Violet (2009), by Tania Duprey Stehlik

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 15.5.

Violet

Violet is starting a new school, but is worried that she won’t have friends because she is, well, violet.  When she discovers a myriad of other-coloured students in her new class, she is only somewhat reassured: “There were red kids, yellow kids, and blue kids…” But they all have red, yellow, and blue parents.
Mixed-ethnicity is explained to the reader through the vibrant skin colours of the characters, engagingly drawn by Jovanovic to reflect a world both interesting and yet subtly disturbing, much like Violet’s experience of school.  Violet’s Dad is blue; her Mom is red; Violet is purple.  The analogy is simple and effective.  The only problem with the story is that it ends too soon.  Once Violet realizes where her own unique colour comes from—blue+red=purple—the reader would benefit from her perhaps meeting another child in similar circumstances: Hazel’s parents could be green and brown; Amber’s could be red and yellow… But the story ends abruptly with Violet’s realization of her uniqueness, which does not, I think, send a message of belonging as strongly as this very promising and imaginatively conceived story could.

Stuff: The Life of a Cool Demented Dude (2004), by Jeremy Strong

I first read—and taught—Stuff shortly after it came out. My strongest memory of the reading experience is travelling up to Simon Fraser University on public transit, with the cover of the very obviously young novel displayed to the world, unable to keep myself from laughing aloud. Slightly embarrassing, given the artwork. I can’t remember now what it was—Pankhurst, the “radical feminist rabbit” (39); the “hearty farty” knickers (13); the adventures of Punykid—but regardless, I found it one of the funniest novels I had read in a long, long time. When the American ARC came into my hands a couple of years later, I was struck by the level of my disappointment in the cover art. I have since read through the American edition, complete with drawings, and been equally disappointed, as have students at both the elementary and the university level. Seb Burnett’s quirky illustrations in the British edition suit Jeremy Strong’s intelligent but ribald humour to a T; Matthew Armstrong’s have a much more “American manga” look to them, as if they are trying just that bit too hard to be cool. This does not do justice to Strong’s obvious intent, for—despite the novel’s subtitle—it is the geeky misfits who will recognize themselves in and take heart from Simon and Pete’s escapades.

Simon is “a fund of information, which is why everyone at school calls [him] Stuff. [He’s] full of it” (8): and very liberal he is with his information, too. Stuff is hilariously irreverent: intelligent yet immature, annoying to the adults around him yet completely comprehensible when we see the world through his eyes. His story is a combination of narrative, comic, and encyclopædic digressions that weave—or maybe lump—together to form a cohesive whole that only Simon and Pete, his best friend, can ever hope to understand. When a substitute teacher reveals the story of Samuel Johnson’s refutation of Berkeley, the boys go about kicking rocks… and lockers… and each other… and “nobody else had a clue what [they] were on about” (54): “how life goes” (93) for teenaged boys. Of course, readers are privy to the strange convolutions of Stuff’s inmost thoughts, so we are privileged in our ability to follow. This becomes especially empowering when the tangential stories Stuff tells us—for example, his “Frog Experience” (8-9) or his “Short Note About Cuckoos” (92)—appear as random elements in the comic strip he is anonymously writing for his art teacher’s school magazine (and thesis project). The five episodes of “Punykid’s Battle with the Drooling Dorkoids” interspersed throughout Stuff’s narrative are both an entertaining graphic representation of the story as we have it so far and a cathartic experience for Stuff, who excises his teenage angst through his art, creating a world in which he might—if Skysurfer can save Punykid in time—just get the girl.  What to readers in Stuff’s school appear as random narrative or graphic elements, readers of the novel recognize as important aspects of Stuff’s teenage reality. The art teacher asks, “Whose that tubby little man who keeps kicking things?” (180), and we know the answer.

Between the laughter and the energy inspired by engaging with Stuff’s witty yet disconnected ideas, readers will find Stuff not only hilarious but exhilarating; I couldn’t put it down.

Tabloidology (2009), by Chris McMahen

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 14.5.

Tabloidology

The lessons that Tabloidology delivers are important: issues of representation—truth, falsehood, exaggeration, omission—are combined with a lesson in achieving balance that many readers will be beginning to learn themselves.  On this level, Tabloidology is an ambitious story.  Unfortunately, the narrative style detracts from the power of the message.  It is only a small step from engagingly irreverent to over-the-top ridiculous, but this story takes it.  Many young readers may appreciate the over-the-top humour in the text, but even grade 4 to 6 readers—at whom it seems to be aimed—will likely find it too silly for their tastes.

One of the protagonists, Trixi, writes fictional stories—”a great big pack of lies” (66)—for the school newspaper, which, when the paper is photocopied on a magical photocopier, come true the following day.  A fabulous premise, but excessiveness in a multitude of narrative aspects weakens the effect.  Small issues become traumatic, while serious issues such as poverty and child neglect are considered sources of humour; the adults are made stereotypically ridiculous; and the predictability of the events the protagonists are worried about seems to belittle the reader—or at least not demand very much in the way of critical reading.  So much could have been right with this story, if the humour, the stereotypes, the silliness, were toned down just a little.  The balance the protagonists learn is necessary in media reportage would be beneficial here as well: the important messages that this story could have delivered are lost in a humour that tries too hard.

Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot, and The Story of a Short Life (1895), by Juliana Horatia Ewing

In my other life, I work for the Canada’s Early Women Writers (CEWW) project, headed by Dr. Carole Gerson at Simon Fraser University.  The project aims to construct an online database of all Canadian women who published—in any genre, in any forum—before 1950.  CEWW is one of the seed projects for the larger database project, the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC), run out of the University of Alberta, and headed by Dr. Susan Brown.

Connecting my love of early Canadian literature with my love of children’s literature, I have been reading through the children’s texts written by some of our authors, with the intent of sharing them—if only superficially—with others.  The first such text was The Bells on Finland Street, by Lyn Cook; this is the fourth.

Juliana Ewing was a well-known British children’s author, with an extensive bibliography. She falls onto my radar for having lived for two years in Canada (1867-1869). Elizabeth S. Tucker’s Leaves from Juliana Horatia Ewings “Canada Home” (1896) is part biographical, part autobiographical, and contains a number of photos of the author and her life in Canada. Given this connection, I thought I would read at least Jackanapes, one of her most successful children’s stories.
My copy of Jackanapes (published in 1895) is bound with two other of Ewing’s children’s books: Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot (1884), and The Story of a Short Life (1885). All three are unquestionably written as instructive moral tales, but where Jackanapes and to a lesser degree Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot retain the reader’s interest, The Story of a Short Life is tedious and we wish that young Leonard’s life had been shorter… or, more compassionately perhaps, that the author had not chosen to write about it. Leonard is a spoilt, demanding child who, when crippled by a fall from a cart, becomes even more spoilt and demanding. Despite the author’s intent of showing how he tries to live up to the family motto, Lœtus sorte mea (“Happy in my lot”), we spend the entire short text wishing that the adults around him practiced some of the logical moral discipline that Victorian children’s texts are generally known for. Instead, when after years as an annoying cripple, Leonard inexplicably succumbs to his injuries and dies, we are shown his parents later blessed with a new family, and who remember and honour the valiant young boy who strove so hard to be like the noble soldiers around him. But failed! Perhaps I should have stopped after Jackanapes and Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot, which have similar morally intent, but are far more enjoyable to read.
Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot is an pleasant story of a young orphan who is taken in as a servant, strives to do well through honestly and hard work, and ultimately succeeds, inheriting his master’s dovecot and doves. The story achieves its goal of showing material gains resulting from moral behaviour, and is an engaging story at the same time. Its success lies both in the simplicity of the story and in the interesting characters, peppered as it is with country accents and quirky characters. The popularity of both Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot and Jackanapes were undoubtedly augmented by Ralph Caldecott’s illustrations, which are sprinkled throughout the stories.
          Jackanapes is the nickname of young Theodore, son of the “big house” in the village. While the story begins with his birth, and ends with his death, it is much more the story of the whole village, the relationships that develop over the years, and how Jackanape’s life is intermingled with all of those around him. (One commentator notes a similarity to Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853), which I think is not inappropriate.) The plot of his life is stereotypic: he leads his less adventurous friend Tony into all sorts of mischief as children; Tony follows him into the military but Jackanapes is by far the better soldier; Jackanapes dies saving Tony on the battlefield; the entire village honours him and Tony is a better man for the sacrifice of his friend. What is engaging about this story is that—unlike young Leonard—Jackanapes is an honourable lad who deserves the respect and love he garners. He is repentant when he is wrong, honest about his activities, and he loves his horse: a better advertisement for the cult of muscular Christianity can only be found in Tom Brown himself.  So in the end, when Jackanapes dies, we are saddened, even to tears. Ewing has excelled in this story: her characters are more well-rounded and interesting than in her other two stories included here, and the picture she paints of village life in the mid-Victorian period is rich with pastoral imagery and honest human emotion. The diction is somewhat heavy at times:  no more than many other novels of this period, but perhaps more than the average child reader—even then—would want to bear for long. But the story itself pulls the reader through, in a way that justifies Jackanapes’s position as one of the minor classics of Victorian children’s literature.

Hound and Hare (2011), by Rotraut Susanne Berner

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 17.1

Hound and Hare

Trans. Shelly Tanaka.

Hound and Hare’s underlying message of tolerance is admirable, and one all children need to learn, but in this book the story is not sufficiently engaging to mask the author’s overt moralizing.  The language-play, too, does not engage: phrases like “the dog days of summer, you might say” (11), “stuck here like a pooch in a pup tent” (25), and “raining like hares and dogs” (43) are meant to amuse, but fall flat.  The subtleties of having Harley Hare use canine terms like “This place is going to the dogs” (24) and Hugo Hound use rabbit allusions like “Let’s hop to it” (27) are overshadowed by the numerous attempts at dog and bunny jokes that are less carefully applied.
While the narrative fails to impress, however, the illustrations are delightful.  The coloured-pencil drawings are both simple and expressive. The emotions on the characters’ faces speak more strongly than the words at times, and the detail of setting is just the right level for the younger reader or listener to enjoy.  While a contemporary text, the illustrations remind me strongly of some of my favourite picture books as a child, like Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings (1941), or Syd Hoff’s Danny and the Dinosaur (1958).

A Fairy Garland of BC Flowers (194-), by Dorothea Allison

In my other life, I work for the Canada’s Early Women Writers (CEWW) project, headed by Dr. Carole Gerson at Simon Fraser University.  The project aims to construct an online database of all Canadian women who published—in any genre, in any forum—before 1950.  CEWW is one of the seed projects for the larger database project, the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC), run out of the University of Alberta, and headed by Dr. Susan Brown.

Connecting my love of early Canadian literature with my love of children’s literature, I have been reading through the children’s texts written by some of our authors, with the intent of sharing them—if only superficially—with others.  The first such text was The Bells on Finland Street, by Lyn Cook; this is the fourth.

A Fairy Garland of BC Flowers

This captivating little book was written by a teacher in the North Okanagan Valley. She came to Canada in 1912 to visit her cousin, as part of a round-the-world tour that began with visits to her sisters in Burma and India. While in Oyama, she fell in love with her cousin’s neighbour, Robert Allison. She had accepted a teaching position in Okanagan Centre, but when the couple married in December of 1913, she gave up her position (as was required of married women at the time) but stayed involved in education and other community services in the Kalamalka area. Dorothea remained involved in North Okanagan community affairs for the rest of her very long life; she died in 1981, at the age of 103.

The volume itself comprises 28 short poems: an introduction, the 26 letters of the alphabet, and a farewell.  The cover, title page, and poems are decorated by delightful wood-cut prints, with a lithe little fairy flitting about the flowers. The copy I have in my hand is signed not by the author, but by the illustrator, Janet Macmillan, whose name when she signed it was Janet Macmillan Blench. The author thanks in her dedication a “Mrs. Helena Parham (Botanist, Vaseux Lake), who has taught us so much about the flowers of the Okanagan Valley.”

As an alphabet, the author tells us, it was difficult to find the right flower for each letter: some were hard to come up with, and for some letters there were too many options. I can well imagine, and modern readers will be surprised by some of the choices she has made: frittillary, kinnikinnick, pentstemon, urtica, and zygadena are not flowers I remember from my Okanagan childhood! The flowers she does include are all local wildflowers: no orchids or jasmine adorn these pages. The poetry is sometimes shaky in rhyme or meter, but at other times perfectly lovely. Description of the volume requires words that are sweet and diminutive: it is truly a “fairy book” of flowers, in tone and content, visually and poetically. If my children were younger, I would want a copy to keep, for it is a fine combination of art, simple poetry, and tribute to the valley I was born in.

Little Gray Doors (1926), by Alexandrina Woods

As promised, my less-than-glowing review of an early twentieth-century children’s book: Little Gray Doors, by Alexandrina Woods. This author is one of the early Canadian female authors listed in the Canada’s Early Women Authors project, which aims to construct an online database of all Canadian women who published—in any genre, in any forum—before 1950.  CEWW is one of the seed projects for the larger database project, the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory (CWRC), run out of the University of Alberta, and headed by Dr. Susan Brown.

Little Gray Doors (1926)

Little Gray Doors suffers from one of the predominant problems of early twentieth century literature for children: it is not only prescriptive, but premised upon guilt as a motivation for behaviour. The first four stories in the collection each show a child learning through fairly drastic means a lesson in good behaviour; the last story, “The Fairy Glen,” shows a magical visit to fairy-land given to a well-behaved child, a visit of which there is no memory on her waking.

The opening story, “Little Gray Doors,” has a naughty boy, sent to bed without his tea, suddenly and inexplicably out in the garden where he discovers a doorway in a tree truck, leading to a hallway full of little gray doors. Behind each door, he sees a different world in which the children are unhappy, mischief abounds, and chaos reigns. On the wall above each door is cryptically written L.O.P. He reaches the end of the hallway to view a final room in which a group of exhausted women, obviously mothers, sit around mending toys and clothing with tears in their eyes. At this point, he sees the full message: Land of Punishment.  It is not certain to me whether the punishment is being inflicted on the children or the mothers… regardless, it is a dismal experience, and the guilt-ridden David returns gratefully to the land above, resolved to behave in an impossibly perfect manner from now on.

The stories become increasingly less traumatic as the book progresses, but none actually manage not to create a feeling of guilt in the child reader.  “The Mirror” tells the metaphoric tale of a young boy who is given a mirror by his “King” (Jesus), whose face will be reflected instead of the boy’s. Each time the boy fails to behave, the mirror becomes clouded or seems cracked, until it is not longer useable.  The boy must take a Pilgrim’s Progress journey back to see the King, during which he performs good deeds. The King forgives him and restores the mirror.

"The Fairy Glen": Betty flying with Tania on the golden goose

“The Magic Needle” teaches young Ruth be content not knowing or understanding the whole picture of what she has been set to do; “Paternoster” helps the unnamed protagonist to understand that all creatures’ lives are worthwhile, as they are all created by “Our Father”; and “The Fairy Glen” has perfectly organized and disciplined young Betty taken on a trip to fairy-land. Here, she cannot dance without diamonds on her toes, coloured jewels on her skirt, and pearls in her hair—like the fairies—but she is granted all these riches by the small animals she has helped in her real life.  In the end, though, she is returned to her bed and her jewels are taken back to fair-land, the incident is explicitly forgotten: “the clock was ticking as though nothing had happened … and the little China Shepherdess has never said one word about the strange things she saw and heard” (121).

There is nothing redeeming in the message of Little Gray Doors: no child could live up to the expectations of behaviour set by the author, and while the punishment and guilt for misbehavior is explicit, there are no positive results in the real world, for the good behaviour Betty shows.

Bosley Sees the World (2012), by Tim Johnson

Bosley is quite the adorable little bear.  The illustration of his world and his bearness all work together to present a very friendly, yet vibrant aesthetic, a good choice on the part of author/illustrator Tim Johnson, who tells the story of an adventurous young bear out to discover his world. Young Bosley Bear, fascinated by his world, steps out of his comfort zone to explore what lies beyond his cave, beyond his forest. What lies there is another challenge: a mountain taller than any of the trees he has climbed. From the top of the mountain, Bosley looks down, back through the forest to his cave, and decides to return to the safety of his home.

The repetitive language (“He stretched his front paws. He stretched his back paws.”) serves multiple purposes: it creates an effective sense of rhythm in the narrative; it reinforces the learning of phonics and written word; and it exposes cross-language learners to a new vocabulary: for Johnson’s book is a dual-language text, with English and an alternate language (in the case of the edition I read: Spanish) on one page. The pattern of repetition could be more carefully use to this advantage; there is nothing wrong with Johnson’s prose, except that it brings memories of other, more successful books to mind too readily (although it is unfair to expect everyone to be Maurice Sendak). Similarly, the actual way that the text is superimposed over the delightful images impedes on the enjoyment of the reading experience; a number of other aesthetic options would create a blending of text and image that is less visually jarring. The final criticism of the text lies more deeply in the story. An easy alteration would render the story more meaningful: Bosley embarks on his quest for adventure, leaves his cave, traverses the forest, climbs a mountain, looks back at the great world he is a part of, and … nothing:

“That will have to wait until another day.
It’s too big for me now.”
And Bosley walked back to his tiny cave.

… He curled up in his little bed and dreamed about the big world.
He would explore it all someday.
He knew it.

The End.”

The narrative structure is fine, but there needs be a stronger sense of epiphany in Bosley’s mountain-top realization. Perhaps I am being too harsh, but at the end of a picture book, as much as a novel, we like a sense of emotional accomplishment, not only effective dénouement and closure.  This slight deficiency prevents Bosley Sees the World from rising into the higher echelons of children’s picture books; it is nonetheless a delightful story with much—notably the dual-language format—to recommend it.

When I read Bosley Sees the World , it was provided by the author in .pdf format; it has, however, recently been made available at amazon.com.

The Nightwood (2010), by Robin Muller: another Tam Lin tale

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 16.1.

The Nightwood

Robin Muller’s version of the Celtic folktale of Tam Lin and Janet (here Tamlynne and Elaine) is richly decorated and illustrated, wrapping the story in layers of magic and mystery.  The language Muller uses lightens the depths of the folktale, rendering it accessible to younger readers, presenting it as a more classic fairy tale of elves and magic than the original Irish myth, in which young Janet’s arrogance is rewarded with an unexpected child.  In Muller’s The Nightwood, Elaine’s grievance is against her father, the Earl of March, who still considers her a child; like young readers, she only wants to prove herself “grown-up.”  Refused permission to dance at her father’s ball, she runs to the Nightwood to dance with the færies.  The story follows the folktale fairly faithfully: she and Tamlynne fall in love; she returns to her father’s house and pines for him; she escapes and seeks him out, only to learn that he is mortal, captive to the Elfin Queen’s magic, and destined to die; she learns there is a way to save him, but only at risk of her own life; in the end, she succeeds and they marry.  Overall, the beauty of Muller’s illustration and the magic of the romantic tale weave together to present a captivating and timeless tale.

Big City Otto: Elephants Never Forget #1 (2011), by Bill Slavin with Esperança Melo

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 17.2.

Big City Otto

Big City Otto’s plot—the Babar-like migration of the large, rural elephant to the urban jungle—is not original, but the lack of originality is easily balanced by Bill Slavin’s fabulous drawing.  The emotion he brings to his characters through line and shading rivals the best of graphic novelists. Add to this an elephant with an allergy to peanuts, with a simple outlook on life that repeatedly misses the nuances of urban life and language, and you should have a recipe for success.
The narration of Big City Otto unfortunately does not rise to the level of the illustrations. The syntax and sentence structure are stilted and over-simplistic, leaving the reader to wonder who the target audience is.  My own child noted that the content and story were perfect for grades 2 or 3; but are grade 2 and 3 students able to read sufficiently independently to handle the graphic novel format and small, hand-written type? The sophistication of the drawings leave me wanting the authors to have invested more effort in constructing a narrative that is correspondingly interesting.