Monday, April 23, 2007

Tuesday

Some of the wonderful moments that I have had with Sooraj is when we talk about dragons and other imaginary creatures that inhabit the stories that I concoct for him. I enjoy science fantasy, therefore, most of the stories that I make up for him includes some wild and imaginary beings.


There are very few children's books that are fantasy based - atleast I do not come across them very often. One such book that captured my attention is Tuesday - a great book by David Weisner, the king of wordless books.


Tuesday is an imaginary story that begins when three smug frogs lying on lily pads, one tuesday evening, suddenly find themselves afloat or flying. Soon, almost every frog on every lily pad is afloat. The lily pads look like small magic carpets specifically designed for the frogs to fly. Slowly and quietly, all the frogs fly up and decide to explore the neighbourhood sleepy town. As they frog explore the town, the book follows their adventurous journey. The illustrations are extremely life like and done in green, blue and purple water colours. They depict the silent Tuesday night in extremely vivid detail. At times, one could almost feel that one is travelling along with the frogs on those green magic carpets. As time passes on, the daylight breaks and the lily pads lose their flighty nature and fall down. The rather proud frogs can no longer stay afloat and start falling down to their huge dismay and return back to the marshes feeling rather forlorn.


And then, the next Tuesday evening breaks and the next flying adventure starts! This time it is some one else; read(is that the correct word to describe the book?) the book to find out who it is.


It is great book to spend with you kid. Keep turning the pages and let your kid make up the story as it goes along. Sooraj loved the story and we ended watching out in the dark sky for some flying frogs. Although, we did not find any; we are hopeful that we would find one soon. We did spot a flying dragon eye though!


If you have not watched a silent movie; do not worry - Tuesday is the book for you and your kid.

9 comments:

Praba Ram said...

Interesting adventure and review!I have seen this book in stores, and the title was quite intriguing...Now that I know what's it all about, you've rekindled my curiosity about the book and in general, all of David Weisner's - like I mentioned earlier - Flotsam is this year's winner - have been wanting to check his books out...Will certainly do so this summer..

We have read one wordless picture book - Red - 2004 winner..

Thanks!

Praba

Tharini said...

Nice review Sathish. This is going to be a surefire hit with Akhil. And I just KNOW I'm going to love the illustrations right from the look of the cover itself. A wordless book...the only one we have ever tried so far is Goodnight Gorilla. :)

sathish said...

thank you praba and tharini.

There is one scene at the end of the book, that explains the bewilderment of people as they find out many mysterious lily pads lying on the road side and all over the town, that almost reads like a scene from a movie.
There is an array of police cars; policemen whispering into their handsets, the detective leaning down to touch/feel the lily pads (and probably wondering ), the the person to see the flying frogs explaining the scene to a television camera, a police dog sniffiing around!!
All this action in just one page! Amazing stuff.

Anusha said...

i have to get my hands on this one...we love wordless/single word books - as they are kind to an 18mo's attention span :)
similar titles - Hug/Tall/g'nite gorilla - have been big hits with us, so I'm sure this will top the list too. thanks for sharing the find!

Praba Ram said...

Hi Sathish -


An interview with David Weisner

http://content.scholastic.com/browse/collateral.jsp?id=10671

interesting point on the target audience for picture books -

"It's unfortunate that after a certain age, some people think that we don't need pictures anymore. I don't believe that for any reason."
------------------------------

sathish said...

praba,

there is definitely a mindset among people that picture books are for children and that too young children..

I would say 'no'; picture book can be as illuminating as any fiction/non-fiction book to carry across a point of view - I have another very good picture book called - Why? by Nikolai Popov that I plan to review that soon.. - here the message of war that is conveyed is essentially as powerful as massive 300 page volume.

Tharini said...

I agree with your point Sathish. Graphics can tell as much as words and more, for it is left to our own interpretations. I shall look forward with interest to reading morepicture books soon.

Praba Ram said...

So true - a picture speaks a thousand words , isn't it?

Also, wordless picture books can help overcome language barriers...I am sure it has some therapeutic benefits to offer too for adults who continue enjoy reading picture books...:-) (an easy way to escape from the pressures of adulthood and retune into one's childhood.. - thanks to our children!! :-)

Sheela said...

sometimes, when we read a book we get a mental image of the words and our mind processes it based on our experiences; and when the same book gets made into a movie, it feels like a let-down at times as it didn't match our mental picture...

don't you think similar relationship exists between picture book and the same picture book just written in text? Our mind can interpret the pictures and internalize it well

>>>Keep turning the pages and let your kid make up the story as it goes along.

this should be a treat as children have such wild imagination which gets jaded over time as we grow up.

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