The Way Back » HomeHome » Page 11

  • Posted on November 01, 2011

Remembrance Day

Of all the days in the year in Canada that we celebrate or commemorate, Remembrance Day is the one that means the most to me. Other seasonal occasions, like Christmas, hold fond places in my heart, filled as they are with memories of friends and family, and my unnatural love of winter, twinkle lights, and all the Who’s down in Whoville.

Remembrance Day, on the other hand, engages me emotionally and spiritually like no other day of the calendar. No cards or presents are exchanged, no fireworks, no hollowed-out pumpkins. It is the one day set aside for quiet reflection, not on our lives but the lives of others who participated in the wars of the 20th century and beyond, who even now are buried in fields where poppies blow. I have no direct experience with war, other than through my brother-in-law whose mother was taken from her Polish village and brought to Germany as a labourer, and his father, who fought with the exiled Polish army all over Europe and the Middle East. I am not a war nut; the specificities of battles and campaigns do not interest me, but I do wonder why people do the things they do. How decisions, large and small, play out through time.

Continue Reading

  • Posted on October 29, 2011

Picks & Tweets from the Illustrated Word

Just a few days until Halloween, and I still haven’t bought any candy, or at least none I wish to share with miniature ghouls and goblins. The dog, on the other hand, is welcome to whatever falls off my lap. I confess that I’ve been rather busy of late, but I have managed to visit a few of my favourite sites. Here are some highlights from the world wide spiderweb…

A Picture Book Proclamation, signed by the likes of Jon Scieszka, Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen. I may not have published any picture books…yet...but this blog is devoted to, and in celebration of the principles outlined in this manifesto. I couldn’t have said it better, or at least as succinctly, although I have been accused of soapboxing it every now and then. Nice to see folks standing up for art. Hurray!

Speaking of Jon Klassen, Zoe at Playing By the Book takes on I Want My Hat Back in an interesting review which goes against the tide of praise washing over this witty and beautifully drawn picture book. The dry wit may leave some kids cold. Good point. Conversely, the dry wit leaves this sarcastic old(ish) gal all warm and cozy. Who’s right? Well, there is no right and wrong, just individual preferences, and as with the above noted proclamation, I’m just very happy to see people discussing picture books. Good picture books.

Continue Reading

  • Posted on October 22, 2011

The Grimm Reader

There is no dearth of Grimm tales in children’s literature. In fact, Grimm was children’s literature for many years in the 19th century. What is fascinating is not the pervasiveness of the Brothers Grimm, but in the countless adaptations of their tales. Even the brothers themselves modifed the text in many instances, publishing mulitple versions of the same story within their lifetimes. As scholars, linguists, and archivists, their original intended audience was not primarily children but adults; they wished to chronicle the local, and in many cases oral storytelling of the German republic, and if a frog prince got hurled against a wall (instead of kissed) to break a spell, who would raise an eyebrow? Nevertheless, even their ‘PG’ versions were surprisingly and rather inventively violent, especially if you had the misfortune of being a stepsister, or stepmother. Apparently, blended families were the ticket to severe bodily injury, and occasionally a very painful death, which puts a whole new spin to the Brady Bunch when you think about it.

Now comes this new translation by Matthew Price, The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, a compendium of familiar and not so familiar stories in their original 1857 form: warts, revenge and all. Noel Daniel, the editor of this impressive tome does something quite unusual by casting the spotlight on the illustrators who helped to bring these fairy tales into the collective consciousness. Each of the 27 tales, in the order of when they originally appeared, are paired with some of the most influential illustrators of the 1820’s to the 1950’s. It would have been nice to see a few contemporary artists, like Lisbeth Zwerger, who is surely the most gifted visual interpreter of Grimm in the last fifty years, included alongside the roster of ‘famous’ illustrators, but this is a minor quibble. The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is beautiful, wicked fun.

Continue Reading

  • Posted on October 13, 2011

The Dark Art of Halloween

Ah…Halloween again. As mentioned in a previous post, October is one of my favourite months. Autumn colours and bags of fun-sized chocolate bars make me happy in a very, very deep place. As a picturebook aficionado, I love the months that bring out the seasonal collections. Christmas, Easter…even within this narrow field, it’s fascinating to see how many picturebook variations there are on Jesus (well, not that many), a Christmas tree, or a gourd. Some are better than others, and in that spirit, I will be making recommendations for Halloween based on previous posts in this blog. But first…a little Halloween treat from my youth.

While this blog is devoted to picture books, occasionally a novel bubbles to the surface, or in the particular case of this novel, boils and bubbles to the surface, demanding inclusion in spite of the dearth of illustrations. Such is The Little Leftover Witch, by Florence Laughlin.

One of the most memorable books of my childhood, The Little Leftover Witch is a short novel about a seven year old witch named Felina who breaks her broom on Halloween night and is unable to fly. In spite of her protests, the stubborn and disheveled girl is taken in by a family, where she is gradually made to feel at home in a non-magical world. What I remember most is the way she is cared for by the mother. Her long hair is brushed and brushed until it is shiny and all the knots are gone, her dirty black dress is washed and ironed, she has a bubble bath for the first time in her life, and instead of bat soup and jibbers’ gizzards, she is fed chicken and dumplings, peach cobbler, ice cream, and big glasses of ice-cold milk.

Felina resists the kindness of the family, but eventually succumbs. The Little Leftover Witch resonated with me as a child. As the fifth girl in a family of limited means, the nurturing was a little thin, but I did have my school library, where I found this book, and many others. Coincidentally, I found it again the first day I started working in the children’s section of a bookstore. Different cover, same book. The simple, pen & ink illustrations are just as evocative as they were decades ago, as is the story of a lost little girl. The jaded adult in me wonders why Felina wasn’t allowed to retain her true witchy self and is instead persuaded to follow the conservative values of her adopted family. Luckily, a good story and pretty pictures never fail to knock me off my portable soapbox. The Little Leftover Witch is a book about love and transformation, and on that level, it succeeds beautifully. And what could be more ‘Halloween’ than a story of transformation…from summer to autumn, light to dark, jibbers’ gizzards to chicken dumplings. Although I believe the book is currently out of print, I was more than a little surprised to read that Chris Colfer from Glee is making a movie out of The Little Leftover Witch for the Disney Channel. Looks like the book is about to undergo…a transformation.

And now…a few more Halloween treats (excluding those horrible molasses things) from the archives~

Continue Reading

  • Posted on October 12, 2011

Picks & Tweets from the Illustrated Word

Gorey's Black Spider (courtesy 50 Watts)

An entire month since I last posted a Picks and Tweets? For shame. No excuse, other than the usual craziness that is synonymous with September (in my day-job world), which is somewhat alleviated a month later by the arrival of Halloween candy on store shelves. There are goodies everywhere, and many, many empty wrappers, but it is the non-chocolate variety of which I speak. Where to start? Well, how about with some well-deserved accolades?

Just announced…Migrant, Along a Long Road & Ten Birds are among the nominees for the 2011 Governor General’s Award. All three have been reviewed in this blog, and all three are very deserving. Congratulations to the illustrators, authors, and publishers. Also, I Know Here, written by Laurel Croza and illustrated by Matt James, has won the Marilyn Ballie Award. Congrats all around.

One of several interesting articles from The Guardian: Maurice Sendak ‘I refuse to lie to children’.  Yes, he always tells them where the wild things are. Turns out his His favorite story is Outside Over There. Mine too. Falling backwards is one of my many talents.

Really fascinating and disturbing. Loitering in Neverland: the strangeness of Peter Pan. Yes. It’s a strange story, about a strange boy, written by a strange man, co-opted by an even stranger man. Not one of my favourite stories for sure, but there is a very fetching edition of P.Pan with illustrations by Authur Rackham lurking about on my bookshelves. Kind of a palette cleanser. Via the Guardian.

David Bowie’s Space Oddity made into a picture book for kids. Child therapists everywhere rejoice! Seems a strange choice of songs, but the concept, by a Canadian, has proven very popular. My first choice would have been I’m Afraid of Americans, although the Berenstain Bears may have covered this one already. Wired.com
  • Posted on October 09, 2011

A Dish of Revenge

In spite of many hours trolling bookstores and online websites, new and beautifully illustrated Halloween books are bone thin this year. Not that they have to be about Halloween per se; no gourds required. What is required is subject matter brewed in mayhem and mystery, with a soupçon of the supernatural. Checking out Lane Smith’s Curious Pages blog, I ran across Dillweed’s Revenge: A Deadly Dose of Magic, which looked suitably dark. I summoned the book to my doorstep, and found a story that is indeed dark, and funny, and deliciously bent. Perfect.

Continue Reading

  • Posted on September 30, 2011

I Want My Hat Back

I Want My Hat Back by Governor General Award Winner Jon Klassen is my favourite book of the year. Yes, there are still three months left in 2011, and yes, I have lost my heart to several wonderful books in the last nine months, but I stand by by my statement. A book about a bear looking for his lost hat, with simple yet breathtakingly lovely illustrations, and even simpler (but hilarious) text is a perfect creation. And I kinda knew it would be just from the cover. Some books, like some people, have a charisma that precedes them. Maybe it’s the bear, who looks like a beaver, all alone on the cover, with a slightly accusatory expression on his face. Bears already hold an esteemed place in children’s literature. Who doesn’t love Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle, or the perpetually troubled Berenstains? We may fear bears in the woods, but in picture books, a bear is a slam dunk, and in I Want My Hat Back, the bear is a star in the making.

Continue Reading

  • Posted on September 23, 2011

Mirror, Mirror

Beautiful Griselda is a fairy tale about the perils of narcissism and the difficulty of keeping your wits about you, especially the parts of your anatomy containing your wits, when confronted by the object of your desire. I think we can all relate…to a degree.

Princess Griselda is beautiful. Really, gobsmackingly beautiful. Everyone who casts their eyes upon her lovely visage falls head over heels in love with her. Literally. Their heads pop off like corks. Griselda is greatly amused by this, and makes a collection of her admirers, varnishing their heads and placing them under glass or on the walls like stuffed trout. Yes, grisly Griselda is a bit of a monster, more interested in perfecting her lethal form of beauty and growing her ‘collection’ than finding a nice little froggie to kiss. Lucky froggies.

To keep the princely heads rolling, Griselda’s daily beauty ablutions include bathing in cold spring water, slurping juice from sour Tasmanian fruit, posing in crystal shoes, and of course, stray hair removal, courtesy of her ladies in waiting (to have their heads pop off.) And, like all narcissists of the royal persuasion, Griselda takes more than a little pleasure in knowing that people throughout the land are obsessed by her beauty, misinterpreting fear for admiration.

And yet…a mirror makes for poor conversation, and even the self-absorbed get bored…

Continue Reading

  • Posted on September 07, 2011

Coppernickel

For many reasons, most of them involving packing tape, it’s been almost a month since I’ve reviewed a book in this blog. It’s become quite apparent that my brain cells must be somewhat settled before the words can flow. Not the opinions, which spew out of my mouthparts in spite of, and because of the stresses afflicting my grey matter, but writing a simple ‘I love this book’, however exuberantly expressed, just doesn’t fly in the cutthroat world of children’s picture book blogging. Nevertheless, I love Coppernickel, The Invention and I knew that once my discombobulated neurons got sorted and the packing tape put away, I would be in a position to expand on this premise. Turns out, all I needed was a blank sheet of paper.

Continue Reading

  • Posted on August 19, 2011

Picks & Tweets from the Illustrated Word

OK. I’ve been slack in the review department, and I promise that once things calm down in my life (moving), and as of the two days ago, my mouth (stupid tooth), I will ramp up the output on my little blog. Until then, please enjoy these lovely confections from the WWWeberville~ 

 From the New York Times, an all-time favourite: The Snowy Day Celebrates 50 Years. What’s not to love about this sweet, and highly influential little book about the pleasures of winter precipitation?
 
Another great interview from the impossibly good Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast~this time with with author/illustrator Jon Klassen (Cat’s Night Out, I Want My Hat Back.) Note: I will be reviewing I Want My Hat Back in September.
 
The London riots-Victorian style~thanks to The Age of Uncertainty blog for consistently bringing the funny to antiquarian bookselling.
 
Via Brainpicker~NPR’s Top 100 Sci-Fi, Fantasy Books  Great list, and suprisingly I’ve read quite a few of them, but where’s EIFELHEIM by Michael Flynn? It’s quite possibly the best book I’ve read in the last five years, and I would not call myself a major Sci Fi reader. However, I do like books set in Germany, especially medieval Germany. The aliens are just a bonus. 
 
Another great post from the New York Times: And a Frog Shall Lead Them: The legacy of Jim Henson . At the risk of aging myself, anyone remember the great muppets TV movie from the 70’s called The Frog Prince? I still recall the line ‘Break the ball in the handle of her cane!‘, and the song, ‘Sweetums lay your ugly head, down upon your wretched bed’  (I’ve been known to sing that to my cat on occasion.) Wonderful show, and I wish it would be released in a remastered DVD.