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- Contents Category: Picture Books
Befitting his origins, Armin Greder’s illustrations are sparse and darkly European. His dramatic monochrome drawings complement the often sombre subjects he illustrates. In I am Thomas (Allen & Unwin, $29.99 hb, 32 pp, 9781742373331), he combines with master wordsmith Libby Gleeson to tell a stark tale about the importance of being yourself. Gleeson’s poetic text is pared back, spare, and dramatic. Sensitively, she leaves many things unsaid, enabling Greder’s visual imagery to run with the story.
Opening with the colourful belongings of a small child who is obviously fascinated by the world around him, the illustrations gradually become darker, as the people in Thomas’s life – parents, teachers, fellow pupils, preachers, politicians – pressure him to become the sort of person they think he should be. Greder graphically illustrates this with compelling images, which feature gaping mouths, grasping hands, and snide or threatening looks. Colour seeps back into the illustrations when the teenage Thomas rejects their small-town proselytising, declares his independence, and sets off to explore the world for himself. This superbly crafted and visually stunning book is a confronting and thought-provoking cautionary tale for older readers.
The Little Dragon (Viking, $24.95 hb, 32 pp, 9780670028740), by two of Australia’s best-loved picture book practitioners, Mem Fox and Roland Harvey, has a much lighter touch. It tells the story of a young dragon who has not yet learnt to control his fiery breath, and of the disastrous results this has for the people in the medieval village where he lives. While the story is engaging and the illustrations full of verve and vigour, there is a slight disjunct between the intended audiences for the text and the illustrations. With its jaunty rhymes and traditional cadences based on the nursery rhyme ‘Here is the Church and here is the Steeple’, Fox’s text gallops along and is sure to engage very young children.
However, as in a number of other picture books authored by Fox, the quite complex illustrations seem more appropriate for a somewhat older audience. Full of Harvey’s usual intricate and often cheeky details, the muted watercolours spill across the pages, encouraging the reader to linger in his madcap world of dragons and other creatures, both exotic and mundane. No doubt this entertaining book will appeal to a wide range of audiences.
Like Fox and Harvey, author–illustrator Elizabeth Honey has been a part of the Australian picture book scene for many years. Her new book, That’s Not a Daffodil! (Allen & Unwin, $24.99 hb, 32 pp, 9781742372488), is an endearing tale about an unusual friendship. Mr Yilmaz, an elderly Turkish gentleman, lives next door to a little boy named Tom. When his neighbour gives him a daffodil bulb, Tom thinks it is an onion, and tells Mr Yilmaz, ‘That’s not a daffodil!’ They plant it anyway and, as the daffodil transforms from a small green shoot into a stunning golden trumpet, their friendship also blossoms. Honey’s beautifully structured text explores children’s playfulness and their literal view of the world, and her subtly coloured, textured illustrations are similarly appealing. She perfectly encapsulates the simple joys of childhood and the enduring pleasures of a friendship that crosses both cultures and generations.
The eponymous hero of Zacharey Jane’s Tobias Blow (UQP, $24.95 hb, 32 pp, 9780702238765) is a magical creature who only appears during storms, when he distributes treasures for curious children to find – leaves, flowers, lost toys, shells, and much more. This lovely concept of a beneficent force working in tandem with what, for some children, can be a frightening experience is presented in a lilting text that draws the reader out into the stormy night.
There is a naïve exuberance to Rosalie Street’s painterly illustrations as she depicts Tobias being caught up in the blustery excesses of the storm. Unfortunately, the predominantly grey tones and Tobias’s somewhat down-to-earth persona do not quite match the fey creature conjured up by Jane’s lyrical text. However, Street does convey the joy of Tobias’s unusual form of travel and the delights of his unique occupation in this imaginative story.
Award-winning illustrator Freya Blackwood is recognised internationally for her ability to capture the essence of childhood. In The Runaway Hug (Scholastic Press,$24.99 hb, 32 pp, 9781865044057), she combines with Nick Bland to produce a delightful domestic drama. Lucy’s mother gives her one last hug for the day, and Lucy runs off to share it with all the other members of her family. But when Lucy hugs the family dog, the overenthusiastic pooch runs away with Mum’s hug. An exciting chase ensues, and the hug is finally returned, with interest.
Blackwood’s glorious, loose-lined illustrations, with their tenderly drawn children and slightly old-fashioned E.H. Shepardesque overtones, depict the family’s exuberant attitude toward life and ramshackle domesticity. This is a wonderfully warm-hearted bedtime story that celebrates the small but important rituals of family life.
Adventure rather than domesticity lies at the heart of Captain Congo and the Klondike Gold (Working Title Press, $24.95 hb, 48 pp, 9781921504273), written by Ruth Starke, with comic-book-style illustrations by Greg Holfeld. This is unadulterated comic-book fare, complete with racy plot, exotic setting, unlikely heroes, easily identifiable goodies and baddies, and the predictable triumph of good over evil. Set in the Canadian mountains, it has everything a good adventure story should have: goldmines, monsters, ghosts, skeletons, fights, white-water rafting, and retribution. With its concise dialogue, larger-than-life characters, and striking illustrations, it will definitely appeal to teenage readers who enjoy this particularly accessible genre.
Unlike the previous titles, You Are My Special Baby (Working Title Press, $24.95 hb, 32 pp, 9781921504181) is visually distinctly Australian. Using a few well-chosen words, Carol Chataway tells a tender tale for the very young as she explores the special bond between parents and children. Danny Snell illustrates the story with enchanting images of Australian animals and their babies, including fairy penguins, koalas, dingoes, echidnas, and wombats. Snell carefully matches the animals to the appropriate text, so that kookaburras illustrate the words ‘we laugh’ and magpies the words ‘we sing’. However, he does take some artistic licence in presenting his cute baby animals – for example, the magpie baby is a smaller, fluffier version of the parent bird, when in reality magpies are usually the same size and a somewhat drab grey. Nonetheless, this is a charming book for parents to share with their little ones.
The Dream of the Thylacine (Allen & Unwin, $29.95 hb, 32 pp, 9781742373836) is also distinctly Australian, but there the similarities end, for this book is in a class of its own. Margaret Wild’s poetic text is heart-wrenching, edgy, elegantly structured, and evocative. It is superbly matched by Brooks’s distinctive images, with their strong structural elements, luminosity of palette, and dreamlike qualities, which reference the artistic styles of Australian artists such as Clifton Pugh, Sidney Nolan, and Arthur Boyd.
Brooks’s images of the Tasmanian landscape are sculptural, beautifully rendered, and heartfelt, and the book is immaculately designed, from the distressed wooden palings and howling, skeletal tiger on the front cover, to the contrasting images behind the wire mesh on the endpapers. Using an artistic style similar to that of his multiple award-winning book Fox (2000), Brooks responds emotively to Wild’s challenging text.
The contrast between the grey double-page spreads containing the text and the wordless pages with Brooks’s luminous artwork is remarkable. The text pages feature monochrome, grainy film stills of the last recorded Tasmanian tiger pacing restlessly in its cage, with the words presented against a background of aged wood. Brooks’s paintings of the tiger in its natural environment are based on the final words of each verse of Wild’s powerful poem, which captures both the anguish of the trapped tiger and the glory of its natural existence.
The final image of the tiger as an integral part of the moonlit landscape, sculpted from stones, complements Wild’s final line: ‘Dreaming am I.’ In this lament for a lost species, Wild and Brooks have excelled themselves by giving voice to humanity’s primordialangst. It is a fitting tribute, indeed, to both the thylacine itself and the quality of Australian picture-book making.
CONTENTS: JUNE 2011
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