What is it about picturebooks? Sometimes the repetition drives you batty and as the adult reader you skip entire pages because you can’t face the thought of reading the same repetitive phrase another single time, even though you’ve heard that repetition is exactly what makes kids’ books so good for kids. Yet other picturebooks have the same amount of repetition, and yet you enjoy reading those ones. Each time you get to that repetitive bit you are motivated anew to put on your funny voice and you enjoy the theatre of it.
The Gingerbread Man is one of the latter examples. I enjoy reading good versions of that story and my daughter is spellbound by it. We have the Little Golden Book and the Ladybird versions.
Which version do you remember? My favourite illustrations of The Gingerbread Man are the lavish kind, in which grandmother’s kitchen feels safe and homely and you can almost smell the gingerbread baking. This isn’t a story that lends itself well to block colour. The gingerbread has to look delicious.
RETELLINGS
The very attractive ‘Run, run as fast as you can’ catch-phrase has been repurposed in a variety of new works. Stephen King even wrote a short horror story about a woman who loved long-distance running. I won’t spoil it for you, but it doesn’t end well.
Then there’s the Australian retelling of The Gingerbread Man. It’s called The Lamington Man, naturally. Lamingtons are a traditional cake — a square of sponge covered in icing (pink or chocolate) then covered in dessicated coconut. I’m not a fan. At least I wasn’t, until I tried homemade lamingtons, which are quite different from the dry sponge you get from the supermarket, although supermarkets have started selling mini lamingtons, which are much improved, not because their sponge is any less dry, but because mini lamingtons have a lower ratio of icing to sponge. (Here I am reminiscing, because after giving up sugar entirely, I have absolutely no intention of eating another darned lamington no matter how many country fairs I attend.)
THE LAMINGTON MAN BY KEL RICHARDS ILLUSTRATED BY GLEN SINGLETON (2009)
This is what a lamington looks like.
I really like this Australian retelling of The Gingerbread Man — first of all, the old woman screams when the lamington comes to life. The artist has to be careful to get this right, because even in fairytale world, I’m sure anyone would be surprised if their baked goods up and left. This woman has a great surprised look. We can see straight down her throat.
I also like the phrase, ‘And sprinkled him with coconut, to finish him off of course.’ ‘To finish someone off’ has another meaning and indeed that’s what will happen.
This Lamington Man is a cheeky little bastard, insulting everyone he encounters. That’s why it’s so satisfying to see him eaten by a croc. He calls the dog lazy, insults the postman’s hat and makes a ‘mocking salute’ which I can only imagine is the middle finger, except the lamington man hasn’t actually got fingers, which is why it’s funny.
There’s also a pretty good joke at the end, but I won’t spoil it.
*There are people for whom Gingerbread will never be quite the same, because their children were making gingerbread houses the day a boy with a gun shot entered Sandy Hook Elementary School. Although I’m not American, and our gun laws are as good as they’ll ever be, that was an event which affected the world, and in fact gingerbread will never be quite the same for me either.
I’ve never experienced the allure of pirates. The celebration of pirates (for boys) is about as ridiculous as the celebration of princesshood (for girls). Pirates aren’t heroes; they’re criminals.
Nonetheless, I can understand (intellectually, at least) the allure of sea adventure. (I’m scared of water, sharks and drowning.)
Perhaps when kids develop obsessions with pirates, it’s the adventure they crave.
Picturebooks
FORTUYN’S GHOST BY MARK GREENWOOD ILLUSTRATED BY MARK WILSON
This book isn’t about pirates per se, though pirates make an appearance at some stage. The story is set on the Shipwreck Coast, well known for supposed hauntings. There’s an explanation at the beginning of the book, since the story relies on basic knowledge of this history, then launches into a narrative about a real-life mariner, Pieter Westrik. The story takes place in 1723. Young readers taken with sea stories will no doubt be spirited away by this story, with its atmospheric illustrations and real, historical backdrop. A touch of paranormal helps to spin a story, too, even if you stop believing in paranormal events as soon as the story is over. (This is what I do.)
The ship vanishes, of course. Parts of the wreckage may have been found. This is all explained on the last page, and feels like a damn good episode of Aircrash Investigation.
AN ABC OF PIRATES BY CAROLINE STILLS, ILLUSTRATED BY HEATH MCKENZIE
This is an ABC book for pirate enthusiasts, introducing children to words such as doubloon, zephyr, buccaneer and azure. I don’t know half of these words, being a bit of a landlubber myself. That’s why I appreciate the glossary at the back.
But the text is only a small part of the treasure in this book: at the back we also have a double page spread of words with ‘Did you find all of these objects in the pictures?’ The illustrations are lively and comical and with this Where’s Wally sort of gaming included, a middle grade reader would find many minutes of entertainment. I also like that this story includes female characters, catering for the little girls out there who are enchanted by Pirates of the Caribbean culture. (It’s fitting, perhaps, that the illustrator’s name is ‘Heath’.)
CAPTAIN FLINN AND THE PIRATE DINOSAURS SMUGGLERS BOY BY GILES ANDREA ILLUSTRATED BY RUSSELL AYTO (2010)
This title had me wondering how many Smugglers Bays there are around the world because I grew up in New Zealand, where Smugglers Bay is a real place, in the Waikato. I’ve always thought that place has a wonderfully evocative name, though sadly, I’ve never been there. A quick google search and I can’t find any other instances of real bays of the same name, but I don’t think there’s any deliberate New Zealand connection. I was ever so slightly disappointed by that, especially since it starts with a child character asking the teacher, ‘Why is it called Smugglers Bay?’ which had me thinking this story was based on a real place. It may be about Cornwall but, not being a pirate fan, I can’t tell. If anyone knows, leave a comment.
The illustrations are done Charlie and Lola style, though I’m not sure if this is a fair term I’m using there, since I don’t know who first popularised that style of picturebook art. For all I know, it could’ve been this illustrator.
I do like my genres pure, even when I’m no particular fan of the genre, so sighed a little when the pirate dinosaurs made an appearance. I suppose this story may doubly appeal to children who are obsessed by both pirates AND dinosaurs — two scary things in one! — so if you have a little person by that description in your life, definitely gift them this book.
As for me and mine, we failed to be particularly engaged by this story, which tried too hard to be adventuresome and scary and failed on both counts. True scariness takes a slightly different shape.
On the upside, I do like that the imaginative protagonists of this pirate/dinosaur adventure comprise two boys and two girls — showing, I hope, that the more modern picture book creators are more naturally gender inclusive, or are making an effort to be.
Film
THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS (2012)
It is 2012 and there is no excuse for these kinds of movies being made. Of course, I say that with the assumption that in regards to female representation we can only move forwards, but this film is another example of why many feminist commentators conclude that we’re going backwards.
I wrote copious notes on why I hate this film so much, and before ranting about it here, checked it past my husband. I asked him to watch it first, for a repeat screening with the four-year-old, who I should mention up front — loves this film.
“What did you think?” I asked, knowing he knew I hated it.
“Um, I thought it was pretty good…?”
“But you can see why I didn’t like it, right?”
“Um… not really.”
So I read him my notes (which took some time) and then he got it. He said, “I honestly didn’t pick up any of that.” And I don’t think he said it just for a quiet life, but he agreed with me that this isn’t the sort of film we should let the four year old watch over and over again. Kids do that, you see, and I definitely see the influence of a few films in her imaginative play, which is why I’m so careful about these things.
This feminist-commentary/blissful-ignorance thing is a familiar dynamic in our living room. After coming out with a feminist critique of an episode of The Walking Dead the other night (even though I do try to keep my editorial inserts to myself, for enjoyment’s sake), my husband said, ‘Doesn’t knowing all this feminist stuff ruin stuff for you?”
“Yes!” Absolutely it does. Absolutely. I am in no doubt that my thinking deeply about inequalities enhances my enjoyment of not a single little thing, least of all Life In General, but in fact, these kinds of films annoyed me long before grew the vocabulary to explain how.
I’ll say upfront that this film met with very good reviews from the critics and as I mentioned above, I have long been baffled with the enduring popularity of pirates. Pirates are criminals, yet they have entered the common consciousness as heroes. If it’s sea adventure we’re after, we could easily glamorise the lives of common seafarers, yet we glamorise the lives of 19th century pirates.
The mood of this film reminds me a lot of The Boat That Rocked — a film for adults which I really enjoyed. Aardman have married stop motion animation with computer generated effects to create something visually stunning. What a shame the gags don’t live up to the vision.
This pirate story opens with Queen Victoria, a formidable character — yay!, a strong female character I think — followed not long after by blokey jokes about “scantily clad mermaids” and I realise that it’s only going to go downhill from there.
The token female saunters into a room full of hapless male pirates announcing that she is just as deadly as she is beautiful. The men stare at her with their mouths agape, stunned by her beauty, or perhaps from the unexpectedness of this.
GENDER-BENDING, NOT REALLY
Female pirates? At this point I would like to quote Shattersnipe:
What happens, in other words, when we’re jerked out of a story, not because the fantastic elements don’t make sense, but because the social/political elements strike us as being implausible on the grounds of unfamiliarity?
I feel I should quote some more of that article, in which we learn that that there was such a thing as female pirates — writers don’t need to shove them in just for the sake of modern political correctness — it is entirely possible to make a movie with female pirates at the helm, rather than as a walk-on sexually objectified character, and she would be perfectly historically accurate:
…there’s a significant difference between history as written and history as happened, with a further dissonance between both those states and history as it’s popularly perceived. For instance: female pirates – and, indeed, female pirates of colour – are very much an historical reality. The formidable Ching Shih, a former prostitute, commanded more than 1800 ships and 80,000 pirates, took on the British empire and was successful enough to eventually retire. There were female Muslim pirates and female Irish pirates – female pirates, in fact, from any number of places, times and backgrounds. But because their existence isn’t routinely taught or acknowledged, we assume them to be impossible.
Here’s another point, from author Scott Lynch, in response to a reader complaining that having a middle-aged female pirate is nothing more than political correctness. Quite rightly, Lynch says that middle-aged women are allowed some wish fulfillment in their fiction as much as the next person.
I can see that this film, however, is parodying the classic female roles with its eyes wide open, but what does this really achieve, apart from reinforcing those roles? I was slightly concerned when the four-year-old looked at me and said, “Girls are queens!” meaning, I thought, “What is this girl doing as a pirate?” A successful attempt at gender-role bending, perhaps. Then I worked out that the female pirate was acting so far out of her traditional female role — only her voice was feminine — and the four-year-old didn’t realise that the pirate was actually a female. Decent female characters do not equal male characters with boobies. To the four-year-old, even the bows in the hair was confusing to her, since male pirates are traditionally depicted wearing bows on their ponytails, unlike every other character on everything, and so hair-style is how little kids are conditioned to tell the difference between female and male caricatures/cartoons/characters in the first place. (There’s that and the colour pink, of course, to denote the token female in a group.)
So much for gender bending, anyway. I’m wondering now how female pirates did behave. I don’t know. I’ll probably never know, because their histories haven’t been recorded.
By the way, this alluring female pirate appears later in the sexually charged fantasy of the Pirate Captain. This time she’s the stereotypical gameshow hostess in which he wins pirate of the year, or something. She may have first appeared in pirate dress, but that is not how the audience is guided to see her. It would be a mistake then for the audience to conclude that this film is a good one for pirate-loving little girls, because a young woman in pirate-costume is… well, just that.
FATISM
In the week when American news anchor Jennifer Livingston responded on air to an email from a male lawyer asking her to lose weight in order to be a good role model on screen, I was already wondering where all the fatism comes from, especially when the overweight and obese look set to outnumber the rest. So I couldn’t help but notice the fat jokes in this film, too.
The Pirate Captain has the obligatory parrot on his shoulder, standing in as his ‘trophy wife’. The running joke is that the parrot is bigger than it should be. “She’s not fat — she’s just big-boned”, exclaims the captain defensively. This has the entire ship in fits of laughter, and is the turning event when the captain decides he must prove his worth as their true leader. This joke wouldn’t work, of course, if there were not the cultural assumption that powerful men must have beautiful women on their arms — or in this case, beautiful parrots on their shoulders. A man whose woman (or his female parrot companion) can’t possibly be fit to be leader unless he finds himself a female who fits the narrow constraints of acceptable body shape. A man’s status must match his woman’s beauty. Stereotype thusly reinforced.
Later, when Queen Victoria enters a room on a horse, the queen is exaggeratedly large (as she is always depicted) and the horse is ridiculously small: a visual joke about size which is as powerful as anything voiced. In another scene someone says, “A minute on the hips, a lifetime on the hips.” A ridiculous axiom in the first place. All it does is bring unhealthy messages about food guilt into a comedy designed for kids, who shouldn’t have to have to hear such rubbish.
TRADITIONAL FEMALE CLICHES
Much of the humour in this film come from anachronisms such as the appearance of a group of modern children on a geography field trip to the pirate ship, or the Pirate Captain performing the moonwalk, or the audience at the science awards eating popcorn and sucking down soda drinks. Yet in that same audience, a woman is so taken aback that she faints. This often happened in those days, partly because it was expected of the weaker sex. It’s interesting to see which authentically 1800s parts are kept and which are ditched for comedy’s sake.
TOO SOON TO BE FUNNY
I am a big fan of the historical figure Charles Darwin — I think he did a lot to advance our understanding of the world — so at the risk of sounding way too precious, I take it a little personally when he is fictionalised as a rather hapless character. I wouldn’t mind so much if he were as untouchable as Queen Victoria, but here’s the rub: there are still plenty of otherwise well-educated people in this world who refuse to believe ‘The Theory Of Evolution’, so I’m not sure Darwin is quite up to the role of being ridiculed, not so long as his work is still being ridiculed for real.
I’d be interested to know if other adult viewers got an impression of Charles Darwin depicted as gay when he is first introduced in this film. Later, it turns out he is in love with Queen Victoria, which is meant to sound ridiculous, of course, but funny? Really? “You don’t get many women back here, do you Charles,” says one of the pirates when Charles takes them to his house. Because women exist as sexual conquests, to be impressed? Because a comfortable home takes a ‘woman’s touch’? I’m not sure, but I know I don’t like it. I think it’s because a man couldn’t possibly be attracted to an unattractive woman… in power. One of those attributes would be unappealing enough, but both at once, in the same woman? Impossible. Even today. Queen Victoria can see Charles’ infatuation for her and says, “I’ve always loved you Charles.” “Really?” “No!” Queen Victoria then hits him over the head with a frying pan. I wondered if this is how the male authors of this screenplay feel about women in general. Much of this humour felt like a catharsis of female rejection. Or maybe they’re just playing on how many other men feel about women, and the nasty business of being rejected when you’re acculturated into making the first move, as a real man.
Small things, small things, I know. But they add up. Like when a canon ball smashes the head off a female figurine at the front of a boat. A model of Queen Victoria is sucker punched. An animated pirate movie will of course contain comic violence, sure, but when violent things happen to the male characters the male characters are there in person, to fight back. Maybe it’s not okay to depict violence against actual female characters, but using images of them in an indirect, subversive kind of way doesn’t work either, in my opinion.
Not when women are sexualised as it is. When a scientist presents his new invention (a blimp) he goes over all the ways in which it will be useful, then says, “but mostly it’s for looking down ladies’ tops.” This film may well be hilarious in a dirty-old-man kind of a way, and I might even expect this to come out of the mouths of ribald pirates, but this was from a character who was meant to be a scientist. In this film, no opportunity is lost for treating women badly. I should mention that (the real depiction of) Queen Victoria ends up being squashed by giant barrels of vinegar( though she magically reappears later, since she’s indestructible in a larger-than-life kind of way).
REAL MEN DON’T DO THAT.
The rolling credits at the end are accompanied by (omitted?) scenes, if you’re still watching. “It’s not about the treasure,” says one of the pirates, “it’s about how you feel inside.” The Pirate Captain responds dismissively with, “You’re not a man disguised as a woman, are you?” Also: “Grow yourself a beard. It’ll make your face look less lumpy.” Wrong on several levels. It’s not lost on me that stories which are not good for little girls are also not good for little boys. Gender roles, when presented in binary, are bad for everyone.
Something tells me the creators of this film weren’t thinking too hard about their script. At least they took out the bad-taste leprosy joke before the final cut. But where the hell was Germaine Greer?
And now the four-year-old wants a pirate party for her next birthday. She liked the ‘scary dolphin’ in it, and now this appears to be one of her most favourite movies.
For good claymation from the same people, watch Chicken Run instead. That’s what she’s getting for Christmas. But how the flying hell did this film get a rating of 6.7 on IMDb and avoid any feminist critique whatsoever from the top reviewers? I checked.
The lyrics are about a scrubber woman from the south who dreams of ruling the world by becoming a pirate and killing the people who keep her in her place. Her imagination helps her get through the day, where she is told to get on with her scrubbing.
Last week, after a summer hiatus, our local book club reconvened. I had promised to take along The Artifacts to show everyone the picture book app that I wrote and illustrated last year.
Do you remember the first time you used a touch device? An iPad, maybe? It’s quite something to see the look of wonder in the eyes of people who have never seen one before. This is why user testing on iPad virgins is of limited value; are they in awe of your app, or of the gadget?
There are a few things I should say about my book group. First, the average age would be about 70. Second, it’s a proper book group, where we do discuss books in a structured way. It is made up of women who have read heavily their entire adult lives. Some read 8 books a month. Many are former teachers. All buy books for grandchildren. It’s fair to say I’m the least well read. But one thing we all have in common: we care passionately about books and literature and story and education.
So I wasn’t the least bit surprised when someone asked, with detectable dubious intonation, “So is this the future of books?“
Who knows? Probably!
Next, “But doesn’t all this [interactivity/animation/sound effects] take away from the story? Isn’t it a distraction?”
This, too, is a common reaction, at least to those of us involved in storyapp creation.
Everyone who cares about literature and children has surely asked this question.
My feelings on this are clear, however. It depends if the app developer knows what they are doing. Sometimes I care so much about children and literature that I probably need help. I have been known to rant on and on about top 25 grossing apps, starring branded characters which are nothing more than bells and whistles. “Why can’t parents see what they’re buying for their kids?” I’ll ask, stomping about the house, slamming down pots and pans, mopping the floor (on a productive day). “Why do people buy this crap? It’s crap!” (Words sometimes fail me.)
I rant about those ‘story’ apps with unoriginal, clichéd plots, in which an unenthusiastic writer has been contracted to spin a story of sorts, to match flat, uninspiring artwork. I rant on about apps in which the creative team do not seem to have communicated adequately with the programming team. Sometimes it looks as if a programmer has been emailed a story and told, “Here, make an app thingo out of that.”
But there are plenty of knowledgeable people who care deeply about children’s literature, providing commentary on how app developers are shaping up to the new challenges of digital media. Many of these people are educators or literacy experts.
A successful picture book app fulfills the requirements of a traditional picture book, but with an extra oomphunique to the digital format.
Wow. Since we’re in the middle of making another picture book app ourselves, I often ruminate about best practice and usability (so far undocumented), so I do take my time to absorb expert expectations. And what a big ask! By ‘extra oomph’ might Katie Bircher be asking app developers to do something more than print books can do? What exactly is ‘oomph’?
Here are some basic truths about picture book app creation:
1. Picture book apps are expensive to create.
2. Picture book apps are just as expensive to market as print equivalents, and do not have the benefit of visibility in bricks and mortar book stores.
3. Picture book apps are much cheaper for the consumer to buy. The Artifacts is $1.99, for example. You can’t buy a new, physical picture book for $1.99.
Yet here we are, at this weird junction, where some people seem to expect more from a picturebook app than from a print book.
Do we expect more from the movie adaptation of a book? I don’t. I expect something different. Many people have learnt to expect less.
Why is this a paradox?
Because I’m hearing two distinct but conflicting messages from those of you who know children’s literature:
1. Apps should be simple. You’re encouraging us to think very hard and long about interaction and animation. This is good. I’m thinking. Hard.
2. Apps have to offer something more than a print book does. For less cost to the consumer, by the way.
But we didn’t go into this industry hoping to add something more than print books can achieve.
Printed picture books are an excellent medium. I can’t see a single way in which the print book fails. The best of them do a great job of sparking imagination, transporting children to other worlds, offering the gift of story and creating a love of reading.
Can a digital medium possibly offer more oomph than that? And should the savvy consumer expect it to?
“If there’s anything missing that I’ve observed over the decades it’s that that drive has declined,” said the 83-year-old author… ”There’s a certain passivity, a going back to childhood innocence that I never quite believed in. We remembered childhood as a very passionate, upsetting, silly, comic business.”
Little Critter is told to get ready for bed, but gets distracted at each point. Mercer Mayer’s books are so appealing because they’re so realistic. This is exactly what happens if you tell a toddler to get ready for bed. Of course books of this kind must end with the critter/animal/child in bed asleep. This one is no exception.
Where’s My Mummy? By Carolyn Crimi
The picture on the front cover tells us that the ‘mummy’ is the Egyptian kind, wrappped in bandages, but the play on words is that the baby mummy has lost it’s mummy (named ‘mama’ to avoid confusion). The mummies live in a graveyard, and as the baby mummy wanders about looking for its mother it comes across all sorts of creepy (but comical) characters who are going through their bedtime routines. (Gargling with goo, cleaning long pointy ears etc.) Eventually baby mummy finds its mother and goes safely to bed.
Wake Up! By Katie Cleminson
This doesn’t sound much like a going to bed book, but it begins with a boy waking up, takes us onomatopoeically through his daily routine, focusing on different verbs. He ends up in bed, which is why it could be effective as a bedtime story.
Where Does Thursday Go? By Janeen Brian
A bear and a bird (Splodge and Humbug) wonder what happens to each day after the sun goes down so they get out of bed after they’re tucked in and go look for it. They come to the conclusion that Thursday is ‘the moon’, because it disappears slowly behind a cloud. They retire to bed for the rest of the night until the sun brings Friday.
ONE SNOWY NIGHT BY NICK BUTTERWORTH
A procession of forest animals turn up on Percy’s doorstep because it’s snowing and they want a warm bed for the night.
The storyline reminds me a bit of that song that goes, ‘There were three in the bed and the little one said Roll Over! Roll Over!”
But if after reading this you’re stuck with Men At Work singing “Who can it be now?” as an earworm, don’t say you weren’t warned.
MOST LOVED MONSTER BY LYNN DOWNEY
The characters are friendly monsters behaving like a human family, which would reassure young children who have a tendency to see creepy crawlers in the dark.
A mother monster has four youngsters, who each ask her as they’re tucked in, ‘Who do you love the most?’ Each time the mother says she loves them all equally but she also mentions the special quality each of them has. (Sense of humour, creativity etc.) The little monsters wait until their mother is asleep then they get out of bed and make the most of their special gifts – the creative one bakes his most creative recipe yet, for instance. In the morning the mother monster gets up and if other readers are anything like me, they’ll be expecting the mother monster to be very angry, because the little monsters got out of bed when they shouldn’t have and made a big mess. But the mother monster is delighted. She’s especially delighted that they’ve written ‘Mama we love you the most’ in red, right across the cave walls. (I wasn’t sure whether I should categorise this as a ‘mawkish book’, but there is plenty of humour in this book as well, since the monsters do monstery things like floss their fangs.)
TELL ME SOMETHING HAPPY BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP BY JOYCE DUNBAR
The characters in this one are rabbits who behave like human children. Two rabbits sleep on a bunk bed. The smaller one is worried and can’t sleep, so the bigger one takes the smaller one around the house and shows it all the reasons to be happy: chicken slippers waiting to be worn, a jumpsuit waiting to be put on tomorrow, oats, milk and apples waiting to be eaten for breakfast etc. They end up back in bed. The little rabbit is happy now and falls asleep.
GOODNIGHT TIPTOE – A TILLY AND FRIENDS BOOK BY POLLY DUNBAR
Polly Dunbar is the daughter of Joyce Dunbar, above.
There are no adults in this one. Instead a little girl takes the parental role and gets her toys ready for bed. She gives the elephant a bath, brushes their teeth and tucks them in. Once in bed herself, she wonders who’s going to tuck her in. Tiptoe must be her favourite toy – he is still up, so does the job for her. This story would perhaps help a toddler to consider the going-to-bed routine a game of imagination. By encouraging the child to take the parental role, a reluctant sleeper might be thus coerced.
GOOD KNIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT BY DAVID MELLING
This story is a little strange, in that the event which starts the rest of the story is simply that a little boy goes in search of pillow stuffing for his little sister. In the boy’s head (or perhaps in the world of the story) the family live in a castle, so the little boy finds things such as wolf hair and feathers off ‘feather trees’. The feathers off these trees prove a hit, the baby sister stops crying and the royal family is able to get a good night’s sleep.
LITTLE HOOT BY AMY KROUSE ROSENTHAL
It’s hard to write a going to bed book with an original twist, but this book achieves it by turning the usual reluctance to go to bed on its head: Little Owl desperately wants to go to bed but his night-owl parents make him stay up and play. Eventually, of course, he has played enough to satisfy them and he is grateful for the opportunity to sleep.
GO THE F**K TO SLEEP
DON’T LET THE PIGEON STAY UP LATE BY MO WILLEMS
I feel as though the above book is a more taboo version of Don’t Let The Pigeon Go To Sleep by Mo Willems, published 2007. The Willems book goes through all the typical excuses a child has (where do they learn it? Antenatal class?) but the language is appropriate for a child. I’m not sure who’d appreciate the Mo Willems book more though — parents or their children.
HOW DO DINOSAURS SAY GOODNIGHT? BY JANE YOLEN ILLUSTRATED BY MARK TEAGUE
This one is for young dinosaur enthusiasts, with a page at the very beginning showing what the dinosaurs are called. Each dinosaur is sitting on a bed, engaged in classic human pre-bedtime rituals such as reading a boo, jumping on the bed or hugging a teddy. Some are blowing bubbles and getting up to general three-year-old bedtime mischief. This story is basically saying to a toddler, ‘A dinosaur wouldn’t be naughty before bed, would he?’, hoping that the toddler will use the beloved dinosaurs as role models for good pre-bedtime behaviour.
This book is a modern one, first published in 2000, yet the illustrations look set in an earlier time. The ‘papa’ wears those high waisted trousers straight off the set of Mad Men. The mothers (because there are various bedrooms and various parents) seem often to be wearing aprons and 1950s bobbed hair. To summarise, the men look as if they’ve got home from work, while the mothers all look as if they’ve been working in the home all day. Is this a way of preserving traditional values and gender roles, I wonder, by setting modern stories in 1950?
DRIFT UPON A DREAM, A COLLECTION OF POEMS CHOSEN BY JOHN FOSTER ILLUSTRATED BY MELANIE WILLIAMSON
The danger of reading this book all at once is that the adult reader may find themselves yawning uncontrollably, or maybe that’s just me?
This is a collection of nursery rhymes, some well-known, some less so; some by well-known poets, others by Anonymous. Some sound like the sort of thing your grandmother made up on the spot. They are illustrated in whimsical, modern style in an attractive colour palette of pinks and purples and blues. The illustrations appealed to my daughter. The poems she found less appealing. I thought back to my own preschool years and realised that my mother read me a lot of nursery rhymes, and I realised that unless children are exposed to such rhymes at the right age, parents have missed the window. This leads me to wonder how relevant those nursery rhymes really are, because I’ve been quite neglectful about reading them to our own preschooler. So much more is available now, and a lot of it is, frankly, a lot more interesting than the classic lullabies. Yet there’s something about a classic — I think it’s knowing that every single one of your recent ancestors knew the same one. Still, if it’s continuity we’re after, there’s always mitochondria, which will never let us down.
There’s NO Such Thing as a Ghostie! by Cressida Cowell
This is a very English book, featuring a monarchy with Beefeaters and Ladies-in-waiting, and a child Queen who gets bored after Royal Tea so decides she wants to go looking for ghosties. (Do the English call suitcases ‘trunks’ though?)
Everyone in the castle tells her there’s no such thing as ghosties but I guess because she’s the Queen, they all go on the hunt. They hear all sorts of sounds which sound a bit like a ghostie, but it’s always something else (like the wind). There’s a fold-out centrefold which features an enormous illustration of a bat. This sends Sergeant Rock-Hard running back to his bed, because he’s obviously terrified of bats. (I am too, to be fair.)
The conclusion is that there’s no such thing as ghosties, but on the final page we see an illustration in which the Queen referees a game of soccer with a bunch of ghostlike figures in a candlelit hall of her castle. So, like many books which are reassuring by intent, there is some doubt left in the child’s mind. They might, just might, be right.
WHAT’S UNDER THE BED? BY JOE FENTON
This colour scheme is a limited palette of monochrome plus red and a little green. (It reminds me of Emily the Strange.) A boy wonders what’s under the bed. Eventually he plucks up courage to look, and finds it’s only his teddy. On the final page there is a story reversal, where we see a monster in bed with the boy underneath.
The colour scheme aims to frighten, which secure children tend to love, but there seems to be a rule that all must be well by the end of the book. (If it’s not a rule, I’m not sure parents would buy a book which frightens but fails to pacify.)
Joe Fenton is a concept artist, and his love of art comes through.
FRANK WAS A MONSTER WHO WANTED TO DANCE BY KEITH GRAVES
I suppose any story which features a likeable monster is effectively a ‘don’t-be-scared’ book. In this story, a monster has a passion for dancing, and takes his moves to the stage. When the audience twigs to the fact they’re watching a monster, they flee the theatre in terror. The monster doesn’t care. He just keeps on dancing.
ANIMALS SCARE ME STIFF BY BABETTE COLE
This book teaches children that animals are more scared of children than children are scared of them.
Tom is followed by a dog and gets scared that the dog will eat him. He encounters a number of animals as he walks along, and thinks of the horrible things that animals can do (bull tossing him over a fence, ants up his nose, etc). Eventually he is surrounded by all the scary animals and sinks to the ground. He doesn’t see the ants. He panics because the ants get into his trousers and he takes off his pants. The animals are scared of Tom’s bare bottom and run away. Next time he’ll know what to do – give them a brown eye. (There’s a picture of this on the final page, designed to elicit a laugh.)
JUMP, BABY! BY PENNY MATTHEWS
Many ‘don’t be scared’ books focus on fear of darkness or of something specific (like animals, above). This one is about a baby possum who is too scared to jump from tree to tree without the help of its mother, but the message is feels much wider than that: Don’t be scared to try new things when your mother urges you to do so.
THE MONSTER DIARIES BY LUCIANO SARACINO
This book is for older readers – maybe 8 years old – and is shelved with the middle grade fiction at our local library. The Federation of Fright sends a memo out to all the vampires, ghouls and witches to tell them they’re not being scary enough. Via their diaries, the reader learns about the daily lives of these creatures, which are both comical and ordinary in nature. Not one of the scary monsters wins the award – they’re all deemed useless.
TOM AND THE DRAGON BY JULIETTE MACIVER
A mother warns her son to stay away from a dragon that lives in a cave at the beach. This is a New Zealand story, and it reminds me of the stories about taniwha (mythical Maori monsters) that we read as children.
When the boy meets the dragon, he finds out that the dragon has been told not to play with little boys. They are both scared of each other. But in the end they are great friends.
JUMP OVER THE PUDDLE BY EMMA QUAY ILLUSTRATED BY ANNA WALKER
Three friends — animals — are next to a puddle in this minimalist picturebook in which the (female) sheep is too scared to jump over a puddle. The panda and the owl encourage her to jump over despite the fear. She falls into the puddle but it doesn’t hurt at all. This story will encourage young readers to examine their fears and consider what’s the worst that could happen.
Pearl is an extrovert, Charlie an introvert (as described by what each of them likes to do), but they are great friends regardless and help each other out. This teaches children that people are all different but can be friends regardless.
SUNDAY CHUTNEY BY AARON BLABEY
This is another book which celebrates individuality. Sunday Chutney is a little eccentric, and the story reminds me of the opening sequence of the movie Amelie, in which Amelie gives us a snapshot of her strange life, including a rundown of the things she does and does not like.
Sunday Chutney sometimes feels lonely because she is always the new kid at school. (Her dad’s job means they move a lot.) There would be a lot of kids in this position – I was one of them all through primary school – and this book might help them to feel as if being new or different (or both) isn’t so bad.
Sunday Chutney is a well-chosen name for a children’s book, and I think it was the name which grabbed my attention – especially since I had already read the Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley book, so assumed (without knowing the author’s name) that the book had been created by the same person. (Did you know that one of Diana Ross’s daughters is called Chudney? With a ‘D’? Happy days.)
Elmer the Elephant has proven so popular that there is a whole series of picture books featuring his adventures. Basically, it’s an elephant who is patchwork instead of grey, which could symbolise any way in which a child happens to be different from other children. The storyline and message is similar to Freckleface Strawberry by Julieanne Moore, which is specifically about the difference of having red hair and freckles.
A little girl wants a pink fluffy rabbit because all the other kids have got one and she doesn’t want to be different. No one can find a pink fluffy rabbit, so grandma decides to knit one, but it ends up looking more like an armadillo. The girl gets laughed at. The toy seems to come to life, and they play together. But whatever the armadillo does, the girl is critical, thinking a rabbit would do it better.
I’m not sure why, but this book did manage to pull on my heart strings a little – I think it’s the expression on the armadillo’s face when he decides to go back to grandmother for an unravel and reknit.
Fortunately, the girl realises how special her armadillo is, and no one gets unravelled.
The knitting theme is prominent in the illustrations and page design, with textures made of photographs of knitting, and occasional fancy font reminiscent of looped wool.
WHAT COLOUR IS YOUR WORLD? BY BOB GILL
This was first published in 1962 and was still in print in 2008. It teaches colours, but in an original way, because different people see that the objects in their lives are not necessarily viewed in the same hue.
I thought this was going to be a book which teaches a basic concept of art (that the sky isn’t always blue, for instance) but the milk is brown and the cabbages are blue, so I think it’s simply about indulging in your eccentricities.
(Still, I wouldn’t drink brown milk.)
NAKED MOLE RAT GETS DRESSED BY MO WILLEMS
I love books by Mo Willems, which appeal to the humour of adults equally. Besides, there’s something inherently funny about naked mole rats.
In this story, one naked mole rat bucks trends by deciding to wear clothes. This causes a stir, but catches on. By the end of the story, some naked mole rats are wearing clothes and some aren’t, but they’re all having a lovely time regardless. So this story is about going your own way, while pointing out the inherent ridiculousness in some of the social conventions we take for granted as normal.
LUKE’S WAY OF LOOKING BY NADIA WHEATLEY ILLUSTRATED BY MATT OTTLEY
Misunderstood by his teacher, the boy in this story sees the world differently from other people. This is reflected in his art assignments, which are meant to be realistic but which he depicts in an abstract way.
One day he escapes school and spends the day at the art gallery. This only spurs his imagination. When he arrives back at school the teacher doesn’t know what to say, so doesn’t say anything at all.
Suspension of disbelief is needed here, because a kid absconding from school these days is very much on the radar of the truancy admin team, or should be, but perhaps the world has changed even since this picturebook was published, in 1999.
Despite that plot hole, the story is a good one, with fantastic artwork, and will strike a chord with any kid who has ever been misunderstood by his or her teacher for failing to follow instructions to the letter.
GIRAFFES CAN’T DANCE BY GILES ANDREAE ILLUSTRATED BY GUY PARKER-REES
The author wrote this book after noticing while in Africa that giraffes are far more graceful than one would expect given their ungainly looking neck and limbs. When he returned home he wrote this story, in which the giraffe surprises all the jungle creatures at a dance by his unexpected graceful moves.
This is a story about having a go even if you don’t think you’re going to be any good at it, and secondary to that it’s about doing things your own way, because while all the other animals are doing a ‘type of dance’ (cha cha, Scottish dancing etc.) the giraffe simply dances.
This week I read a perfectly innocent picture book and managed to disturb my (non-vegetarian) sensibilities. I might say here that a vegetarian would be ill-advised to pick up a storybook about a pig called ‘Hammie’, when the cover illustration is obviously a pig, but that would be stating the obvious.
As the title suggests, this is about a little pig who lives in the woods with his porcine parents and siblings, but this particular pig has higher ambitions, so in a Three Little Pigs sort of way, he goes out into the world to get himself educated.
This is where he ends up at a primary school, and asks the male teacher (the principal?) if he may join the class. While the male teacher says no, the young, pretty, caring female teacher says she’d be happy to have him in her class.
But first the class must give the pig a name. The children all put their thinking caps on, yet it’s the young, pretty, sensitive teacher who comes up with the name ‘Hammie’. I assume this little pig doesn’t understand that he is amid a breed of animal who like to eat his kind, and that he has just been given a moniker that reminds everyone that he is, in essence, after all, a food item.
The little pig has a great day at school, and goes home to tell his father all about it. The father is pleased that his son has taken after himself — intelligent…
…unlike his stupid mother, who is a dumb female pig, but nevertheless good at maternal, caring things like reading picturebooks to the piglets before bedtime while Daddy pig is off doing manly piggish things in the shed… or whatever.
But first, all the piglets get a name. This will make them feel special. Here’s what they’re called.
Is it just me, or have all the male piglets been named, in one way or another, after pig products? I assume the female pigs will be allowed to procreate before being turned into meat products themselves. (Or maybe there’s a Nellie’s Ham I’m not aware of.)
Hutton’s is a well-known brand of ham produced by Goodman Fielder (at least, in New Zealand). Fergus Henderson just happens to be a well-known chef, who does things like pose with pig’s heads in his hands while wearing a rather scary expression on his face. I’m scared. Are you?
By this point in the story I’m sure that this is going to be the first ever picturebook I have read in which every single one of the characters gets murdered and eaten. I’m thinking of a very Grimm tale indeed.
But no. On the last page, little Hammie looks at his delicious self in the mirror and steels himself for the future.
Hence, what is left off the page ends up worse inside my head. The first rule of horror writing, if memory serves me well.
This post features some books which are distinctively Australian in nature, even though I’ve included books by Australian authors in other posts.
Scrambled Egg by Wendy Binks
There must be a strong local market for books featuring Australian native animals. This series is about emus, named things like ‘Crikey’ and ‘Sheila’. The kangaroo is called ‘Bluey’. The storyline is another children’s book about a baby (echidna) losing its mother, then being reunited with the help of kindly others. Children do seem to like these stories, because separation is a constant fear. At the end of the book there’s a double page spread of ‘Interesting Facts’ about the Australian wildlife contained in the story.
Give Me A Home Among The Gumtrees
The story contains the lyrics to the eponymous song by Wally Johnson, illustrated humorously by Ben Wood. This is part of a series of ‘Omnibus Books’ by Scholastic Australia called ‘Great Aussie Yarns’.
A BUSH CHRISTMAS BY C.J. DENNIS
This is another picture book illustrated for the poetry of a well-known Australian poet from last century. The language feels old-fashioned, but it’s a good poem, about a stinking hot Australian Christmas day, where a family on a ranch lament that British Christmas traditions are inappropriate for the local climate. The illustrations in this edition are typical of Australian picture books (and art) in that the colours are very bright. Perhaps the reference photos had been saturated somewhat. (This would certainly be one thing an artist might do in their workflow if creating Australian art. Then again, the light is so harsh down here that it’s hardly necessary.) The artwork fades to monochrome when the old man relates tales of a traditional Christmas back Home. This seems to be a widely used and effective technique for making a visual distinction between the present story versus imagination or memory. The black and white also serves to give the eye a break from brightly coloured pages.
Billabong Bertie The Bunyip by Josephine Barrymore
A collection of Australian animals go out looking for a bunyip, which hasn’t been seen since 1930. The animals are called names such as Tangles (emu), Kip, Smokey and Buttons (kookaburras). There’s also Kooka and Squawk and Boomer etc. Anyway, they find the bunyip and are so surprised they fall out of their tree, from where they have been searching the landscape with binoculars. They fall into some water, and koalas can’t swim, so something comes to save them in a boat. It’s the bunyip.
They have tea around a campfire that night and yarn. They must leave Bertie the Bunyip and head back home, but they promise to return next year.
There’s a technical problem with some pages of this book: all the text is black, but when overlaid on a dark background the text is hard to read.
And I don’t know what it is – I do not like onomatopoeic, formulaic titles that go something like:
Suzy the Samurai Sailor
Tony the Tomboy Tranny
Willy the Wonky Wag-a-lot
I don’t know why I’m so skeptical of books titled like this; perhaps it’s because these titles are so easy to parody.
A Home For Bilby by Joanne Crawford
With a cast of uniquely Australian wildlife, the bilby has lost his family for some reason, and is looking for a new home. The other animals tell him where they live, but explain that it’s no place for a bilby. Eventually he finds his own spot under a bush and all is well again. Illustrated by Grace Fielding, the art has aboriginal influence.
SILLY GALAH BY JANEEN BRIAN
The galah is an Australian bird with pink feathers and for some reason ‘galah’ is also used as a jovial insult as in, ‘you great galah’ or ‘silly galah’. (I suspect they’re actually very intelligent birds.)
There’s a design problem with this book: Black text on dark, speckled background makes it hard to read at times. The typesetter (or someone) has also decided to weave the words around the borders of pages, which is actually quite a challenge for an accomplished reader, let alone for a young reader whose eyes have not yet adjusted fully to reading from line to line.
This book, like many other Australian books, introduces Australian wildlife. (Echidna, crocodile, magpie, possum…) which is pretty much non-fiction, except their personalities anthropomorphise them somewhat. Even the croc seems a little bit cute.
LOONGIE THE GREEDY CROCODILE by lucy and kiefer dann
I class this as a WTF story. Perhaps something has been lost from the Aboriginal translation, or maybe I’m just hoping for more. A crocodile goes hunting in the mangroves and breaks all his teeth on longbum snails, who have slid back into their very hard shells.
Hmm. Somehow I don’t think that’d ever happen. Do picture books sometimes cutify dangerous animals a little too much? Bears is one thing. Crocs is another.
MY AUSSIE MUM BY YVONNE MORRISON
This is a book which celebrates a family member – Mum, of course – and in this case there is an attempt to depict your typical Aussie mum, which always strikes me as problematic. Why bother, when there’s really no such thing as a typical Australian mother?
The mother in question is a white woman who likes sport (an Aussie battler), eats pies with tomato sauce, watches TV on the couch in her tracky-daks… In other words she’s a bit of a bogan, and any story which makes full use of distinctively Australian phrases is going to come across as overly patriotic and slightly disturbing. To counter the idea that all mothers are the same, at the end of the book we have a line-up of mothers of varying heights, shapes, skin-tones and eye-shapes, to avoid accusations of Anglo-normative ideals.
There are things that Australians like to believe about themselves, and this book reinforces those ideas, regardless of their applicability in the real world.
IN YOUR DREAMS BY SALLY MORGAN
This book is Aboriginal in its feel, with black silhouettes as characters, and illustrations by Bronwyn Bancroft which have been influenced by Aboriginal style. Although dreaming and its significance is writ large in Aboriginal cultures, this story is not specifically an Aboriginal one, in that it could apply to any kid who attends school. It’s about a little girl who dreams of being an artist. She wins a local art prize despite self-doubt, which leads to a message which says you should always follow your dreams because they just might happen.
ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR COMPOSED BY PETER DODDS MCCORMICK
You may be forgiven for thinking that Waltzing Matilda is Australia’s National Anthem, but no, they’ve got an official one which doesn’t involve the theft of livestock and a suicide by drowning. It’s called ‘Advance Australia Fair’ and in this picture book the anthem is accompanied by well-known Australian fine art which have been juxtaposed with appropriate lines, with their significance explained in small text.
This is a picture book, but it’s one of the rare picture books which is probably designed more for an adult audience.
If you’ve never heard the Australian national anthem in your life, you can listen to it here. My favourite bit is when you have to sing the word ‘girt’, which is useful in no other context I can think of. Still, all children should know it, right?
In 2001, Australian Labor Party politician Craig Emerson criticised the archaic word “girt” in the national anthem’s lyrics by saying, “This must rank as one of the worst lines of any national anthem.
- Wikipedia
A GIRAFFE IN THE BATH BY MEM FOX AND OLIVIA RAWSON
This picture book features Australian animals in the illustrations, such as kookaburras and koalas, but isn’t specifically Australian – it also stars a giraffe, for instance.
Although giraffes are native to Africa, I don’t really consider that when I see them in picture books – probably because they’re so well known. I wonder if when non-Australian readers see koalas and kangaroos if they think of a story set specifically in Australia, or if in fact these animals are picture book staples, and evoke no particular setting at all.
Anyway, this book plays with humour specific to a particular age group (K2), in which putting things where they should not be results in much hilarity. The illustrations are humorous; I especially like the roo on the loo.
In the end, the reader is encouraged to go back to the beginning of the book and read again, which feels a bit like a cheat ending to me, though I’m sure a child would love to revisit this one, over and over.
MY GRANDAD MARCHES ON ANZAC DAY BY CATRIONA HOY
I wasn’t expecting to be at all moved by this book, but I was! I’m a bit lazy these days and rarely get up at cock shout to drive into town for the annual ANZAC parade, but I have been to enough commemorations to know the atmosphere and I really feel it emanating out of this story in droves. It’s very well done.
KANGAROO’S CANCAN CAFE BY JULIA JARMAN
This one is also very well done, and is different from most Australian picture books in that it’s not created by an Australian, but rather by a writer who visited Australia.
This book’s illustrator – Lynne Chapman – is also British (I think) and I wonder if she has visited Australia herself, because her brightly coloured pastel drawings seem to reflect that kind of brightness that you only ever get in Australia (and which you only notice after coming back from, say, England!) It’s the kind of brightness where you can’t really be outside without sunglasses on.
The characters in this book are pretty standard for a book set in Australia – you’ve got all the most common Australian animals as cast – but the story is original and could have been about any animals anywhere. Actually, I think that’s a great thing. There are already plenty of books which aim to teach readers about the lifestyle and habitat of Australian wildlife, not to mention the efforts of Bindi Irwin and her mother.
ARE WE THERE YET? BY ALISON LESTER
There’s nothing in this book’s title to suggest it might be a non-fiction sort of account of a camping trip around Australia, but the Aboriginal-inspired artwork on the front cover removes any doubts about that.
After reading this book I wanted to get into a campervan and drive around Australia, and I’m sure children reading this could feel the excitement too.
THE THIRSTY FLOWERS BY TONY WILSON
When I picked up this book I didn’t realise it was Australian, which is refreshing because usually the Aboriginal decoration or pictures of native animals on the front cover give it away. But I worked it out on about the second page, because it’s just so Aussie. Which is a good thing. It feels familiar. The drought feels familiar. The beer chugging character who forgets to water his plants is familiar. The plants themselves are familiar.
This is kind of like Day of the Triffids for the little ones, in that the plants decide to uproot themselves and walk next door on their spindly little roots. Next door, they get watered every day.
I was reminded of the classic Wizard of Oz film when the reader first sees the new garden – that page is decorated with glitter, which would make a young reader pretty impressed.
REDBACK ON THE TOILET SEAT BY SLIM NEWTON
A particularly Australian concern, this one.
This book is a picture representation of the song, which anyone might think (from believing the Internet) had been written and performed by Slim Dusty, the more famous ‘Slim’. Some keener on YouTube has even brought Slim Dusty to life using some sort of 3D animation software, and put it to this song. The result is pretty creepy, though strangely compelling:
But from what I can gather, this song was not written by Slim Dusty at all – this song belongs firmly to Slim Newton, born Ralph Ernest Newton in Perth, 1932. So let’s just get that straight. The phrase ‘one-hit wonder’ springs to mind, but let’s give the man credit where credit’s due!
There always seem to be a lot of Christmas picture books in our local library, but that’s possibly because parents only get them out during December, whereas they get other books out at any time of year. This has made the number of Christmas books seem, to me, who has been plodding through the alphabet all year, like a disproportionate number.
Sometimes Christmas picture books are produced for their own value; sometimes they’re put out as one of a hit series. For parents who don’t want any more emphasis on Santa Claus than already exists, there are Christmas books which don’t feature any of that. You may have to look a bit harder for those ones, however.
One thing is true about Christmas Stories: The story has to stand up in its own right, even if you were to take the Christmassy part away.
There are also a number of cliched storylines in Christmas stories:
1. One character helps another character to discover the True Meaning of Christmas.
2. The Night Before Christmas has probably been covered, especially in the app store. In order to justify yet another illustrated version, it had better offer something pretty special!
3. I feel there should be three, but can’t think of a third right now!
DREAM SNOW BY ERIC CARLE
What I really like about this book is that you don’t work out the old man is Santa until the end. Well, you might if you saw the picture of Santa on the front cover, and if you’ve got more than two points of IQ to rub together, but I didn’t.
I also like Eric Carle’s art – he’s like the Quentin Blake of picture books – an unmistakable style. This book has pages of acetate which add a layer of snow to the illustrations. There’s also a button which makes a tune on the last page, and I think this library book has had some love, because the button is pretty worn out.
(There’s a picture of Eric Carle posing with his friend who posed for him. Anyone else think those guys look like identical twins? I’ve never seen two non-related men look so much alike.)
GIVE HIM MY HEART BY CHRISTINA ROsSETTI, ILLUSTRATED BY DEBI GLIORI
This book takes the first and last verse from a Christian poem about the nativity scene. It’s a satisfying poem, and I’m not surprised it’s been revived via a picture book. This particular picture book isn’t all about the nativity scene – that is certainly the backdrop, but a non-Christian family could still get its message. Instead of Jesus, a little girl’s grandfather is the recipient of love. The message is that if you don’t have anything else to give someone, then your love is enough.
The story of Wenceslas may or may not be familiar to a young reader, but it shouldn’t matter because Geraldine McCaughrean has a real gift for retelling history in beautiful, original language. The language in this story is poetic, sparse and would be just as easily at home in literature for adults. I’d wager Geraldine McCaughrean doesn’t believe in simplifying vocabulary for the sake of young readers. In this story she includes words such as ‘postern gate’, ‘seven-league boots’ and ‘broached the brandy’.
If I have one gripe about this particular edition – again – it’s the layout and the choice to overlay light bodied font onto textured background. But for mastery of language, storytelling and rhythm, you can’t go wrong with this author, no matter what age she’s writing for.
OLIVIA HELPS WITH CHRISTMAS BY IAN FALCONER
Sure enough, books which inspired TV series are better than TV series which led to books. This is one good example.
Olivia is a pig. All the characters are pigs. Olivia is an especially enthusiastic little six year old girl in every other respect. In this story the reader is taken through a winter-time Christmas with Olivia’s family, with Olivia trying to help (enthusiastically) and managing, quite often, to bugger things up. Still, the results are humorous: she cuts off the top of the main tree to make a little one for the table centrepiece, for instance.
The illustrations are a limited palette of desaturated pictures with red and green touches. The drawings are combined with photographs.
ALIENS LOVE PANTA CLAUS BY CLAIRE FREEMAN
Just when you thought Christmas books had been done to death… In come the aliens.
This book is part of a series which includes Aliens Love Underpants and Aliens In Underpants Save The World. Our local librarian has chosen some of these underpants stories for storytime, and the children all colored in a shape of underpants afterwards. I’m not sure what makes underpants a hit, but I guess there is a developmental stage during which underpants are fascinating. Or perhaps it’s not the underpants concept itself, but realisation of the fact that (almost) everybody wears underpants, and therefore we’re all equal. I do remember having these weird thoughts as a kid – it often involved the Queen of England. Our father would tell us to mind our table manners, on the pretext that the Queen could drop in at any moment, so she featured quite large in our house. I tried to imagine the Queen blowing her nose, sneezing, burping, Lord forbid farting, and also wearing underpants.
I’ve never been able to manage that last one.
EMILY AND THE BIG BAD BUNYIP BY JACKIE FRENCH
At first sight this doesn’t look like a Christmas story, which is probably why there’s a sticker on the front cover of this one which reads ‘Christmas Story’. Therein lies the problem with Christmas stories set authentically in Australia – there’s no snow, no reindeer and, well there’s no Santa either, which isn’t a huge issue except the old fellow would die of heat exhaustion if he gadded about Down Under in that big red suit of his on a typical summer’s night.
The bunyip in this story is portrayed as a Grinch-like character who needs to be persuaded to participate in Christmas. The other characters are all cheerful and comical, and in the end they do manage to cheer him up by presenting him with a horribly noisy tuba. Bunyips, apparently, love to make horrible noise. That’s the wonderful thing about made-up creatures. A picture book author can paint them as she pleases.
ALL SAFE IN THE STABLE BY MIG HOLDER
This one’s a bit different because it’s told in close third person point of view from the donkey that carries Mary to the stable for Jesus’ birth, and even features a rat, who eats their food.
The finale is a page with folds out to four times the size of the book, with a picture of baby Jesus, and presumably to hammer home the importance of this particular baby, which the rat has questioned throughout. I’m not sure about the wisdom of doing these fold out flappy pages with books. Admittedly, this is a library book so there’s little wonder it’s covered in sellotape, but this also means some of the writing is upside down on the page and the book needs to be turned upside down in order to read it. This could have easily been avoided with more thoughtful book design. Or perhaps kids don’t mind having to manipulate books this way and that in order to read them, not nearly so much as I do.
CHRISTMAS WITH YOU BY VICTORIA BALL
This is a Christmas book more suited to families who celebrate the day without the Christianity. It’s a poem about enjoying the day together, playing in the snow, then ending up safely tucked into bed. The characters are a family of mice living in a nice, warm looking house. Of course, you don’t really notice they’re mice.
This is a ‘going to bed Christmas book’, in which a little mouse has much (secular) fun on Christmas day, and is tucked into bed by its parent.
The illustrations are wonderfully warm, with the atmosphere of an indoor fire burning all around. I’m not sure why but I love illustrations of mice sitting in front of the hearth. (Actually, they don’t have to be mice, in particular.) I love them even though in December in Australia you really don’t want to be sitting anywhere near a fire.
On the subject of mice, do illustrators choose to depict furry animals because humans are harder to keep consistent across different illustrations, or are there other reasons, I wonder, to do with avoiding Anglocentricity. After all, if the mice look like no human you’ve ever seen, then that mice could be you.
PRISCILLA AND THE GREAT SANTA SEARCH BY NATHANIEL HOBBIE
This is a rhyming text, perhaps inspired by Twas The Night Before Christmas. Except the rhythm in the progeny isn’t quite as lyrical. At times this book suffers for the sake of telling a rather complex story in rhyming verse. I think when that happens you might as well write prose.
This is the children’s book equivalent of chick-lit. I don’t mean to say this as a value judgement; it is what it is. Two girls go in search of Santa (a big adventure) and spend their time taking photos of each other (a necessary plot device, but still…) There are the pretty costumes, the mirrors, the binge slash celebratory eating, the BFF confidences, attention to hair styling and an overall lighthearted tone which one might find equally in chick-lit for adults.
MERRY CHRISTMAS MATTY MOUSE BY NANCY WALKER-GUYE
Mice must like Christmas! I suppose in the Northern Hemisphere, mice come inside for the winter season. Perhaps mice have traditionally been a part of many Christmases, with an abundance of food and therefore crumbs?
In this story, a little mouse (maybe 5 human years old) has made biscuits at school and can’t wait to give them to his mother. But on the way home, he encounters a number of different animals who are each very hungry. By the time he gets home he has only one biscuit left. This makes him very sad. His mother reassures him that it’s the thought and the experience of sharing that counts, and together they share the one last biscuit.
I think this is a classic case of a story which should have finished one incident earlier. (Always easier to pick in OTHER people’s stories, isn’t it!) If the story had ended with mother and son enjoying the biscuit together, the sweetness of the sentiment would have been preserved, but it’s as if the author thought this would be too sad for a young audience to cope with, so the next day Matty and his mother bake dozens of tasty biscuits and invite all their other friends around to share them. This ending is as valid as the other, naturally, but I think there’s nothing wrong with letting children believe that there are people (and animals) in the world who don’t get enough to eat. This is the world situation. Also, a storyline about making do and making the most of limited resources is somewhat undermined in the final scene of excess. No doubt this is something many of us get sick of round about Christmas time each year.
THE WATCHMAKER WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS BY BRUCE WHATLEY
The title of this one had me wondering if this was another ‘X discovers the true meaning of Christmas’ plots, but it’s not. Rather, it’s one of those Christmas books which helps to preserve the illusion of a benevolent Santa delivering presents to good boys and girls all over the world.
The story achieves this by having Santa come in to a watchmaker’s shop to have his watch fixed. It’s an incredibly intricate watch of the like the watchmaker has never seen. The only way he can get it to work is by using the hearing aid of the little boy who lives upstairs. I found this quite an odd plot twist, and we never do find out what the (young and single) mother has to say about the fact that her son is now effectively deaf, and that she’ll have to shell out for a new one.
Naturally, the old man in need of the watch turns out to be Santa Claus, and the watch is magic — allowing Santa to take his sweet time flying around the world delivering presents, eating cookies and drinking milk. He is accompanied by the watchmaker, who even has time to sew on the eye of somebody’s teddy bear.
The way I feel about Santa is this: it’s magical for very young children to believe in Santa, but once they’re old enough to start wondering about the logistics, e.g. How on earth does he get around the entire world in a single night? then it’s time for parents to come clean. This book seems designed to artificially prolong the wilful blindness of older children who would like to believe in Santa but find that they can’t — not 100% — and if you’re the parent of such a child, and would like to keep the illusion alive — this sort of Christmas book may prove useful. However, you’d also run the risk of starting your child wondering, even if they hadn’t before!
Most children’s books which feature Santa revel in a time of yore, when toys were wooden and simple — no plastic wrapped, licensed, heavily promoted toys will be found in such books (and for good reason). This story seems a heap an extra layer of scorn upon things which are modern:
The days before Christmas had been quiet for the Watchmaker. Watches with faces and hands had been replaced by digital displays and flashing numbers. The Watchmaker felt sad. There was only the instant — 11:43 or 2:36 — rather than seventeen minutes before twelve or thirty-six minutes past two, which gave you a feeling of time past, present and future.
This sentiment reminds me of that book by Lane Smith ‘It’s a Book’, in which it’s suggested that those who embrace new technology are missing out, or mentally deficient in some way. As a creator of storybook apps for kids, you can probably imagine how I feel about that.
SILENT NIGHT BY SANDY TURNER
This is a wonderfully original story, again about Santa’s visit.
The title manages to be both literal and ironic: The book features no words… other than the barking and yapping of a family terrier, who can sense Santa’s arrival even though none of the rest of the household know what on earth he’s barking about.
Although our library calls this an ‘easy reader’ (because there’s really only dog words, after all), the cartoon-style line drawings of this book require the observation skills and patience of an older child in order to figure out what has happened.
I would highly recommend this book, and I won’t spoil the plot for you.
CHRISTMAS EVE MAGIC BY LUCIE PAPINEAU
Well, if you’re going to write a ‘grump/sad sack discovers the true meaning of Christmas’ kind of story, best to do it as this author has done: unabashedly, with ‘Inspired by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol’ across the front cover.
This story might appeal to children better than the Dickens story, since it features animals, and a pig who keep his toys locked in a safe. Since children may not have any money, their toys are their most precious objects, so this book is kind of like ‘Dickens for the young, modern child’.
This story is beautifully illustrated by Stephane Poulin, in that style I love (acrylic on canvas?), with animals standing around tables eating delicious looking food by candlelight.
