The Pigeon!

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus is another favorite among my students.  They absolutely love to shout no to the pigeon when he’s begging to drive the bus.  What makes this book so funny and entertaining for kids? The pictures are definitely a huge part of it.  Somehow the simplicity of the pigeon is immediately relatable to the students.  The simple lines, with the extremely expressive eye and wings, give the pigeon emotion and complete relatability.   Then there is of course, the two-page spread where the pigeon absolutely loses it.  Children love this page.  They giggle and giggle and giggle because they completely relate.  The pigeon is not getting what he wants and it’s just NOT FAIR.

The simplicity of the pictures somehow gives added power to the speech bubbles that make up the story’s text.  A number of students in my class complained that these pictures were too simplistic and not very impressive.  I would argue that it is the very simplicity of the pictures that makes them so very powerful.  The pigeon is absolutely relatable to the students. For me, the text of this book is told in very simplistic, childlike language.  The pigeon is bargaining – repeating words like please and why not and I’ll be … Therefore, for me, it is very natural that the pictures would be simplistic as well.  The simplistic lines of the illustrations match the simplistic wording of the text. 

The pigeon is drawn much like a child would draw him or herself, as a simple line drawing, not quite a stick figure, but pretty close.  The words are exactly as a child would say them – “I’ll be good.”  The bargaining has begun.  For me, the text and pictures work seamlessly together, to create a story infinitely reasonable to all children who have been in that position – trying to convince the adults in their lives that their request is a reasonable one and that they deserve for it to be granted.

If You Give...

I love this entire series of books by Laura Joffe Numeroff.  They are fabulous books for teaching cause and effect as well as circular storytelling.  The pictures themselves are fun for kids, as in If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, when they detail the utter chaos the boy creates in responding to each of the mouse’s demands.  Then, of course, just as the boy has finished cleaning up the chaos, it all begins again, with the mouse’s request for a glass of milk (and by extension, a cookie to go with it). 

This book is wonderful in its predictability, though it is not always predictable in the ways that we expect.  For example, the boy stares in the mirror, decides to give himself a trim, after trimming, wants a broom to sweep with, then a mop for cleaning, then wants to take a nap, but needs a bedtime story that leads him to request some crayons so that he can draw a picture.  As each request is delivered, we understand and find the request to be a natural one, though we didn’t necessarily anticipate that particular request at the time.  It is only at the end, as he arrives at the refrigerator to post his picture, that we can anticipate what the next request will be – milk! 

There are any number of fun extension activities that can be done with this book, particularly around cause and effect.  I don’t just mean cause and effect in the text, but also within the pictures.  The request for a straw leads to a mess that we can see spilling out onto the page.  The request for a broom leads to dust clouds in every room and the request for a mop leads to suds across the floor. It’s chaos unending and it is quite enjoyable for students to analyze and talk about.

While the text indicates what the mouse is requesting, it is only through the illustrations that we understand the results of these requests. Similarly, without the text, we would not know what the boy’s motivation was, nor would we understand that the mouse was the driving force behind all of the boy’s actions.  Without the text, we would have only half the story. 

In essence, the text and the pictures work together to tell the complete story.  The text complements the pictures and the pictures complement the text.  Without both working together, we would have an incomplete story at best. 

Jumanji

I had never actually read the story Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg.  It is hard to read it now, as an adult, without picturing the movie starring Robin Williams and Bonnie Hunt.  I read this book and immediately wanted to go watch the movie again.  I find the story itself to be absolutely charming.  The concept that a board game can affect reality is quite appealing.  Though the book is more simplistic than the movie, I was quite impressed to realize how true to the book the movie had remained.  I also found it impressive that the creators of the movie managed to expand what is arguably, a quite short story, into a full feature-length movie, without losing the feel of the book.  I absolutely love the fact that Judy and Peter are still the stars of the movie, and that the guide they release in the book turns out to be Robin Williams’ character in the movie.  Truly the movie did a superb job of transforming the book into live-action.  The characters in the movie are dressed much as they were dressed in the book and the set resembles the Van Allsburg’s illustrations as well.  Fans of Jumanji, the picture book, must have been thrilled to experience it as a movie.

Jumanji won the Caldecott award for its black and white charcoal pencil drawings.  The drawings show an immense amount of detail, to an extraordinary degree at some points.  For example, the drawing of Peter and Judy facing the adults at the end of the story is incredible.  Judy’s hair is finely drawn, each individual strand rendered in exquisite detail.  Similarly, her brother, Peter’s hair is carefully drawn, as is the expression on his face. In fact, I think the profile of Peter is incredibly well done.  The smile on his face, the shaggy cut, the look in his eyes – all of these combine to make an amazingly realistic portrayal of a young child looking up toward his older sister.  By contrast, the adults in this picture are featured from their necks down, with very little detail drawn.  They are very much in the background, while the children remain the focus of this picture.  It is an incredibly powerful rendering because ironically, the children stand with their backs to the reader, while the adults face the reader.  And yet, the children are the ones our eyes are drawn to, while the adults remain a faded background to the children’s vibrancy.

Good Night, Moon

Personally, Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown has never been a favorite of mine.  I am not fond of the transition between the color pictures and the black and white ones, particularly as the transition never made sense to me.  At first, I thought the color pictures represented what was real and the black and white ones what was not real (i.e., the pictures hung on the walls).  However, this pattern was broken immediately with the second black and white set of illustrations. 

I also did not like how the original picture changed.  There was no old lady in the rocker originally and then there was.  This bothered me as a child.  While I understood the old lady was capable of moving and had obviously sat down in the rocker, I wondered where she had been originally, why she hadn’t been seated in the rocker to start with, or standing next to the bed.  Why did she suddenly appear out of nowhere?  This was unacceptable to me.  She should have been somewhere!  I remember, as a child, flipping back and forth from the first pages to the later ones, trying to find where she would have been.  She just wasn’t there.  And then she was.  It just didn’t make sense to me and that pretty much ruined the book for me.

In addition, even as a child, I had a strong sense that a book should tell a story.  To me, this book excelled at telling me nothing.  It was a book about nothing.  About saying good night.  I did that every night and I wasn’t much interested in reading about the process of saying goodnight, even if it was said to all the inanimate objects in the room.  I found it uninteresting in the extreme. 

For me, this book has always been the book you read to infants and to extremely young children before they are able to express their desire for a real story, and frankly, for real illustrations.  This was a book of the same illustration, over and over again.  The bunny moves in tiny ways, as do the cats and the mouse, but otherwise, everything is the same.  Except… the old lady disappeared again!  From one frame to the next.  I didn’t like that.  It might be realistic, but it annoyed me.  She had the ability to just disappear and we were not shown that.  Where was the love between the mama / grandmama / nanny rabbit and the child?  Where was the goodnight kiss?  Where was the picture of the old lady leaning over the child in tenderness at the end of the night?  I didn’t like the appearing and disappearing old lady who only ever said, “hush”.  There was so much wrong with this story that when I re-read it as an adult for this class, I had the same, exact, visceral reaction as a child – I immediately began cataloging its failings.  I am left to question why so many people love this story, when for me, it is (as my middle school students would say) an epic fail.

Daleks in KC

The Daleks have invaded.  I may be late to work on Monday…

Click, Clack, Moo!

Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin is a favorite among my elementary school students.  They love the repetition of the words “click, clack, moo; click, clack, moo; clickety-clack, moo” and will often read that part for me during a read aloud.  They giggle through much of the book.  What makes this book so funny?

I think perhaps what makes Click Clack Moo so unique and funny is that these are farm animals living where we expect them to live:  on a farm.  The cows and the hens are in the barn.  The ducks are in their pond.  They demonstrate a few crucial human characteristics, but otherwise are perfectly normal cows, hens and ducks.  Unlike other stories where animals exhibit human characteristics, these animals do not attend school, they do not live in houses, and they do not speak English.  The cows speak Moo and they produce milk.  The ducks live in a pond.  The hens produce eggs.  For the most part, they act as one might expect cows, hens and ducks to act.  Except for one small issue:  they think and they type.  They make demands and they act as neutral parties.  They go on strike!

Click Clack Moo is a Caldecott Honor book.  The illustrations are unique and arresting.  They capture the attention with sprawling, painted images.  The image of the cow quite daintily typing away on a small typewriter (and later, the ducks doing the same) is hilarious.  The image of the note from the cows tacked to the barn down overlaid with Farmer Brown’s silhouette is amazing.  The image of fury is there, without actually seeing Farmer Brown at all.  And of course, what child doesn’t love the gigantic picture of the cow’s backside, with a hen peaking from under the cow, both of them watching Farmer Brown in the background read the note?  Every page has a picture – the title page has a picture of a typewriter and the copyright and second title page have a picture of cows sprawling across the two-page spread,  Even the final, end page, has a payoff picture – a duck’s backside disappearing into the water, having sprung there from a diving board.  It becomes clear, as one analyzes the pictures, why this particular book won the Caldecott.

I have always wanted to have the opportunity to use this remarkable children’s book in a high school or even college class.   However, as I have only ever taught elementary school students (and middle school ESL students), I have never had the opportunity to teach this book to his fullest potential.  Of course, with my students, we discuss the power of the written word (of literacy), the concepts of bargaining and being neutral, and the results of this very specific negotiation.  However, we are not able to discuss some of the other, perhaps more subtle, but also more interesting aspects of this work – the cows and hens are female and Farmer Brown is male (a gender role discussion perhaps re the power of the male over the female workers?)  The cows and hens, in effect, unionize for basic rights, and they strike when they do not receive what they want.  Ultimately, however, the most intriguing aspect of this work (and the one aspect of it that I never liked) is that Farmer Brown ultimately wins.  Yes, he has to give in and purchase blankets and a diving board, but the cows and the ducks, in order to receive these things, have given up their voices.  The typewriter is the one tool in their arsenal that provides them a means to escape their fate, and they blithely give it up.  I find this to be a very intriguing book, with so many layers to peel away.  Whoever said that picture books are only for children never read this particular book!

Good Night, Gorilla

I have always enjoyed Good Night Gorilla, mostly for its secondary storyline involving the mouse.  My students also enjoy that storyline and enjoy seeking out the mouse in each story frame to figure out what the mouse is up to this time.  They love the story of the poor mouse, dragging his banana behind him, all the way through the zoo, to the zookeeper’s house, using his banana as a pillow, then back to the zoo, then back to the zookeeper’s house.  They shake their head and commiserate with the mouse along each page of his journey, and in the end, they will often giggle and cheer when the mouse finally gets to eat his banana. 

In some ways, the mouse’s story is much more entertaining than the outer story of all the zoo animals following the zookeeper home to sleep with him and his wife.  This is probably because the mouse has captured his audience from the very first frame, when he works diligently to cut off a piece of string from a balloon, so that he can tie it to the banana and use the string to lower the banana and then drag the banana wherever they go.  The mouse raises sympathy as he changes the way he carries the banana in a few frames, letting the reader know his banana is getting heavier and heavier.  But, determined mouse that he is, he will have his snack (and does!)

This isn’t to say my students don’t like the gorilla because they do.  They especially like when the gorilla steals the keys and then unlocks all of the cages one by one.  They love that the gorilla is always directly behind the zookeeper and that the gorilla looks straight at them to hold a finger to his lips.  They love that the gorilla has brought them into the secret simply by acknowledging their presence as an audience to the story.

The only writing within the story are the speech bubbles where the zookeeper tells everyone goodnight (and the animals eventually answer) and the word zoo above the entrance to the zoo.  The story is truly being told via the pictures.  In many ways, the writing is superfluous, and yet, without it, the zookeeper’s wife would not realize the animals had followed her husband home and so the writing is necessary to move the story forward, and yet, it is secondary to the story told in pictures.

Although Good Night Gorilla is not a wordless picture book, in many ways, it operates as a wordless picture book would.  Without its illustrations, the story is inaccessible to its readers, and thus the illustrations are crucial for the true meaning of the story to be derived.