Wave by Suzy Lee

There are three kinds of children's books I hate the most. One, are the children's books written by celebrities. Two, are children's books that teach an important life lesson with a heavy moral. And three, are children's books in which the illustrator uses some sort of a crafty technique to create the illustrations, aiming for grand effect that lasts exactly a second until the viewers get bored  out of their minds because the lack of  deliberate details translates directly into a lack of visual information that makes the pictures stupid and uninteresting. Children pick up on this much faster than adults, but even some grown-ups can be taught to look through the pizzaz. One of the worst offenders of this artistic crime is this guy who could be great if he stopped bullshitting (as he did for the The Tale of Despereaux), but his drawings tend to be emotionally and technically ambiguous in a way I really don't like.

This entry, however, is not about him, but about an exceptional book that uses a crafty technique and teaches a valuable lesson, and nevertheless happens to be one of my favorite picture books of all times.

Wave is a book that explores the ancient theme of "man vs. nature", where the "man" happens to be a little girl, and "nature" happens to be the ocean, on one of whose beaches the little girl finds herself, for what looks like the first time.

The story is told in pictures only, no words. However, since the author/illustrator Suzy Lee can actually draw, a skill so many contemporary illustrators profoundly lack, the narrative is exceptionally clear, nuanced, and complex. The pages are split so that the little girl and her seagull entourage are on the left page, and the ocean is on the right up until both parties brave the unknown and venture onto each other's territories with wonderfully joyous and exciting results.

The illustrations are a done in pencil for the girl and the seagulls, and a blue watercolor(?) resist wash which makes the wave and the ocean simply beautiful and very accessible for children. The way the interplay is set up between the two pages is comparable to the use of image size and page spillover in the Wild Things, which is probably the highest compliment of a comparison one could make towards a picture book.

One of my other favorite things about Wave, is that there is a real sense of danger in the story. The mom, who we see on the title page bringing her little girl to the beach, sits under her umbrella in a space off the edge of the page, so that we only see the girl alone. The ocean is much larger than the girl, and the wave reaches well above her head when it comes, and on one of the page when the wave comes over onto the girl's half of the book, it covers the girl entirely. I like this honesty and sense of risk that you feel when reading the story. I am glad everyone is ok, and as the wave retracts back into the ocean it leaves sea treasures for the little girl to play with, but I also like that something scary must be overcome before comfort and understanding can be achieved. I love the fact that many of the implications of this story can never really be articulated in words. 

I have been wholeheartedly recommending this book to my friends for many years now (as well as the other Suzy Lee books about which I will most certainly write very soon), but having my own little girl who has been playing on the beach and encountering the waves has made me appreciate this book on a whole new level.

Excellent Board Books or...

Books My Daughter Likes To Eat Read!
This post is dedicated to Miriam as she nears her first birthday.


This post will be a little different, and concerns a few board books that I have found particularly pleasant to interact with in the first year of my daughter's life. I know that some of these books exist as regular books and not sturdy little blocks that are so great for munching on and testing gravity with, but for the purposes of this post I am refer to the board book versions. Also, while I am largely expressing my opinions here, I am very much taking into account Miriam's responsiveness to the books, as my opinions have been at least in part affected my her reactions.


1: Mon Cirque by Xavier Deneux


I got this book at the overpriced gift shop at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts but have never regretted it. The book is absolutely wonderful. The red-yellow-and-white illustrations against mostly black backgrounds are bright and extremely clear, which is exactly what excites babies and keeps their attention. Each page has one or two cut-outs in it - small holes and big ones, in all different shapes, through which one can peek, stick a hand, pass a small object, or simply trace the outline of the cut-out with a little finger. Each page tells us about some aspect of the circus - and what is most excellent, it does so in french, so you can learn important french words like the ones for tight rope walker and clown. Mon Cirque has a wonderfully wild energy about it - it actually feels like you are in the circus when reading it. It is playful, and strange, and aloft, and mysterious and distant and exhilarating at the same time. The cut outs are extremely clever, some go as far as three or four pages deep, but each page uses the back image for it's own purposes; for example a zebra becomes the pants of a tight rope walker who then becomes a juggler with another turn of a page. This is a book I can definitely appreciate without the assistance of a baby, but thankfully the baby inherited my excellent taste so we can appreciate it together for long periods of time.

2. Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann


This book is one of my all-time favorites. A lot of people snort at it because they think it is a rip-off from Good Night Moon, but please believe me, it has nothing to do with that other book, praise the Lord. In Goodnight Moon the zookeeper walks around to all the cages in the zoo saying goodnight to all the animals, while unbeknownst to him the Gorilla has snatched his keys and is following him around setting all the animals free. They join the queue behind the gorilla, follow the zookeeper out of the zoo, into his house which is just across the lawn, into his house, and into his bedroom, and they all settle in there, with gorilla in the bed, between the zookeeper and his wife. And then the zookeeper's wife says: "goodnight!" and all the animals say: "goodnight!" and the wife gets up and walk the animals back to the zoo until the sneaky gorilla spoils the plans of the humans yet again in the most wonderful and coziest of ways.

This book is wonderful because the details are full of love and kindness in that special way that is fairly rare in the world. There are practically no words, so you can tell the story in whichever way you like - and in whichever language, which is applicable in our case.


3. The Hungry Little Caterpillar by Eric Carle

 

There isn't much that is left to be said about this book as it has probably outsold the bible and the collected works of Shakespeare a few times over, and has been translated into as many languages, but I do have something to say. What I have to say, is that I have a very negative opinion of Eric Carle. I think he is the biggest charlatan out there, who, through sheer luck stumbled upon a winning technique and has been milking it for decades. While I agree that his stuff is still better than a lot of children's literature out there, there a notable lack of humor in everything Carle does that I believe to be incompatible with great children's books. Eric Carle is a bit too heavy as a human being to dance his ideas around and I believe that makes them inflexible, soulless, though that might be too harsh or a word, and unable to be loved. I don't understand how any of his characters can truly be loved by children or grown-ups, because they never evolve beyond flat paper cut-outs.
And yet, The Hungry Little Caterpillar is a fantastic book. It is like a poem, in which everything is perfectly arranged, and all the information and meaning is conveyed through the smallest possible number of words and pictures. It is a wonderful book to read with a child, who can stick a little finger into all the holes on the pages, and count the fruits and the other foods it eats throughout the journey. Despite everything that goes on in the book, there is a certain calm to it, a pace, a rationality, a sequence; that makes it possible to read over and over and over again and never really get bored with it.

4. A Color Of His Own by Leo Lionni


While Leo Lionni's art could, and has been compared to Eric Carle's, I think they are as far apart as two artists could be. Lionni's protagonists are also colorful, often collaged beasties, but they are wonderful, loveable, diverse, unique, and evolving.

In a Color of His Own a little chameleon has a hard time with not having a permanent color. He tries to sit on different things but the world is always changing, and no color gets stuck. A green leaf turns yellow and red and falls off a tree altogether, taking little chameleon with it, until, in the end, the chameleon accepts his fate with the help of a friend in the same predicament; because things that are complicated about one's life are always better when you can do them with a friend.

I also love this book because the story is unpredictable and spontaneous. It starts out by pointing out over a few pages that regular animals have a personal color that belongs to them, so it looks like a book about animal colors, and then you are  surprised by the appearance of the chameleon and his predicament. And one my favorite things is that at least twice in the book the chameleon sits on a tiger and turns tiger color. So you learn about tiger colors without being explicitly told what they are. You never fully see the tiger - only a part of it, with a striped chameleon. I think it is that kind of brilliant subtlety that sets Leo Lionni and his book apart from some other writers. At the end. both chameleons sit on one of those red mushrooms with white polka dots and turn polka dot color. It is all very clever, and creative, and truly wonderful and lovable.

3 Wishes for Pugman by Sebastian Meschenmoser

I've been waiting to write about this book in the same way I used to anticipate my birthday as a child: with a giant bubble of joy that quietly sits in the stomach somewhere nudging the heart once in a while, knowing something truly wonderful is out there,  does not happen very often, but is entirely real.

3 Wishes for Pugman  by the children's-book-writer-illustrator-love-of-my-life S. Meschenmoser is about a depressive dog who lives in a large dog house with a living room and a kitchen and a hallway and art on the walls and other comforts of a nice home. One morning he wakes up at a time of day when one might seriously consider pulling the blankets back over one's head and trying to sleep straight into the next day, but instead he gets up, pulls on his bathrobe, and slowly walks into the kitchen to discover that he is out out of cereal, and coffee, and it's pouring rain outside, and the newspaper is soaked through, and at this point you can probably imagine how he is feeling, especially since he is obviously a PUG and we all know how challenging it is to be one of those in the first place. As Pugman is sitting on the floor contemplating his miserable life, a fairy suddenly appears and offers him three wishes. Whether he takes her up on her offer and what the wishes are if he does, you will really have to find out by reading the book, and I will instead offer my opinions as to why this book is awesome.

First of all, as I had mentioned in my other post where a book by this author was reviewed,  there is simply no better artist illustrating children's books at this point in time. Pugman surpasses the level of artistic brilliance set by Learning to Fly; the pencil strokes are looser, more playful, more spontaneous, and convey a new level of mastery.  There is also such a world of love for each little pencil stroke and hint of color, and so much kindness in every image that at least for me the book must be read in intervals of a few days because I go into sensory overload from both the visual information and the intense kindness of the narrative and it takes a while to process it all.

Second, similar to Learning to Fly, 3 Wishes for Pugman is a children's book that mercifully does not have any child characters or naive animal characters that children's books are apparently compelled to contain nowadays. Pugman is clearly an adult, with an adult life and adult problems and I think that very fact makes it incredibly valuable for children to read this book - it says that grown up life can be hard and unpredictable too, and does so in a respectful, gentle way. Additionally, when the fairy shows up, she is portrayed in such a vulgar, obscene and invasive way, that the hearts of those of us who hate all the tasteless, Disneyfied, dumbed down, soulless crap that the world of childhood has been infested by, our hearts rejoice and feel validated in a whole new way whether that was the author's intention or not. The super bright colors and the grotesque objects that are paraded by the fairy in an attempt to seduce Pugman into making wishes are in such strong contrast to the depressive, but subtle and tasteful images of the first half of the book that they are hard to look at. I think that by employing a drastic change in the style of the pictures halfway through the book, Meschenmoser makes the strongest commentary on the horrifying reality of children's literature (and, I would argue other forms of child entertainment) to date. Not even Sendak could say it like that, however scathing and sarcastic his remarks were in the last fifteen years or so. However, commentary aside, Meschenmoser seems to possess a Miyazakian quality not to divide his characters into the good and the bad, but to see the wonder, the magic, and potential in every situation, and to make the best of things, which is exactly what Pugman does with his wishes (and, I would say, Meschenmoser with his books).

Before I sign off, as a little bonus, I would like to mention that 3 Wishes for Pugman has a spectacular sequel, that I only have in German, called Mopsmanns Magische Wunderwolle, (or La laine magique de Molosse in French, in which it is also apperently available, though not in English yet, as far as I can tell. Just as, if not even more wonderful than the first one, I recommend getting this in whatever language, the pictures tell the story better than any words ever will.

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How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz

  Uri Shulevitz is a hard person for me to write about  because he has written and/or illustrated a very large number of books about which I have drastically different opinions, but I'll just focus on this one. I think this is by far the best book Shulevitz has written.

How I Learned Geography is an autobiographical story from the time when Shulevitz was a little boy. His home in Warsaw was bombed during the war, and his family escaped to Kazakhstan where they survived. While in Kazakhstan they had very little money for food, and one day his father went off to the market to buy bread, and instead spent all the food money on an enormous map of the world. The family went to bed hungry, listening to the neighbors eat their bread, but the next day, the map went up on the wall, and little Uri discovered the magic and the salvation offered by this new object. He started to "travel" all over the world in his imagination, making up poems from all the strange names on the map, drawing parts of the map on precious bits of paper that came his way, and in many ways using this object as a means of surviving starvation, loneliness and uncertainty.

The first big reason I love this book is because I love maps most of all. I don't know if I would have had the strength to buy a map instead of food if I was in the father's place, but I certainly would hope so. There is something so profoundly familiar in this act, I feel like the characters in the book are a part of my family.

The second reason I love this book is because it deals with WWII and indirectly with the Holocaust (Shulevitz is Jewish, of course) in a very subtle, personal and honest way, without using those two events to blow up one's self-importantce, in way that most books, movies, poems and art works by people not connected to the events do. This is why I generally refuse to have anything to do with them, and find the activity of using the Holocaust to promote one's art or writing truly appalling, a cheap and indecent way to get extra points without making the work good in it's own right. This book is one of the few exceptions to this phenomenon that I have seen, and I very much respect Shulevitz for talking about his experiences in the way that he does, as someone who actually experienced it, not someone who merely observed and was "affected".

Third, both the text and the pictures are superb. In my opinion Shulevitz has often unsuccessfully tried to be poetic with his texts which made his stories boring and meaningless, and it is definitely not the case with this story. Probably because he is actually describing real events, the plot is strong and well structured, and he is very successful at using a few words to convey a lot of meaning. The illustrations are also some of his strongest. Maybe because he is going back to the place of his childhood imagination, and also visually recalling childhood memories, the pictures are exciting, emotional, diverse, dynamic, colorful and engaging.

My last and most favorite part of this book is the very last page, the one that comes after the story is over. On that page there is an autobiographical note describing the actual events on which the story is based, a photograph of a map Shulevitz drew as a child on the back a letter, a comic he drew as a teenager when after the war the family lived in Paris, and, a photo of Shilevitz as a little boy. I especially appreciate the photo of the author as a child, as that puts the book into an elect group of examples of children's literature that touches on the idea that adults and children do not necessary need to exist in two different and separate worlds. The other two books that are quite dear to me,  include the Little Prince with its dedication to Leon Werth (friend of the author) when he was a little boy, and Korczak's King Matt the First, with a photo of Korczak  as a boy on the first page.

This is a special and important book for grown-ups that used to be children, and for children who plan to become good grown-ups.

Rain by Virginia Parsons

           I bought this book at a giant used book warehouse called Wonder Book, in Frederick, MD, where I lived for four months in the winter and spring of 2007, which were by far the best four months of my entire life, so I wondered if the reason I love this book so much is because it is colored by my mood of that time. However several not-so-bad-either years later, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I love this book for reasons that are pure and honest and, I believe, well and just deserved.

"Rain"was published in 1961, and is of course out of print now, though it pops up on ebay quite often.

I have tried to find out as much as I could about Virginia Parsons, the writer and illustrator of this book, but have not been too successful. It seems that she wrote and/or illustrated many wonderful children's books at a great time when picture books already acquired legitimacy and artistic recognition but had not yet become the unbearably pretentious examples of bad taste and lack of talent we overwhelmingly see today. I do have another book of hers in my possession right now having gotten it through interlibrary loan, and can reliably vouch that it has the same wonderful illustrations and a general happy and content feel as "Rain".  I would say that if you like what you read here, it is a good idea to look for her books at used book stores and yard sales.

The book "Rain" alternates between color and black and white illustrations. I think both of her signature styles - the cartoony color images and the graphic black and white line drawings are equally strong and appealing, and I love the fact that she tells one story using two different styles.

Both sets of pictures really remind me of the way I used to draw as a kid - or at least tried to. I think that her images are so appealing, friendly and accessible that a child who sees them will easily be able to copy her style and draw his or her own pictures with freedom and confidence.

At the same time, the black and white pictures in particular are fairly complex and exciting to look at even if you are a grown up who likes art.

                        

As with other books I admire, I love the fact that "Rain" does not offer any morals or lessons, but simply describes something that happens in our world, and informs the readers of things that happen, or could potentially happen when they do. While the loose, happy, innocent mood of the text - ducks are described in the book, policemen and mailmen who work even in the rain, gardens that grow better in the rain, and deserts, where it does not rain, and so on - is definitely a reflection of the times when the book was written, I feel like it possesses something extremely valuable that is totally missing from children's books today. I think that something is the freedom to be unconcerned whether the book "lives up" to some arbitrary standard. This allows for the text to be assertive and yet absurd, and the pictures to be lovely and expressive in exactly the way children love them to be.

Finally, (I saved one of the best things for last), I have to say that this book has the best endpapers I have ever seen. Coming from a person who rather obsessively investigates endpapers of used children's books in particular, I think that just looking at the inside cover of "Rain" makes the world a better place. I love the fact that it has nothing to do with contents of the book, I love the fact that it has fabulous colorful diamonds, I love all the people, objects and animals that are preciously contained within each one. I think that when children look at images such as this one, they have a slightly better chance of growing up into adults who still remember what it was like to be a kid. And that, I believe, is one of the most important things in the world.

Elmer by David McKee

Those of you who know me well might be surprised by the fact that I've written about four books and not one of them has yet been about an elephant. If you have been hoping for an elephant book, today is your lucky day!

Elmer is different from the other elephants because unlike them, who are "elephant color" he is a multi-colored patchwork elephant. Elmer's personality matches that of his skin, he always plays great practical jokes, goofs off, and makes all the other elephants laugh. Even though the other elephants love Elmer, he feels awkward about his appearance, and runs away to find an elephant-colored berry bush plant that he uses to make himself elephant color and comes back to the elephant herd only to discover that his colorful personality can not be disguised no matter what happens on the outside, and all the elephants rejoice together.

I think that "Elmer" is truly a wonderful book. As passionately as I hate books that specifically deal with the moral of "it's OK to be different", I find that nothing at all annoys me about the way that this idea is treated in "Elmer". The book exists to tell a wonderful story, not to push a moral, and I think that makes all the difference. Additionally, if one does want to use a book to talk about the fact that "it is ok to be different" (whatever that means anyway), there are multiple ways to use the book to broach the subject in a way that allows all the involved parties to walk away and continue thinking about things, not memorize a bunch of meaningless platitudes and call it a day.

In addition to the good stories one finds in all the Elmer books, they are absolutely visually awesome.
Colorful patchwork does very beautiful and powerful things to my soul, and, when combined with an elephant of all things, it is absolutely perfect. In addition to the patchwork, the rest of the jungle where the elephants and their other animal friends live is wonderfully drawn as well, the vegetation is very Henri Rousseau with a magical twist.

While I have not read all of the Elmer books (there are probably about twenty by now, and more are still being written) I have liked all the ones I read. I also, (and this comes as a shock even to myself) really love all of the Elmer toys that have appeared out there in the last ten years, and there is quite a variety. I like them not just because of the book, but because most of the Elmer paraphernalia is actually tasteful, well made, and fun to see and play with. As a matter of fact a friend gave Miriam a stuffed Rose the Elephant toy a few days ago, and we've both been playing with her since. 

Have I ever mentioned that wheeled elephants is my greatest weakness?


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If you read the whole post and looked at the pictures, then I only have one more thing to add. There is no proof of this, and it is nothing more than a visceral association, but I feel that there is something in Elmer of the Little Elephant's Child - the one who was full of 'satiable curiosity, the one who asked too many questions, the one who went down to the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River all set about with fever trees and found out all about what the crocodile has for dinner.

You know the one, of course.
And I think that Elmer is his great-great-great-great-great grandson.

The Tree House by Marije Tolman and Ronald Tolman

         


It seems rather counterproductive to use words to talk about a story that has itself transcended the need for words, but I will do my best.

Illustrated by a  father/ daughter artist team (and do follow the links, if you will) this book won the  Ragazzi prize for fiction at the most famous and important Bologna Children's Book Fair.  The book is published in the very way that books should be published - it is the right size, shape, color, thickness, weight, and, especially smell (I also judge books by opening them right in the middle and sticking my nose into the crease at the back. Good art books in particular stand out on the olfactory scale).

The main characters in the book are two bears (one Polar, one Brown) who arrive at a tree house via a whale and boat, respectively, and engage in a wide range of activities in the time that follows that include quiet reading,  hosting large parties for flamingoes and a rhino, among other creatures who arrive via land, water and air, laying on the roof contemplating, and watching the moon.

The first thing I love about this book, is that the treehouse in question, a cozy and safe structure that nevertheless lends itself to serious adventure is, I am pretty sure, an etching. This means that the treehouse is the same exact image on each page, printed on different papers and in different colors. Which is very cool.

The second thing I love about this book are all the amazing creatures that come and go. They are drawn with TRUE LOVE of the most special variety, the same love that the Moomins, and the Wild Things, and the Little Prince are drawn with. This makes me wonder if only the creator of a character can breathe this kind of TRUE LOVE into the image of their literary offspring, and I have serious suspicion that mostly yes with notable exceptions such as Pooh and Alice.  The two bears and the other characters in the Tree House are just truly lovable without being "cute" in that horrifying way in which so many "cute" characters in children's books are.

The third thing I love about this book is the respect that is extended to the reader's attention and intelligence. There are elements throughout the book that are clever and complex and address a huge number ideas and themes, some very personal and some very global. There is one picture towards the end of the story which shows an elaborate pulley system installed in the tree house on which a kerosine lamps hangs just as the sky turns pink at sunset and all the guests are leaving the tree house. The bears sip tea and relax as the day comes to an end. This particular picture is the most dear to my heart because  my favorite feeling in the world is when all the guests leave after a fantastic party, and I can quietly sit sipping tea with one other person, processing all the joy from the intense and wonderful interaction with people I love. I am also a fan of hanging things from the ceiling, to me, that somehow makes a home. Combining so many elements of what (to me, at least) makes our world a truly miraculous place, the book just invades all the most vulnerable places of my soul making me feel joy and sadness and hope and warmth and much more all at the same time.


The last thing I wanted to mention is the book's treatment of solitude. The character of the treehouse does not seem any lonelier when it stands alone than when it is inhabited by hundreds of flamingos or just the two bears. The bears seem equally happy being by themselves or with all the guests. There is a general o'kayness with things - there is no conflict, no moral, no resolution, no life's lesson, no betrayal, no forgiveness - there is just life. And the life that is described in the book is isolated and far away, but never lonely, even given the vast areas of gorgeously treated "empty" space found on many pages. The world is a good, safe, beautiful place in this book, and that feeling stays with the reader long after the book is closed.

Socrates and the Three Little Pigs by Mitsumasa Anno and Tuyosi Mori

I checked this book out so many times from the library at the school where I worked once that the librarian just gave it to me. It was quite a generous gift (though I did donate a bunch of books in exchange) because this book is out of print and while you can still get a used copy it is quite expensive.

Where do I start as to the reasons why I think this book is a gift to humanity (or at least to the likes of me)?

First of all it is based on the Three Little Pigs.
Second of all, unlike any other contemporary treatment of a classic fairy tale in which all the characters are neutered, de-clawed, politically corrected and taught to live in peace and harmony with all in a gender neutral and pseudo-socialist society through a great moral taught to all innocent bystanders with the elegance and the lightness of a wrecking ball, this fairy tale is used in a lovely way, as a recognizable structure on which the story hangs.
Of course there is not that much of a story, because the book is really about math.
It is also about a not so big (rather skinny, actually, because he uses up most of his energy on thinking) and not so bad wolf named Socrates, who would be happy just thinking all day, except that his rather spoiled and plump wolf-wife Xanthippe wants him to go out and catch one of the adorable three little pigs sitting in their little houses. Lucky for the pigs, Socrates spends the entire book chatting with his mathematician friend Pythagoras the frog about the probabilities of the pigs being located in one of the five houses in the meadow where they all live. There are elaborate charts and graphs that visually explain the concepts described by Socrates and Pythagoras and serene domestic scenes, that mostly feature the voluptuous Xanthippe being sensually impatient with the pig-acquiring process.

Here are some photos I took of the pages, in case nothing above makes sense:

 

A third reason, and this is probably a bit personal but I'll share it anyway, I love this book because there were many times in my life when I would ask someone very smart and very clever a simple question or make a simple request only to be faced with an albeit fascinating and enlightening, but entirely useless discourse on a loosely related topic. Given the fact that this book is written by two people closely connected to all things mathy, I suspect that the pain of Xanthippe's plight was not lost to them. While to the uninitiated she might come off as being needy, demanding and spoiled (like at the beginning when she tells Socrates to go find food while pulling on a rope she has tied to his tail), those of us who have been left hungry in the face of the pursuit for knowledge and ideas will absolutely recognize her as the victim and the unsung hero of the tale.

I thoroughly recommend this book to all those who appreciate a bit of hard core geekery in a loosely romantic picture book context.  Anno's other intricately and cleverly illustrated books are really famous as well - both in the intellectual and in the visual context, but I am a bigger fan of this one by far. Look for it in your local library and maybe ask if you can have it if you like it and your librarian likes you.

Learning to Fly by Sebastian Meschenmoser

Experiencing Sebastian Meschenmoser's picture books is something similar to listening to Glenn Gould play Bach. There is a beginning and an end, a plot and an idea, but all the spaces in between are filled with a profound, powerful magic that is both familiar and absolutely enlightening.

I haven't been able to learn too much about Meschenmoser except that in addition to writing and illustrating children's books he is a professional painter and lives in Germany. I also learned that there are a bunch of books he wrote in addition to the ones I managed to get my hands on that are only available in Europe, so if you are there, feel free to buy them and send them to me.


Learning to Fly is the the first book of his I discovered. The story is about a penguin who once knew how to fly but then stopped being able to because he was told that penguins don't fly. The said penguin meets up with the narrator of the story, and the two spend most of the book figuring out how to help the penguin fly again.

As it is said in the book there are some good ideas and some bad ones, and while I can not tell you what happens in the end, I can say that you won't be disappointed even if you only read one page and take a look at the pictures.

Meschenmoser does his illustrations in graphite pencil with a bit of color here and there. What I find totally amazing is how much meaning, love, and information is conveyed through the pictures with scratchy lines and squiggles that run across the pages like a master jazz improvisation that continues to sound in the mind well after the book is closed and put away. This artist has a line quality to be noted quite seriously. I think that the fact that he makes such very serious art for children is a sign of deep respect for his audience and a belief that children can more than handle something other than total dumbed down stupidity of most children's books published in the States.

Along with the serious art, there is a serious plot line. I am a big fan of interaction that occurs when absolute absurdity happens with a straight face, and a lingering moment of confusion in which things absurd make total sense. The whole absurd story of Leaning to Fly is delivered with a totally straight face and leaves the reader to smile quietly to himself as he gets to the end.

Kenny's Window by Maurice Sendak

Everyone knows that Sendak is my favorite children's book author and illustrator of all times (for reasons, other than the obvious, and also include things like his obsession with Mozart, and some strong opinions typical of people from the old country).

But back to  Kenny's Window.
The story is about a hypersensitive (my assessment)  boy named Kenny who has a vivid dream in which a four legged chicken in a magic garden that is half day and half night gives him a note with seven questions on it, and tells him that if Kenny can find the answers to the questions he can come live in the garden. Kenny magically transports the note into the awake world, and spends the rest of the book finding the answers.

Since the questions, in a typical Sendakian way, are thoroughly absurd, the answers, though logically consistent, hang in the delicate balance of the dreamscape where things that are magical are simply taken for granted, as being totally normal.

This is what I love the most about this book. When I read it I feel the same way as when I talk to a child who has a disorder in which they have trouble differentiating reality from fantasy. I encountered quite a few of those children in my life, both very young and somewhat older, and whenever I was allowed into their reality and informed how things work there, I always felt like I was allowed into someplace sacred, untouched, absolutely innocent like the Garden of Eden. I always found it very hard to stay in the reality of the adults who were helping those children to disengage from their imaginary world and not to cross over into the child's.

Apart from that aspect of the book I love the (unintentional?) references to my other favorite books: I definitely feel a bit of a Little Prince in there - Kenny is a child, but is also a king of the world he lives in, operating independently of adults, making risky decisions with all the resolve, innocence, and wonder of things childhood.  Also to H. C. Andersen - the tin soldiers that come alive and offer advice to Kenny are pretty much a direct quote from the Steadfast Tin Soldier and some other tales in which toys come alive and interact.

Reading Kenny's Window from start to finish is an incredibly satisfying experience. I find that one only needs to do once a year or so, and it stays with you for a very long time, lingering, and having some of its wisdom appear at times when it is needed.

Disclaimer

This is going to be a blog in which I will tell people about the children's books I love.
The reason I am starting this blog is because I love children's books. I have a lot of them, I have read a lot of them, and I am of the opinion that I have a fairly good ability to distinguish the good ones from the bad ones.