Flotsam

Photo courtesy Amazon.
Author/Illustrator: DAVID WIESNER
Recommended Age group: 2 and up. You are limited only by your imagination!
Caldecott Award: 2007

I have been reading children’s books for the past three years. The main things I consider while picking out a book are message and language development. For people like me, books like Flotsam are eye openers. This is a wordless picture book and I REALLY noticed the pictures, the effort the author has put in to the pictures in order to convey the message and was simply astounded. The medium Wiesner uses is watercolor. Every seashell is meticulously drawn. The use of lines and the play of light are so wonderful that one can almost feel its texture. The colors are pleasing to young children making the children focus on the story without overly stimulating them. The placement of pictures also plays a major role in story telling in this wordless storybook.

Wiesner’s message through his books - magical things are happening all around us, anything can happen anywhere, do not limit your imagination/dreams and never loose hope on your dreams becoming true(Digression: Check out Wiesner’s 1992 Caldecott Medal book TUESDAY. It talks about the dream of frogs coming true. Any one, even frogs can dream and you never know it might just come true! Keep dreaming, it keeps you alive!).

Flotsam is a story in which a boy finds an underwater camera in a beach, washed ashore by the waves. The boy is not able to find the owners of the camera and decides to develop the pictures from the film in the camera. When he looks at the developed pictures, a whole new world is thrown wide open to him. From now on it is a fantasy journey not only for the boy but also to the readers. The older readers who know about the functioning of a ‘real world’ stare open eyed at the mechanical fishes swimming along side the real ones, a family of octopus sitting on a couch reading a book, puffed up puffer fish acting like a hot air balloon, gigantic sea turtles with a whole city on their shell and star fishes of colossal size – that make grey whales look tiny, housing an entire island on them. That’s not where the surprise ends, one has to read the book to find out what the final surprise!

It was so surprising how different the adult mind works when compared to a child’s mind. I am trying to make some sense of the pictures, and this is exactly how my brain went:
A key wound mechanical fish?!
What do I say if the children ask me to explain this?
May be I can say that this is a marine experiment and the biologists are observing patterns about this school of fish.
Whaaaat? A family of octopus sitting on a couch and reading books?
Aahhha! I see a moving container capsized behind the octopus and the couch must have fallen out of the container. The octopus just happened to sit on it.
What now? Puffer fish flying??? Okay I give up. There is no way in hell I can explain this….

And guess what questions I had to answer? ‘What is the boy’s name?’, ‘Ammaaaa, hermit crab eyes popping out of his head? That’s so silly[they put their index fingers on their fore heads and start doing a hermit crab routine. They even came with a voice for the hermit crab]’, ‘The boy has two shovels, one blue and one red. Can I have two shovels?’, ‘Can we put fish on our couch?’. They just surrendered to the story line and digested everything! Gosh, why did I even worry about flying fish and floating aliens? Teh open mindedness, amazes me.

There was a lot of language involved. By the time we finished reading this book, the boy had a name, ‘Geeg’ (please don’t ask me why, I did not name him). When he looks through a ring, his eyes become bigger(Errr.. in the book the boy is looking at a crab through a magnifying glass and Wiesner has painted it from the perspective of some one observing the boy. So you can see normal right eye and part of left eye through the magnifying lens). He is playing on the beach and is not being responsible, always listen to your mommy and daddy Geeg (I thought I was looking at myself and listening to myself)…and so Flotsam from a 2 year old and a 3.5 year old’s perspective goes on…..

Ahaha, I am not revealing the final knot. Go get a copy of Flotsam and discover it yourself. Hey, you, you and you get off the couch and get the book. Next post surprise quiz on Flotsam.

Once Upon a Banana

Picture courtesy: Amazon

Author/Illustrator: Jennifer Armstrong, David Small Read Together: 2+ Genre: Humor

Once Upon a Banana is totally bananas!

It starts with a naughty little monkey, who runs away from his juggler caretaker, steals a banana and carelessly throws the peel on the sidewalk, right next to a sign that says "Don't litter".

From there on, chaos ensues. Someone parks his bike in a no parking zone, steps on the peel, crashes into a ladder, throwing a painter on to a shopping cart, which zooms into a busy traffic intersection....I could continue, but I would be spoiling the fun for you, so I won't!

But I will say this. Each page promises wild, hilarious theatrics and acrobatics that you would not expect to see on a busy city street. And the way each scene unfolds makes it seem as if something like that could, probably happen; it does not seem like a fantasy at all. (Except maybe for one scene of a baby flying through the air, which I found unrealistic and which also alarmed my two year old - for he was concerned for the safety of the baby!)

This is probably a good time to mention one important thing. Once Upon a Banana is a wordless book. All the story telling task is left to the illustrator - David Small - a Caldecott honor medal recipient, who paints pictures of the chaos and drama though cartoonish, light, water color illustrations. Not one text to clarify what is happening, not one line of spoken dialogue. Everything that needs to be said is in the facial expressions of the characters and the animated movement of objects being hurled around. There are appropriate road signs on each page, that serve to act like marks of irony and add to the humor rather than convey any special message.

In each of my half dozen or so readings so far, I notice a tiny detail that I didn't catch before, and it makes me wonder how much time the author, Jennifer Armstrong, invested in coming up with the precise detail of events. In her biography, Armstrong says she had wanted to write books that "capture a reader's imagination and make them forget everything else while they read." This book does exactly that -it transports you temporarily to a square block of that fictional city, making you turn each page, as you wonder what is going to happen next.

The comedy of errors builds up to a fitting climax and you can happily close the book, with a feel good smile on your face.

If you happen to get your hands on Once Upon a Banana, please post a comment on what you thought about it. I would love to hear your interpretation.

Yellow Umbrella

Yellow Umbrella

By Jae Soo Liu

Music by Dong II Sheen

Ages 3-6

We've all heard of books on tape and audio books. Sure! We've even listened to them, perhaps. But have you ever heard of a wordless audio book? Sounds pretty paradoxical doesn't it? Yeah, I agree. And just for that, you must try Yellow Umbrella. It is a very interesting Kane Miller publication and a little stint with happiness.

Now a wordless book, to be a good wordless book, has to have strong illustration to back up the story and tell it effectively in the absence of a few 100 words. Author-Illustrator Jae Soo Liu, has achieved all that and more with simple watercolours. The concept of the book came to her many years ago, on a rainy day, when she was a teacher in a middle school and she watched students coming to the school carrying their umbrellas. There was a pretty array of colours in the umbrellas and underneath them, all the children looked like one, whether they were short or tall, fat or thin, boys or girls. It was a complete scene of unification and harmony, where the only thing that stood out was colour. The reds, blues, greens, pinks and the yellow of the umbrellas.

So that pretty much gives you an brief idea of the book. From page to page, is depicted the scene of children walking to school on a rainy day, protected under the hood of their umbrellas. You are looking in on the scene from above, to a lone yellow umbrella on the first page. Pretty soon, blue joins yellow and together they walk along the rainy street, when they are joined by a bright orange one. The three of them reach the end of the street and come to a bridge when green comes by. The droplets of rain causing little ripples on the pond below the bridge, and the coloured reflections of the umbrellas in the water, all give you a silent pleasure. Pink joins in and they cross a park, filled with slides and swings, and a cobbled walkway. By the time they reach the fountain in the middle of the park, red has also joined the group. Together, they walk down the steps onto the road, and purple leads the way now. They reach the train tracks, and teal huddles close to the rest, as they wait for the train to cross. They cross the tracks and walk on the street once more, with tall buildings on either side. By this time, more umbrella holders of many more merry colours have joined in and together, they cross the busy street, while all the vehicles stop to let them pass. Turn to the next page, and you know they have entered the school grounds, for the paths now, are flanked by tall trees on either side. The merry play of colours from the umbrellas contrasts beautifully with the lush green of the trees, which have been made lusher by the rains. And soon, the scene shifts from the top view and we now stand behind the children, behind all the rows of brightly coloured umbrellas, and we can see the school building just yonder. We also see a row of little feet ensconced in rain boots and sloshing their way over the rain covered ground. On the very last page, you see all the umbrellas stacked neatly in a little holder, a little puddle of water forming on the ground.

This is the book part of it. The book on tape/CD, is communicated through the whimsical music scores by Dong II Sheen. The idea is to view each page of the book in harmony with each track on the CD. There is a little pause between tracks which lets you know when to turn a page. The jaunty notes on the piano form the perfect background score for this colourful, innocent experience of a book and flow rhythmically from one page/score to the next! At the end of it all is a very lovely song, sung by some children in the Korean language. It sounds very mystical and friendly at the same time. A rough translation of it goes like this:

Underneath the sky

Everyone hold up your umbrella
Standing underneath the sky
Everyone - with your umbrella
Listen to the rain

Refrain:

On a rainy day, the umbrella is my house
I can take it with me like a snail's shell
La la la la la, my umbrella
I can take it with me anywhere I go

Everyone spin with your umbrella
Standing underneath the sky
Everyone - spin your umbrella
Like a carousel

Refrain

Everyone put down your umbrella
Standing underneath the sky
Everyone - fold your umbrella
Feel the shining sun

Refrain

Well, that's the song. And Yellow Umbrella is the kind of book that can put a smile on your face and inspire you to be a little artistic. The sight of all those pretty colourful umbrellas on every page had me running to get out the crayons and paint some of my own and Winkie joined me in my little burst of artistry. Obviously, we need a lot of practice to make them seem less like colourful cobwebs and more like umbrellas. So while I do that, why don't you go place a hold in your library!

The Red Tree

There are days when we feel extremely downcast and so lonely(run the Akon song here for effects!) that the whole world seems to pass us by. There is no hope in sight and days are dark and nights even darker. Anxiety and depression sets in and we keep wandering from one disaster to another. There almost seems to be no end for the depression. But, whenever there is a trough; there is always a peak near by.

This is the idea that is portrayed in this rather dark picture book by Shaun Tan called The Red Tree. A name less girl wakes up to find her room filled up with dry leaves which slowly envelope the whole room. She gets out and as she walks through the streets, there is a big crying fish that throws a dark shadow all over her. Every imagery that accompanies her through her journey is dark and poignant. We have no clue why there is always a great depressive mood hanging over her. But, it does not matter. Sometimes we get into depression for a rather small reason and sometimes the reasons are rather big. All we know in the illustrations is that the nameless girl is struck by a nameless / reasonless depression from which she is trying hard to get out. After a long wait, she returns back to her room to see a beautiful red tree blossoming right in front of her bed.

If you ever had a doubt that images can speak a thousand words; please stop by and pick up this book. One will be amazed by the brilliance of this young illustrator. Although this is a picture book, it is definitely not for our 5 year olds. It is more for young adults and people like us. It is the book that you may gift to a friend who is going through a rather tough time. Young children might not get it at all(or atleast that is what I think!).

Shaun Tan, the exemplary illustrator says the following about the book - The Red Tree

"I'd also been increasingly aware that illustration is a powerful way of expressing of feeling as well as ideas, partly because it is outside of verbal language, as many emotions can be hard to articulate in words. I thought it would therefore be interesting to produce an illustrated book that is all about feelings, unframed any storyline context, in some sense going ‘directly to the source’".

Aptly summarises this picture book.

ps: For more pictures/illustrations by Shaun Tan, check out the French site LaBoite Images , Lines and Colors and his own site.

Free Fall

Hobbes (of Calvin and Hobbes) says - I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each others dreams, we can be together all the time.

Calvin always lives in his dreams or his dreams and real life overlap so much that there is hardly any demarcation between them. Calvin lives in a surrealistic world. Who knows? May be most of our kids live in a surreal world where their real life and dream life merge and intermingle. May be, we were like that during our young days and slowly lost ourselves completely to the real world.

A young boy falls asleep reading a book and drifts slowly and silently into the book. The book draws him into a glorious world as it travels through wide and varied landscape. Each page of the book takes him through one adventure after another. As he glides through the wide fields, he meets some the members of his chess game. The bishop comes out to greet him; while the rook and the knight keep a safe distance watching him. The bishop leads him to a gigantic castle guarded by iron-clad knights. The castle is a maze of steps and circles that could lead to anywhere. He goes along to greet the knight only to realise that one of the knights have turned into beautiful sea-birds. The pillars of the castle turn into massive trees and walls of the castle turn into dragon's sharp back. and so on.. goes the dream!

Well, so goes on the wonderful picture book called Free Fall by David Weisner. Another great wordless book; as he demonstrates the amazing creativity and boundary less nature of dreams. David Weisner depicts the fluid nature of the dreams with one dream after another merging in his wonderful paintings. There is so much of activity going on in each page of the book that one needs to spend at least a few minutes going through the minute details. Every page is a potential for the kid to make up his own story. Every time we browse through the illustrations, I end up finding something interesting.

It is a great reminder for us about the tremendous power of creativity and dreams - something that we tend to forget during our mundane day to day work.

As Marcel Proust says - "If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time."

Dream on! and let your kids free to dream their own dreams!

Why?

"Never has there been a good war or a bad peace. " - Benjamin Franklin

Is there any reason for a war/battle? As the war drags on, does any one remember why the whole battle started? At the end, only devastation remains. There would probably be victors, but what is the price? Or is there ever a victor? Is there any sense in a war?

All these are big questions. Something that one would not want our children to know about. Do we want our children to know about war and violence? At what age do we tell them about war and violence. Nikolai Popov thinks it is never too early to talk about violence and war with children. He talks about the senselessness of a war in simple and understandable format of a wordless book called Why?

In a very peaceful environment; a buttoned up frog is sitting peacefully on a rock and enjoying the pleasant evening(or morning) with beautiful flower in its hand. Very soon, a rodent digs out a nearby hole with an umbrella and for no reason attacks the frog. The frog is crestfallen, but, it has a few buddies around and they gang up and attack the rodent. The rodent flees leaving the yellow umbrella. The frogs use the yellow umbrella to pick up flower and enjoy among themselves. Soon, the rodent is back with its own friends and launches a fresh attack on the frogs. Soon, every one joins together and there is a big war in progress. For absolutely no reason, the frogs and rodents keep bashing each other up. The final page shows the first frog with the torn umbrella and the rodent with a completely smashed flower in hand. Both look crestfallen and seem to wonder why the whole incident happened?

All the illustrations are in green water colour initially to depict the greenery and peace and slowly the colours change as we scroll through the various pages. By the end, the whole page is brownish depicting the ravages and destruction of the war. There is no bloodshed, the illustrations emote the dreadfulness and senselessness of the violence very well.

It is an extremely loaded picture book. It is probably a good gift for all adults and kids of all ages. I am not sure if kids might be able understand the depth of the tale, but, it would probably stay in their mind. Sooraj and I went through this book once or twice. But, he did not seem to enjoy it that much - atleast there were no visible signs. I have a feeling he might enjoy it and appreciate more as he grows older.

"An eye for an eye makes the entire world blind" - M K Gandhi