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Roberto, The Insect Architect, by Nina Laden

Sep15

Roberto, The Insect Architect, by Nina Laden

It’s a satirical story with a technological secret. “No computers were used,” brags Nina Laden, listing out the materials that she used instead to create the mixed-media collages in “Roberto the Insect Architect.” (“[D]ifferent kinds of paper, parts of images cut from old catalogs and magazines, wood veeners, cork veneer, blueprints, cardboard, skeleton leaves, old engravings, stickers, etc.”) It’s an appropriate medium for a story about a scavenging termite, and the bright illustrations give it a retro-modern feel. The other termites may be obsessed with their wood-based status symbols – but Roberto has grander ambitions.

“Don’t you know there are termites starving in Antarctica” says Roberto’s mother, who’s upset that the young termite is playing with his food – wood. (He builds a tower out of the pancake-shaped slices of wood that he’s served for breakfast, and he dreams of becoming an architect.) Laden writes that Roberto is “hungry to start a new life” – and her book’s puns are highlighted in enormous bold letters. But it’s her busy illustrations that steal the focus, dominating every page with bright colors and strange visuals.

On Roberto’s breakfast table there’s a bag of chips – but they’re wood chips. Another termite hoists a delicacy on his fork – a small wooden house. One is eating a skyscraper, while another seems to be salting a church. It’s easy to create anything when you’re cutting-and-pasting images, and when Roberto flees to Bug Central Station, there’s a great pastiche of buildings from the San Francisco Bay Area.

“The city was a place where you could build your dreams,” Laden writes wisely – highlighting “build your dreams,” since it’s another architecture pun. “Roberto beamed hope like a lit-up skyscraper.” But you can bet that the hotel he checks into is full of bugs. In fact, they’re bed bugs – and it’s Roberto who builds them beds!

The snooty city bugs won’t give Roberto his chance, and soon Roberto is “feeling like a pest” – again, highlighted in bold. There’s a homeless fly, and even a ladybug who’s crying that her house is on fire and her children are gone. And then in a beautiful collage of a purple sunset, Roberto vows to prove his skills to the city. He turns a pile of abandoned wood into a street of fancy new homes – then sends the keys to their new owners anonymously.

“Antennae were buzzing,” Laden writes – in bold letters, and “Robin Leech” promises to make the anonymous builder famous. It’s a funny story with a happy ending. But it’s Laden’s mixed-media collages that you’ll never forget.

Coming On Home Soon by Jacqueline Woodson

Jan15

Coming on Home Soon by Jacqueline Woodson

The illustrator dedicated this book “To the men and women at war, far from and home.” For Coming On Home Soon, E. B. Lewis drew photo-realistic illustrations capturing a sad story from the distant past. The narrator “tried hard not to cry” as her mother puts a Sunday dress into a satchel. “Ada Ruth,” she says, “They’re hiring colored women in Chicago since all the men are off fighting in the war.”

It’s a dramatic story that’s handled expertly by both Lewis and author Jacqueline Woodson. Even on the title page Lewis sets the tone, drawing the girl and her grandmother looking sadly through the panes of a snow-colored window. But Woodson’s text has a subtle and powerful poetry. “Hush now. Your mama’s gonna be coming on home soon,” the little girl’s grandmother says.

In the story, that picture has an even sadder context. The girl and her grandmother stare through the window because they’re hoping for a letter from the girl’s mother. “When the postman goes on by without stopping, Grandma says ‘Hush now. Don’t start that crying.’ But her eyes are sad. Like she’s wanting to cry too.”

I love children’s books where the simple statements suggest the small excitements of a new day. (“There is snow this morning. And a small black kitten scratching against our door.”) The grandmother lugs in firewood for the stove, and grumbles that the kitten is ugly. But the little girls curls up by the fireplace and plays with the kitten anyways.

The author writes poetry that’s heartfelt and honest, so she won’t sugarcoat the reality of a radio broadcast about “the battles being fought and all the man who’ve died.” And outside, “the snow keeps falling.” The little girl reminds herself of her mother, and pets her kitten’s warm fur for comfort. There’s a beautiful illustration of the two of them huddled near a tiny yellow light.

To survive, the grandmother hunts possum and rabbit. “Me and Grandma keep walking and the kitten behind us, shivering until Grandma stoops and lifts it into her coat.” But the text is written as though it’s happening in real time. As they walk, “The land goes on and on. Flat sometimes and then climbing up into a hill.”

The snow-covered fields inspire more beautiful illustrations, and the little girl talks about setting off to see the big world someday. And then the mailman arrives with a letter. “Thank you, Lord,” the grandmother whispers, and mother’s handwriting is a pretty cursive. Money falls from the envelope, and the little girl says that the letter’s first line is like a song that you want to keep singing over and over.

“Tell Ada Ruth I’ll be coming on home soon.”

Sally Arnold by Cheryl Ryan

Nov8

Sally Arnold by Cheryl Ryan

There’s a secret character in Sally Arnold: the Appalachian Mountains. “The setting of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia…were ideal subject matter for my paintings,” says illustrator Bill Farnsworth – “combined with the very real people of this part of America.” Author Cheryl Ryan lived on one of the mountain’s crooked ridges, where she’d heard the folk stories about Sally Arnold. Ryan lives in a tiny West Virginia town on a crooked ridge they call Sally’s Backbone – and decided to write her own story about Sally.

She dedicates it to “all who have ever gone down Sally’s Backbone to Fox’s store.”

A little girl named Jenny works in her grandfather’s store, but she knows most people shop on Saturday night, when they come for a weekend visit to the country town. When she’s bored, she plays her fiddle and pretends it’s Saturday night. There’s a checkerboard on a barrel and canned goods on the shelves. And the customers tell stories of a woman named Sally Arnold.

There’s a real sense of the town and its people, so Sally assumes the size of a legend. Sally has white hair and she looks like a witch. She lived by herself, in a shack which was “ready to slide into the creek.” She was always collecting things, sometimes searching the ditches for berries, mushrooms, and wild asparagus. “Maybe she’s just lonely,” thinks the little girl – who is already lonely herself. And on Saturday night, Sally plays the harmonica while Jenny plays the fiddle and her grandfather strums on a banjo.

There’s a mystery around Sally, and Jenny wants to explore it. One day after church, she follows Sally to her shack up the ridge. But instead she falls into the creek, her wet hair covering her eyes. The next thing she sees are “blue eyes framed in wrinkles,” as Sally Arnold has the last laugh. “Well, look what the creek brought me today! Company!”

And it turns out that Sally’s shack has a charm all its own. There’s hummingbirds in the flowers by the porch. A lazy cat stretches and yawns. Sally weaves “gathering baskets” out of the cattails she’s collected at the mud flats. Ands he understands the life of a bluebird carrying straw. “She gathers what she needs from what she finds and makes something new.” And soon it’s Sally and the little girl who are searching the ditches and road banks for berries, mushrooms, and wild asparagus. “They talk. They sing. And they never, ever walk down the road empty-handed.”

My Friend, the Starfinder, by George Ella Lyon

Sep1

My Friend, the Starfinder, by George Ella Lyon

George Ella Lyon is one of my favorite writers, but there’s some surprising illustrations in “My Friend, the Starfinder.” Stephen Gammell contributes amazing watercolors showing the wonders of the night sky, adding a glorious background for even the simplest sentences. It’s a fascinating combination of two artists – a writer and illustrator – and there’s an exciting interplay between the two as the story moves along.

Lyon describes an old man in a ragged suit – but the illustrator fills his jacket with wild colors. The colors almost steal the show, as the side of his house is filled with greens, pinks, and purple. “He wore old soft clothes and sat in and old chair on an old green porch and told stories,” Lyon tells us. On the next page, a meteor shines through a green universe… But then the watercolors switch to rich grays and whites when the old man begins telling his story to a little girl.

Even with blacks and grays, he somehow creates a magnificent sky filled with planets and stars, its dark clouds swallowing trees on a hill. The shades create levels and depth behind twinkling stars, even on the title page where the author and illustrate dedicate the book to their loved ones. I’ve never seen black and white watercolors before, but they’re surprisingly effective. The illustrations show the old man’s memory of following a star across a field when he was a young boy.

When Lyon writes that the boy kept walking, Gammell draws a breath-taking cumulus cloud, stretching across the sky with black edges in a bright white sky, dwarfing the tiny fence in the field below. When the boy reaches the top of an inky hill, there’s a splotch of yellow and spectacular stars in the sky. Lyon writes simply that the boy “picked the star up,” and Gammell imagines a big star-shaped rock, its grays flecked with gold and turquoise. And when he hands the star to the little girl, the two friends are filled with colors, and a ray of sunshine peeps through the gray clouds.

In another story, the old man’s hand turns purple – and Gammell draws mysterious tangles of branches and tree trunks. I like Ella’s simple words – she describes one color as simply “orangey orange as fire” – and it turns out the man had wandered to the end of the rainbow, discovering “cool warm striped air.” But the illustrations give the story a vast perspective – showing the mountains in the valley as a pastiche of colors with white wisps and a yellow streak of sun.

And Lyon writes that she could feel all the colors.

Mr. Munchlee’s Magic Tophat by Corrie R. Rice

Feb17

Mr Munchlees Magical Top Hat

“Mr. Munchlee comes to a town that has forgotten how to smile,” explains the back cover of Mr. Munchlee’s Magic Top Hat. “With a little help from his friends, a world of imagination begins to save the day!” But the experience of the book is something far more elaborate, since its text is written entirely in rhyme — and within a few pages the book is virtually exploding with colorful and imaginative illustrations!

Even when the book first shows Mr. Munchlee — a tall man with a mysterious moustache and a top hat — there’s a wall of bright yellow in the background. He strolls into town whistling, with fireflies under his hat, each one twinkling at the thought of sharing their good will. Soon he’s given a magic map to a girl named Luzianne, and then abruptly vanishes from the book. But the map shows her a way to dream — to laugh and be happy whenever she wants — and it awakens her own happy spirit.

“Imagining one thought made a jungle come alive…” the book explains, as the color suddenly begin splashing across the pages. There were animals doing “troopa-loopa” tricks who invited Luzianne to eat bubbles and share bananas splits. The book’s cover illustration captures this moment with an iconic picture of the girl dancing on the rim of Mr. Munchlee’s hat. All around her are butterflies, musical notes, and even a bird with a flower in its mouth.

Some of the more fanciful drawings reminded me of Dr. Seuss. The little girl swings impossibly high on a yellow streamer that’s held by a smiling jack-in-the-box. As a background there’s the silhouette of pink and purple hills. And on top of those hills are more jack-in-the-boxes, and birds with impossibly large tails…

The smiling girl marches behind blue monkeys banging cymbals in a parade through a yellow field. But she learns a valuable lesson — “I can be whatever I choose!” And that sharing a smile makes smiles spread even further, and can make happiness grow. Luzianne’s love was “like a butterfly garden,” and there’s actually a lot of lessons. Maybe one too many? The book seemed to have a little extra text…

But maybe I just couldn’t find the right rhythm for reading the rhymes…especially since I was feeling impatient about getting to those pretty pictures! Tulia Lulu drew the book’s illustrations — and it’s obvious that a lot of care went into this project. My copy even came with a black-and-white coloring book, presumably created for an appearance at the Miami Beach Regional Library. It asks a very thoughtful question — “What makes other people smile?” — and then also asks its young readers, what makes you happy?

And then it invited those young readers to fill Mr. Munchlee’s hats with their own happy thoughts…