In Praise of Picture Books
Jul. 16th, 2010 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerPicture books! They don’t get enough LJ-love, probably because most Ljers quit reading them regularly fifteen years ago. But – these are the books that form the mulch of our minds. They’re the dark, peaty soil that nourishes our imaginations! From picture books flowers a love of literature, an appreciation of art, an adoration of alliteration, quick someone give me another word beginning with A...
Anyway! I spent the weekend at home for a wedding, and when not occupied with wedding related things I reread my old picture books.
Picture books – or at least my favorites – are all prose-poems The alliteration! (Someday I should read Gawain and the Green Knight. The idea of alliteration makes my heart palpitate.) The refrains! The delicious words! In one of my favorites, The Mousehole Cat they eat star-gazy pie. I have no idea what it is, but just hearing it evokes a sense of wonder and comfort and “Mom, can you read this to me again and again and again and again and – ”
My poor parents.
Other favorites: Jan Brett’s The Christmas Reindeer, which has the most beautiful, rich, detailed pictures, bordered with illustrations of Santa’s workshop.
Patricia Polacco’s Thunder Cake, about a girl who bakes a cake with her grandmother as a thunderstorm brews. I was so afraid of thunderstorms then, and that book helped soften the fear.
And two books by Barbara Cooney. Roxaboxen, about a cadre of kids living in the desert build an imaginary city out of white stones and desert glass: turquoise, amethyst, and sea green; and Miss Rumphius, which everyone I know calls The Lupine Lady. (I had a friend once who found a bench in a garden dedicated to Miss Rumphius. I thought that was pretty ace.)
Anyway, the Lupine Lady walks around the east coast scattering lupines like a floral Johnny Appleseed. I adored that book. I still love that book; I want to be the lupine lady, at least metaphorically. My LJ is in some ways an extension of that side of myself.
Did anyone else read any of these?
***
In other news, a trio of flies invaded the cabin while I was at the wedding. I squashed two of them, but they popped back up and fluttered off like cartoon characters, so I’ve given up and given them names: Vanya, Tanya, and Alexei Grigorovich. They’re either White émigrés or turnstile-hopping Brezhnev era chess players, and they want my bananas.
Anyway! I spent the weekend at home for a wedding, and when not occupied with wedding related things I reread my old picture books.
Picture books – or at least my favorites – are all prose-poems The alliteration! (Someday I should read Gawain and the Green Knight. The idea of alliteration makes my heart palpitate.) The refrains! The delicious words! In one of my favorites, The Mousehole Cat they eat star-gazy pie. I have no idea what it is, but just hearing it evokes a sense of wonder and comfort and “Mom, can you read this to me again and again and again and again and – ”
My poor parents.
Other favorites: Jan Brett’s The Christmas Reindeer, which has the most beautiful, rich, detailed pictures, bordered with illustrations of Santa’s workshop.
Patricia Polacco’s Thunder Cake, about a girl who bakes a cake with her grandmother as a thunderstorm brews. I was so afraid of thunderstorms then, and that book helped soften the fear.
And two books by Barbara Cooney. Roxaboxen, about a cadre of kids living in the desert build an imaginary city out of white stones and desert glass: turquoise, amethyst, and sea green; and Miss Rumphius, which everyone I know calls The Lupine Lady. (I had a friend once who found a bench in a garden dedicated to Miss Rumphius. I thought that was pretty ace.)
Anyway, the Lupine Lady walks around the east coast scattering lupines like a floral Johnny Appleseed. I adored that book. I still love that book; I want to be the lupine lady, at least metaphorically. My LJ is in some ways an extension of that side of myself.
Did anyone else read any of these?
***
In other news, a trio of flies invaded the cabin while I was at the wedding. I squashed two of them, but they popped back up and fluttered off like cartoon characters, so I’ve given up and given them names: Vanya, Tanya, and Alexei Grigorovich. They’re either White émigrés or turnstile-hopping Brezhnev era chess players, and they want my bananas.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 10:37 pm (UTC)my favorite sort of people from the Brezhnev era!
I love Barbara Cooney's art, but I didn't/don't know that story--except from you. Jan Brett's art is lovely too, and Patricia Polacco lives somewhere near here and came to the kids' school at one point to do a reading, if I recall correctly!
I was thinking of children's books too, today...
no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 02:10 pm (UTC)In my freshman year Jan Brett stopped at the Appleton library, in a trailer painted to look like an illustration from her book. I wanted to go meet her, but the line went around the corner and I had class. :(
What were you thinking about children's books?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-18 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-16 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 02:19 pm (UTC)