Book Reviews

The MW Book of the Month Archive. Book to inspire budding (and experienced) authors, demonstrate key aspects of the writer's craft, and explore with the children in your lives. 

If you would like to post the Monthly MW Book Review on your website or blog, contact me at joanna.norland@gmail.com.

The Red Book, by Barbara Lehman
(Ages 3-6)  MW Book Pick, March 2012

Discoveries abound in The Red Book 

by Barbara Lehman

Children's authors are advised to leave some open questions in the text, so that part of the narrative can be conveyed through the pictures.  In The Red Book, illustrator, Barbara Lehman, goes one better, by dispensing with words altogether and telling an entire story through pictures.  

When I spotted The Red Book in a shop a few years back, I was instantly drawn (pardon the pun) to the striking jacket design, just as the young heroine of the story is drawn (ouch!) to a glinting red volume half buried in a snow bank on a busy urban street.   She opens the book to discover a sequence of illustrations depicting a solitary boy walking along a tropical beach towards . . . a red book, half buried in the sand. 

The complex plot that follows is communicated seamlessly, and Lehman uses ingenious devices to layer two intersecting through lines—the story of the children, and the story of the book itself.  When the girl sets off to find her friend, borne aloft by an oversized bunch of helium balloons, she accidentally drops her red book on the pavement.  The childrens’ reunion unfolds across the pages of the discarded tome, ruffled by the wind.  Just as the children greet one another, a gust blows the book shut.  A solitary cyclist retrieves the closed book from the pavement and tucks it under his arm—inviting readers to invent a sequel.

Barbara Lehman has illustrated several wordless picture books in which gentle, inquisitive protagonists are transported across space and time by means of a box of memorabilia, a train, or a painting.  Her colouring-book style  graphics and bold, geometric forms contribute to a strongly marked style.  What distinguishes The Red Book from her other engrossingly whimsical works is the protagonists’ sense of yearning.  Their initial loneliness is palpable.  Without friendship, the girl’s bustling city and the boy’s sun-drenched beach are equally desolate.   Furthermore, as Lehman’s most complex story, The Red Book lends itself to numerous different retellings, from the point of view of various characters.

This book, which celebrates human connection, invites sharing and discussion precisely because we must supply the missing words.  I sometimes draft mental shopping lists while re-reading bedtime favourites, but The Red Book challenges me to engage, ask my children questions about the pictures, and find new approaches.  (First person narration?  Shall we role-play the different characters? What about an ad lib rap?)   It’s not just a story—it’s a workout.

Maybe its versatility explains why The Red Book has enjoyed a particularly long shelf life in our family.  We shared it with our son for years, and now he interprets it for his toddler sister.  Master Alistair’s version includes the telling line, “Math class was so boring that the girl said, ‘I think I’ll look at my new book.  The teacher won’t catch me if I pretend that I’m writing numbers.’"   When you open The Red Book, you never know what you may discover.  

Click here for Barbara Lehman's website. 

Tiddler:  The Story-Telling Fish, by Julia Donaldson
(Ages 3-5), MW Book of the Month, March 2012

After five or six iterations, I've had     enough-alo of The Gruffalo, but I never tire of Julia Donaldson’s lesser-known hero, a quirky sardine who is caught by fishermen while inventing tall tales to entertain his classmates.

The magic ingredients?  A striking, whimsical protagonist, a loyal sidekick (Little Johnny Dory), and a narrative that celebrates the power of imagination, ingenuity, and determination.  

I also use Tiddler as a teaching aid, because it's a textbook illustration of key principles of narrative structure – and why they work.  For example:

• The transformational journey and homecoming.  Tiddler returns from his adventure as eager to tell stories as ever, but there is a new depth to his account, reflecting his personal growth along the way. 
• Character-driven plot, where the protagonist’s idiosyncracies first land him in trouble and then, equip him to prevail -- once he learns new skills.  Tiddler is caught by the fishermen because he's daydreaming.  As he learns to emerge from his inner world, and read the cues in his environment, he finds his way home by following the Chinese-whispers trail of his stories, which have been passed from fish to fish.  
• The rule of three. The story is structured around three episodes.  The first two establish the pattern (Tiddler is always late to school, because he's off dreaming up stories).  In the third episode, this pattern is disrupted by the inciting incident (capture by fishermen), which tests the progatonist's mettle. 

I am also impressed by the compact inter-weaving of mutually dependent plot and subplot -- each of which achieves a satisfying resolution.  Tiddler's narrative line is complemented by the quest of steadfast Johnny Dory, who champions Tiddler's stories while others scoff, and brings them home to his granny--thereby starting off the trail of words that ultimately leads Tiddler home.  Tiddler succeeds in returning to safety, and Johnny Dory finally succeeds in finding a sympathetic listener, when he describes Tiddler's adventure "to a writer friend . . . who wrote it down for YOU."  


And of course, as a writer, I’m enchanted by the stanza--

“I was lost, I was scared, but a story led me home again

“Oh no, it didn’t”

“Oh yes, it did!”

I have felt that way so many times.

My one quibble is with the illustrations, that are at times, confusing, and fail to capture the dramatic progression.  Tiddler is downright inconspicuous in the illustration of the climactic scene "IN SWAM TIDDLER at half past three!"  Surely, the returning hero deserves a spotlight!  Furthermore, the margin illustration of the Gruffalo fish on page 20 struck me as shameless product placement worthy of Sex and the City.  Julia Donaldson's text is more sensitively illustrated in the gentle, cyclical Rosie’s Hat, in which Anna Curey's whimsical pictures intelligently complement the writing to flesh out the narrative and suggest answers to open questions embedded in the text. 

PS - Not tonight, honey, I'm folding paper -- This is as good a time as any to 'fess up to my origami addiction. Thanks to the Origami Resource Center for instructions on how to fold a manta ray, dolphin and sea horse.  I order origami paper from Folded Square.

The Velveteen Rabbit  
Margery Williams
(MW Book of the Month, Feb 2012)

The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams.  My mother hated animal stories, so I missed this gem, growing up, and first heard of it on Friends--the episode in which Chandler buys a first edition for Joey's girlfriend.  I finally picked up a (not first) edition of my own a few weeks ago, when I was book shopping for my kids . . . uhm, for me.  It's a kinder, gentler ancestor of Toy Story, and what impresses me is the sophistication of the language and humour.  (Would a contemporary children's author dare pen a sentence like, "The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas"?  What about the understated irony of: "For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and there was a great rustling of tissue paper and unwrapping of parcels, and ... the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten.")  Not easily accessible for my five year old son (we are weathering an extended Curious George phase) but well worth the effort, and a wonderful opportunity to talk about how childhood has changed -- and hasn't -- in the past 90 years.