises nothing but gravel in my shoes and a runny nose.

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  • Posted on March 16, 2010

O Leprechaun, Where Art?

I have a bazillion children’s picture books and not one of them is about a leprechaun. Cockroaches, beetles, sheep, lovesick frogs, blue muffins and a sweet, sweet moleman, but not a single shamrock wearing, shillelagh-packing leprechaun. Therefore, I cannot review or recommend a St Patrick’s Day book. Even a green cover would have sufficed, but I seem to have few of these as well, with the exception of a book I illustrated several years ago for a local publisher. It’s about zucchini.  Not very Irish.

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  • Posted on March 13, 2010

Unwrapping the Dong

I picked up a copy of The Dong With a Luminous Nose by Edward Lear for the title.  It was wrapped in cellophane, so what lay between the covers was a mystery.  I knew the illustrations would be good, because Edward Gorey is always good, but I was dead curious about what Lear was getting at with this peculiar title.  Was it a book about Vietnamese currency?  Would the words ‘Long’ and ‘Silver’ also appear?  Nah. Too twentieth century.  Turns out, the Dong is just a dong…not a name or an appendage, just the Dong.  Like, the Dude, I suppose, or the Donald.  As for his luminous nose, well, I’ll explain later.

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  • Posted on March 09, 2010

Dear Johnny Depp

I ate Gilbert Grape

I wish to register a complaint. Five years have passed since we were subjected to that disturbing image of you as Willy Wonka in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. I had hoped that by now you would have moved beyond children’s literature in favour of something better suited to your predilections, like artistic director at Neverland Ranch.

However, with the release of Alice in Wonderland it appears that we are to be afflicted with yet another tiresome, fetishistic take on a classic literary character. I have not seen the movie, but I have seen enough to know that your visual interpretation of the Mad Hatter is creepy. Not inspired, not delightful, not even whimsical, just creepy. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is indeed, a strange book, and in the 145 years since its publication in 1865, it has proven time and again to be a deep rabbit-hole of inspiration for artists of all persuasions, including actors. And now, I suppose it’s your turn.

This is not to say I haven’t enjoyed some of your films, especially the tastier ones like Chocolat and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, but I have come to the conclusion that you must be bored, and for reasons better left unexplored, extreme makeup does it for you.  It amuses you, and it amuses your partner in cosmeticological crimes, Tim Burton.

But public self-gratification does not amuse me, most of the time, and I think it would be a mistake to regard your affectations as anything but self-serving.

You sir, are a creeper, as my nieces would say.

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  • Posted on March 02, 2010

Guardian of My Being

You know, I’m really having trouble with this post.  First of all, the Olympic hockey finals are on and the American team just scored a goal in the last twenty seconds of the third period, tying the game. Cheese and crackers!  Now we have to go into overtime. However, as distracted as I may be by a little rubber puck, the real reason this entry is proving so difficult is that Patrick McDonnell is my hero, and I don’t know how to write about heroes.

One could argue that all of my posts thus far have been about hero worship, but my feelings for Patrick McDonnell go beyond an admiration for his extraordinary talent as an artist and humourist. This is a man who exemplifies kindness.  It informs and connects all of his beastly projects, from his comic strip Mutts to his work on the board of the American Humane Society. And it’s kindness that permeates his latest book, Guardians of Being.

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  • Posted on February 24, 2010

Pyroclastic Classic

It would be a mistake to limit your search for beautiful picture books to the children’s area in a bookstore. I found Ashen Sky in the history section at a university bookstore, among the textbooks and ubiquitous backpacked youth.  Someone had the good sense to ‘face’ it out, so when the book caught my eye, it was an entirely calculated move on the part of the bookseller, with predictable results.  I stopped, and then I bought.

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  • Posted on February 21, 2010

A Murder of Crows

crow callAs anyone who knows me can attest, I love crows. And magpies, and blue-jays, and really…all upstanding members of the corvidae family. These sturdy little mischief-makers are the smarty-pants of the bird world. And, in my opinion (sorry blue-footed booby), the most handsome. It’s no surprise that picture books about crows attract my attention, and three have made it to my shelves: Crow Call by Lois Lowry (illus. by Bagram Ibatoulline), Martha by Gennady Spirin, and Crows: An Old Rhyme by Heidi Holder.

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  • Posted on February 18, 2010

Shoot me now

Tales from Outer SuburbiaI give up.  I mean, I really just…give up.  Shaun Tan is better than me, and better than you, and better than just about every other children’s book illustrator working today.

And it’s not as if he’s carved out some quiet little niche for himself. No. He is a one-man scorched earth policy, destroying all competition in his wake. We can only hang our heads in sombre resignation whenever he publishes a book.

Tales From Outer Suburbia is the latest self-esteem killer from Mr Tan, following on the heels of the stupidly spectacular, and prodigiously lauded The Arrival, published in 2007.

It is a collection of absurdist stories, accompanied by absurdist illustrations, and every last one of them is sublime, beautiful, charming, subversive, witty, idiosyncratic, and wildly inventive. Blah, blah, blah…

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  • Posted on February 17, 2010

Pants!

What Was I Scared Of?It may not have the cultural impact of a Cat in the Hat, or the loopy narrative line of I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew, but What Was I Scared Of is my favourite Dr Seuss book, and here’s why: it cured my viridistrouserophobia, or the fear of disembodied green pants that had plagued me since childhood.

OK, not exactly, but in this Who-sized mini-book (it was originally published as part of The Sneetches and Other Stories) What Was I Scared Of encompasses all that I love about Dr Seuss: the guileless, not quite human beasties, plants that seem strangely alert to their surroundings, whiskery black outlines, and of course, the utterly delicious Seussian wordplay. Also, the self-propelling green pants (but just in this book.)

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  • Posted on February 16, 2010

My, What a Beautiful Beaver

Life in the Boreal Forest coverWhen the great philosopher king, Frank Farian of Boney M exclaimed, “Oh those Russians!” he was not, as once believed, referring to Rasputin and the court of the Romanov Czar, Nicholas II. Indeed, the source of his exuberance was the Surikov School of Fine Art at the Academy of Arts in Moscow, which spawned a number of great Russian artists, in particular Gennady Spirin, to whom this blog is directed.

Life in the Boreal Forest is Spirin’s latest masterpiece, and not only do I share Mr Farian’s love of Russian art, in Spirin’s case I take this infatuation to an even higher degree, and I say, without reservation, ‘I wanna bear his children’, as that other great 20th century exclaimer, Catherine O’Hara of SCTV, once stated (but not in reference to an illustrator.)

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