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  • Posted on February 11, 2012

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 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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  • Posted on January 17, 2012

Pigs On Ice

I know a little something about ice. This winter has made me an expert. Last year, Edmonton broke a record for the quantity and in some respects, quality of snow that descended upon its shovel weary citizens, ending a multi-year drought and sending our city council into a tizzy of snow removal that was not only inadequate to the task, but a spectacular (and occasionally entertaining) public relations fiasco. This year, unlike any year in recent memory, we’ve had very little snow, some rain, ice-polishing gales, and a months-long cycle of freeze-thaw temperature variations. The landscape is pock-marked with pools of hard, lethal ice waiting to catch my rubber soles in a moment of inattention. Nevertheless, in summer when it’s unbearably hot, I will think back to winter’s icy grip with fondness, for there is nothing worse than unrelieved heat.

Just ask the pigs.

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  • Posted on January 03, 2012

Stuck

As the year, any year, comes to a close, we are compelled by cultural pressures and lifestyle evangelists to evaluate our lives and either pat ourselves on the back for a job well done (unlikely), or resolve to improve our shortcomings (more likely) in the new year. I fall into the latter category. I always fall into the latter category. Unhelpful and occasionally unhealthy patterns plague me year after year, and year after year I resolve to change them…to break free…to be the person I’m meant to be, or something like that. But, I’m stuck. Stuck in routines and behaviours that prevent me from moving beyond my present situation (and dress size.) After many failed attempts to deal with my various and largely self-imposed problems, I need a new plan of attack. Luckily, and just in time, Oliver Jeffers has published a new how-to book on this very subject. Sure, it may be difficult to obtain the required blue whale and an ocean freighter, but I am game, and willing to try anything once. I just wish I didn’t throw like a girl.

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  • Posted on December 27, 2011

Picks & Tweets from the Illustrated Word

Christmas brunch with the dog-an annual tradition

Whoa…it’s been almost two months since I posted a Picks & Tweets on this blog! Other than a pre-existing case of indolence, I have two fat excuses-I travelled to Sweden (and Norway) in November, and upon my return, was hit smack in my jet-lagged face with Christmas-the great sucker-upper of time (and everything else.) Didn’t even have time to put rapidograph to paper and ink my annual Christmas card (sorry people.) However, now that we are thankfully passed the fever pitch of festive activity, I have collected a few of my favourite tweets from this month, and parts of the last, in one butter tart-induced burst of hyperglycemic energy. I expect to crash at any moment…

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  • Posted on December 23, 2011

A Hoppy Christmas

And now…one final Christmas review~a lively and colourful book from 1962~Kangaroo For Christmas, by James Flora. I was beginning to despair that nothing would jump out at me this December, but not only does the book jump…it leaps off the shelves, across five decades and 32 snow-filled pages. The only thing better than a really cool Christmas picture book is a really cool retro-Christmas picture book, with fantastic sixties-style illustrations, a dad who smokes a pipe, and a kid who says, ‘oh my‘ and ‘we are dreadfully sorry‘. Thanks to Enchanted Lion Books of New York, Kangaroo For Christmas has been spirited out of Mad Men playrooms and digitally restored just in time for Christmas 2011.

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  • Posted on December 07, 2011

The Best Picture Books (and one novel) of 2011

In the almost two year life of this blog, I have yet to compile a ‘best of’ list list simply because I would not write about a book unless I thought it was already head and shoulders above the rest. This is the beauty of writing a blog; it is by nature exclusionary. No one is paying for my services (sadly), or directing my attentions, therefore I can toss my voice into the blogosphere with nary a concern for my job or the feelings of an author or illustrator who failed to meet my exacting standards. I write about the books that I love. Period. In terms of the number of children’s books published every year, it is a very small number indeed, but in terms of the amount of time I can devote to them through this blog, it is a dauntingly large list. I wish I had more time. And more bookshelves.

The other problem is that I don’t just write about newly published books. The oldy oldensteins on my shelves insist that I shine a spotlight on them from time to time, and I happily oblige. It’s the least I could do.

Nevertheless, I respectfully admit that a few titles have stayed close to my heart this year, closer than others perhaps, like an unforgettable conversation with a friend, or a dog that just won’t leave your side.

And so, in no particular order…

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  • Posted on December 01, 2011

On the First Day of Christmas

 

Uh oh. It is December 1st, and I have yet to deck a single hall, and to be perfectly honest, it’s been a very long time indeed since my bells have been jingled. Fear not, for I bring you tidings of great joy, namely Christmas Books, and plenty of them. While this list was compiled in the snowy months of 2010, it is destined to expand in the coming weeks, just like my waistline. Stay tuned for more festive selections and a list of favourite books of 2011.

May your decorative Starbuck’s snowman cup runneth over with the spirit of season.

 

  • Posted on November 29, 2011

The Foreign Bookshelf

Along with the giddy anticipation of visiting great Scandinavian art museums and the fulfillment of a life-long dream of being in the same country that whelped ABBA, the prospect of foreign bookstores and the treasures therein was giving me the vapours weeks before my departure. Different cultural sensibilities, the promise of exciting new European illustrators…sometimes I feel like I’ve picked the shelves of my local bookstores clean, and trolling online can be hit or miss, especially when distraction arrives in the guise of a headline announcing the demise of Demi and Ashton’s marriage.

Sowa at Christmas

As expected, the WH Smith in Heathrow did not have any tasty items, but the small bookstore in the Frankfurt airport netted my first score-a Michael Sowa Christmas book, Der Karpfenstreit (The Carp Dispute.) The text was in German, but the illustrations were deliciously odd, more than enough reason to part with my Euros. Sitting in a cafe, drinking a cappuccino and waiting for my connection, I wanted to reach out to the older couple sitting at the same long table with me. “Look what I found!” Instead, I pulled out The Snowman by Jo Nesbø, and proceeded to read about bonhommicide in Oslo. Must remember, not everyone has a passion for picture books.

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  • Posted on November 12, 2011

The Secret of MiM

Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost and the Man in the Moon. What do they all have in common? Well, other than varying degrees of commercial value, nothing, other than they are the mythological beings of our childhood, along with (if you’re Canadian) the Friendly Giant and Mr Dressup. As such, they loom large in the imaginations of many children, and a certain, brilliant author and illustrator-William Joyce. The Man in the Moon is the first in a series of books to be called The Guardians of Childhood, a concept born out of Joyce’s disappointment at the ‘weak and undefined’ mythology surrounding these fantastical beings. “There are defined mythologies for Batman and Superman, so why not a defined mythology for something we actually believed in as children?” Why not indeed, although I personally don’t recall being too concerned about where the purveyor of my Mr Fruit n’ Nut originated, other than his name was Easter Bunny. But, I may have been wrong about that…

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