2 posts tagged “picture books”
(Because who can say no to an evening of picture books on a rainy November evening?
...I mean ...this is for purely intellectual study... you understand...)
So, for my long lit paper this term, I'm writing about the vague catagory of "gothic picture books". What do the children whose favorite Muppets are Oscar for his attitude, and The Count for his style like to read? What texts prepare children for Scary Stories to tell in the Dark, and a Series of Unfortunate Events, and the Spiderwick series? And what can be said about them?
That's the project, and I'm still open to new book suggestions.
However, there's nothing like work you should be doing to make you dig into work that can wait, and I've got so much writing hanging over my head, a blog post reviewing my recent forrays into the books for spawn seemed just the way to relax on a Friday evening. So without further ado:
Fortunately, by Remy Charlip:
Remy Charlip is without argument my favorite picture book writer from childhood. I DEVOURED Arm in Arm as a child... quite literally destroyed it, and then took the covers that had fallen off and put them up on my wall like movie posters.
A couple of years ago, my mother spent weeks before Christmas, finding my sister and I new used copies, with the orignal cover illustrations. It was pretty magical.
Anyway, I had always bypassed Fortunately as being simplistic. It's narratively cohesive, if only in the sense that each page is a new Deus Ex Machina for the character to deal with or adjust to. But after
Brian Selznick credited it for being part of the Hugo Cabret invention, I just had to pick up a copy. The back and forth nature of the page, the way turning a page creates movement, and time, really is something to love. Reading it silently to yourself really doesn't do the trick, and the more you think about the "what happens", the more you wonder about why a book like this could possibly work. But reading it aloud, the surprise at every new page, even if you understand the structure and know the next page will be a bad (or good) event, is something just magical.
The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg is such a classic, I don't know why I didn't own a copy before. I'd glanced through it before, and heard them talk about it on NPR, but tonight was the first time I really sat down with a copy. I'm currently reflected on the narrative arc of a piece which is supposedly about different stories... there's still a strongly noticable development where the pictures in the begining... the sleeping child, the thing under the rug, are points that imply a beginning of a tale, while things like the catipillars spelling goodbye, a picture that comes near the end, serve as a warning that this tale, like the "story" the picture is "taken from" is coming to a close.
So, I heard a rumor that Steampunk hit Newsweek for Halloween. Ah, Newsweek, when will you stop being a month behind on my life? I've been who you've watched to decide what cool culture is ever since that summer I was obsessed with Ryōri no tetsujin.
Anyway, how could I not pick up this little gem? It has basically nothing to do with my paper, but dude, it's got a Dream Vacuum Machine in the title, and he's wearing a top hat. I do wish, however, it had been an idealized vacuum machine, as opposed to a machine for vacuuming dreams, but perhaps that is neither here nor there. It's a fun little time; I especially enjoyed when Sneem becomes depressed, and hides in his room under an umbrella to prevent being hit by any sunlight sneaking in through the window. I mean, that's how I spend every weekend, so I could really relate.
Boris and Bella, by Carolyn Crimi
The boyfriend saw me reading this, and asked if I was reading the picture biography of Tim Burton. Grimly's illustrations are really the stuff I was looking for when I was a child myself. And while I cringe at Crimi's writing, that the two of them become a couple because they're "just the right size", I am as much of a sucker as Bella for Boris any time I see him with a shrunken head or skull teacup. (And really, I'd be right there next to her with the neon green dreads if I didn't have a day job. Those are the win!)
Speaking of which, and I'm scared to even mention this in a summary of otherwise children's books, I picked up Sarita Vendetta's particularly gory version of Strewwelpeter (for academic reasons only, you understand) the other day. I haven't read all of it, although I've flipped through her illustrations, and am familiar with the stories. Her illustration for "Jimmy Sliderlegs" stops me every time, but I do have to say I was a little disappointed with her illustration for my favorite story, "The Story of Augustus Who Would Not Have Any Soup". Judging from the scale of the arm reaching in from the side as if to feed him, it seems as if she was almost going for a somewhat fetus-esque image, but I feel like this could have been further developed. I found myself flipping back to look at the 1915 Winston printed version, with the boy that turns into an almost cave-painted looking stick figure.
I'm getting tired, and this is getting rediculously long, but I just can't help talking about this little gem. Gothic, stick-legged boy, and the little pet lizard that follows him like a puppy-- and not the slightest mention of Halloween anywhere to be found-- this is the picture book that is year-round gothic fun.
And oh! the melodrama! How delicious!
Then his stomach began to ache;
it growled and turned and spun.
"This is it," Mucumber thought.
"The dying has begun."And so upstairs he ran,
with teardrops in his eyes.
"I guess I'll lied down on the bed,
and then I'll wait to die."
All I have to say about this is that it's a beautiful example of prolepsis and dramatic irony, and that anyone who claims that children can't comprehend advanced forms of humor is sadly ignorant themselves. We know that there will be No Cat at the end. And sure enough, throughout the text, the actions of the cat and the witch build to that inevitable end. And yet...
Well. I was still totally satisfied. And amused.
Last one, promise. This book gets a bad rap from a lot of parents. And maybe the girl sitting in an armchair where what initially looks like a rug is actually a running horde of rats is a bit grotesque. But the fact that I bought this book for it's purported "gothic" nature is a sign that some people are far too obsessed with the fluff and the bunnies. Not all imaginations are pure or simple. This is a far cry from confronting the darkness, and is the pefect example of the crowbar of separation between the gothic and the surreal. Even if Yvonne is waiting with an axe.
Two updates for the price of one! Now with a free soda!
(I should just do these more often, and then not feel
like I have a backlog of things worth commenting on.
But boy, do I have a backlog of things worth commenting on.)
One of my friends, and I can't remember if it was here, or somewhere else on the interwebs, or by federal post (being one of those rare individuals who sends handwritten letters, I occationally have the good fortune to recieve them as well... try it, you might like it.) told me that I was too smart for poetry and that, hence, I would probably be good at it. I like to be a good fiction writer and pretend to not like poetry. I do try to maintain my dry fiction-writer sensibility. And yet I keep getting suckered back in.
This spring semester, which is two months over, and yet I'm still not sure to have recovered from, I became resuckered. Poetry of the rambling words on top of words, meaning perhaps found in the density of it, or maybe just the sound of it, is the sort of thing that I tend to fancy... exactly the opposite of what typical New Yorker fare tends towards. So... Best American? I have my reservations.
The 2006 is deeply rooted in narrative arc. Poems that go somewhere. Out of the 75 of Billy Collins' top choice, I found 12 that spoke to me, and only three of particular note. Poems that forced me into a slow pace, pondering plodding alliterations of metaphors mesasoaic I read through once, read the author's note on the poem, and moved on. But Daniel Gutstein's prose poem, Monsieur Pierre est mort about a pet rock which meets a grusome end is a little fantabulous, and Julie Larios' Double Abecedarian: Please Give Me had the wonderful sound and word usage I adore, the sort of randomness forced through order of the sort Oulipeans rejoice in. Meanwhile, James Tate's was the only one with the kind of engaging pacing that I enjoy, and I liked the surrealism of the ending, although, being the good fictionista I am, I felt like perhaps he hadn't earned it in the setup.
***
And now for something completely different:
Barbara Lehman's The Red Book has no words. And I'd always been of the mindset (sort of like my imagined fiction-writer stance on poetry) that I just wasn't the picture book sort of girl. What did I know about picture books? I was writing word books before I could write words, creating line after line of scribles in a blank book with teddy bears holding heart balloons on the cover. I couldn't make them yet, but I loved the way words traveled across a line, the wonderful horizontality of it all. But I've been suckered there, too. (More on that in a life update section, as opposed to the book update section. Hopefully I'll get around to a life update section. We'll see about that.)
But, inherent prejudices aside, what I like about Lehman's book, what I really really like about it, is that it's a complicated idea. A little fantasy, a little surrealism, and a large dose of metafiction. Not bad for a book with no words that I thought was going to be about color. The climax of the story we see through the pictures of some pictures in a book. Talk about layers. That's the kind of depth that I favor at all levels, and I'm glad to have added this one to my collection. I take it all back guys. Picture books are better than I thought. My mistake. Call me fooled.
I hope to do a full picture book round-up and review sometime soon.
I've added a few more to my collection, and I've barred a few from ever
being spoken about in my presence. Sometime I'll get around to talking
about which are which. For now, I just wanted to say this is one of the
awesome ones.
