|
Children's Books: Animals and Rubbish Dumps
Over the years
I have collected a selection of children's picture books with
interesting, intriguing or imaginative illustrations. These are
books to be read in ten minutes but to be lost in for hours. I think
what attracts me to them is that their illustrations are of
inhabited landscapes, real or imagined, and they stimulate both the
geographer and smallfarmer in me. They teach that the real landscape
should be looked at imaginatively in order to see its many facets,
and that imagined landscapes are based on real possibilities and
make visible what are often invisible values and virtues.
For example, Graeme Base's books always have well-painted pictures
which are central to his stories. His "Animalia" is probably his
best known work, an alphabet book which has an animal-related
picture for each letter. I still occasionally see it in bookstores.
I have three jigsaws of pictures from this book. One of them is
"Proud peacocks preening perfect plumage". Behind five magnificent
peacocks standing amidst poppies and pansies is a parade passing in
front of a prince and princess, with a palace and pagoda in the
background. In the procession of people is a politician talking to a
pregnant woman pushing a pram, preceded by, among others, a pygmy,
piper, policeman, pharaoh and percussionist. Altogether there must
be over a hundred things, plants, animals and people beginning with
"p" inhabiting this landscape of the imagination. In each "Animalia"
painting, Graeme Base has placed himself somewhere as a boy,
sometimes partially hidden, and you end up searching carefully to
find him.
Colin Thompson is another author whose pictures are crammed with
animals, machines, and things. His are finely drawn and
 intricate
illustrations, full of unusual sights. His books explore people's
impact on the natural world. "The Paperbag Prince" is about an old
man living in an abandoned railway carriage on a rubbish dump,
observing the slow march of time bringing a gentle healing to this
blight on the green countryside. One of the pages in "The Paperbag
Prince" shows part of the rubbish dump - old shoes, pots, tv sets,
toys and tyres, all homes to birds, foxes, mice, frogs, cats,
caterpillars, spiders and ants. But a careful examination of the
picture reveals more astonishing sights - a tiny submarine in a lily
pond, a yacht on a small lake, a human hand emerging from within a
book to open its cover, a small ladder leading up to an equally
small door, a castle nestled amidst candles, a duck asleep in an
armchair, a human couple enjoying a tropical sunset underneath palm
trees. Thompson also encourages you to search his landscape of the
imagination in great detail by placing in many of them a tiny black
dog often outlined against a lighted window.
Graham Oakley is the author the "Church Mice" series of books first
published in the 1970s. Each book recounts the adventures of Arthur
and Humphrey and their fellow mice who live in a church in Wortlethorpe with their friend Sampson the cat. The stories and
accompanying illustrations are always full of action, movement and
interesting characters, all set within a small English town and its
surrounding countryside, albeit viewed from the rather unusual
perspective of church mice. Oakley has also written "Hetty and
Harriet", about two hens who escape from an English smallfarm only
to find that the world outside is nowhere near as safe and
comfortable.
On to
Part Three
|
