Book Reviews

Fun Picture Books

Susan Vande Griek (Author) and Pascal Milelli (Illustrator)
The Art Room. Douglas & McIntyre
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Elaine McLeod (Author)Colleen Wood (Author)
Lessons from Mother Earth. Douglas & McIntyre
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Dean Griffiths (Illustrator)Frieds Wishinsky (Author)
Give Maggie a Chance. Fitzhenry & Whiteside
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Reviewed by Lynn Wytenbroek

We live in serious times, and there are lots of things children need to know to get by, or should know to be more understanding and compassionate about others. These three picture books all have something worthwhile to say to children, while also being very entertaining . Yet they are very different indeed.

Lessons from Mother Earth is a story about a small child exploring her grandmother's garden. But the garden is the natural land around the grandmother's home, and, along with the child in the story, the child reader learns about the importance of harvesting what is available in each season, and taking only as much as one needs to keep the garden healthy and productive. The book also shows some edible wild plants, and what sequence they grow in. The book offers some wisdom on caring for the land so that it may provide for all of us continuously. In these days of global warming and environmental degradation, this book has an important message for children and adults alike about stewardship.

Colleen Wood's art is most appropriate for the book. It is colourful and quite detailed in its depiction of grandma's large garden, and the plants and creatures that, flourish there. The watercolour illustrations have great detail in the close-up-pictures of the plants, making the plants quite identifiable as part of the message of the book. Clothing and implements, such as the hand woven baskets the grandmother uses to harvest the plants and berries, reflect the cultural context of the story. The background tends to be depicted with less detail than the foreground, and Tess and her grandmother, while dynamic, tend to be less well illustrated than the plant life.

A book that has a real element of delight is The Art Room. Told from the child's perspective, it relates the adventures two children have when taking art classes from Emily Carr. It shows the joy of the children in Emily Carr's animal filled studio and the trips to paint scenes in the city or in nature. It shows the importance of art in opening minds and souls to the world around. It is poetically written, and the text certainly matches the subject in its artistry. While the story is playful and full of delight, it also gives the reader a glimpse into the wonderfully dynamic and amazingly complex person that was Emily Carr. Thus the book will appeal as much to readers as to children.

The oil paintings for this book by Pascal Milelli are themselves works of art. They are full of detail and life, and depict the children's joy and awe at the spectacle of the animals roaming free in the studio, while showing the concentration on the young faces as they work on their art. He makes Emily Carr warmly human. My only criticism is that perhaps oil paintings were a little too heavy for the book, and although they are masterly, they miss out somewhat on the delight evoked by the joyous style and poetry of the writing.

Give Maggie a Chance is different again. A story about a child who freezes every time she goes up to the front of the class to read, the book shows the difficulty children often have in expressing themselves, even when they know how to do something. Of course, not all children have these problems, and the obnoxious Kimberly has no trouble reading to the class, and no trouble going out of her way to make Maggie feel stupid after she has succeeded where Maggie has failed. Kimberly is an intellectual bully, and with each passing day, Maggie becomes less and less capable and Kimberly becomes more and more obnoxious. That is, until the day when Kimberly sneers at Maggie's best friend Sam, who stutters. It is in defending Sam that Maggie's own confidence is restored, and she is finally able to read to the class.

This book shows a real understanding of how children function, but it is also beautifully written. Give Maggie a Chance is, in fact, as poetic in its own way as Vande Griek's book. Wishinsky has a tremendous sense of speech rhythms, and the story has a captivating rhythm that makes it a treat to read aloud.

Griffiths's art for the book is ideal. Although the story speaks of the children as ordinary children, Griffiths depicts them as anthropomorphized cats. Maggie is a marmalade cat, Sam a tabby, and irritating Kimberly is a Persian. Mrs. Brown is, most appropriately, a Siamese cat. The emotions are captured nicely in the illustrations, but making the characters cats rather than people softens the story, diffusing any potential didacticism. Wishinsky leaves the child readers with a sense of their own capabilities despite repeated failures and embarrassment, and despite the flagrant successes of the Kimberlys of the world. Overall the art and story work together beautifully to produce an encouraging and highly amusing book for young readers.

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This review originally appeared in Canadian Literature #181 (Summer 2004), Jon Stott. (pg. 163 - 165)

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