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Yellow Umbrella by Jae Soo Liu. This book isn't exactly new--the first American edition being published in 2002--and it isn't exactly unknown since it got some high praise when it first released including being named one of the New York Times Best Illustrated books of the year (2002). But it is new-to-me. Or relatively new-to-me.

I first read Yellow Umbrella last fall. I loved it. I really really loved it. But since it is a wordless picture book, I felt somewhat at a loss of what to say. But I've decided to be brave and venture forth into new territory. If my review doesn't do it justice, you'll just have to trust me that it is worth it. Worth finding and reading yourself.

The book Yellow Umbrella comes with a CD. For the full experience, readers are urged to listen to the CD while 'reading' or 'sharing' the book. An interesting concept in my opinion. A wordless picture book whose story is told by music--by melody--and by illustrations. It's a completely different experience than you might expect. It's all about mood and tone. I'm not sure everyone will love it. But I urge you to read and see for yourself. You might just find it as delightful as I did.



The CD is 27 minutes. The track needed for reading the story is a little over 7 minutes long. The rest of the CD are "extra" bits that make it just that much more fun of an experience.

Thoroughly appropriate for use as "art appreciation" or "music appreciation" or the more complex aspects of storytelling. It also makes for a great shared experience on a rainy day.


The publisher is Kane/Miller. It was originally published in South Korea.

Rainstorm
Illustrated by Barbara Lehman
Houghton Mifflin, 2007

Do you remember being a kid and how horrible it was when you couldn’t go outside and play and you were bored out of your mind? I do. And this wordless picture book captures a child’s curiosity and imagination.

It’s raining. A little boy character looks out at the rain, tries to find something to do, but he’s just bored. He kicks a ball under a chair. When he goes to retrieve it, he discovers a key. He tries the key out on every object he can find that might require a key. Finally he finds a trunk. He opens it up and there’s a ladder inside that leads somewhere.

This story told solely through the pictures show where the boy goes in his imagination on a rainy day. There he meets up with other children who have also made their way there and want to keep going back to their special place.

This book reminds me of the imaginary places I had as a kid and the imaginary games I’d play on rainy days when I couldn’t go outside.

Of the three books I’ve reviewed, this the first one to have the title large and easily seen. The Red Book doesn’t have a title on the front cover. Museum Trip does, but it is in the form of a small stamp on the bottom right hand corner. Rainstorm’s title is right on the front.

Museum Trip
Illustrated by Barbara Lehman
Houghton Mifflin, 2006

This book begins by introducing us to our main character, a boy who lags a little behind when he goes on a school field trip to a museum. While the other children are looking at fascinating pictures and sculptures, the boy stops to tie his shoe. When he looks up, his class is gone. He looks for them briefly and then discovers more interesting things.

He goes through a door that leads to a room of pictures of mazes. He studies each one, imagining himself making his way through the twists and turns of each. As a reader we escape into these mazes with him and the mazes take on life-size existence. In the last maze, the boy enters a tower and receives a medal. After winning “the prize” for success in each maze, he rejoins his class, still looking at pictures in the museum. No one seems to have missed him while he was gone exploring his imagination. And in this book the reader notices that it’s not another child who has also escaped into the same imaginative exploring, but it’s the museum guide.

I love that last touch. I think it’s wonderful that Lehman celebrates not only a child’s imagination, but also an adult’s imagination.

One of my goals for my blog this year was to study a few authors/illustrators more in depth, to attempt to get my hands on as many books as they have created as possible. As I do my author/illustrator studies, I may not be able to address all of the books he/she has written. I will do my best to cover as much of their work as possible, with as many of the books I can get my hands on.

I begin with Barbara Lehman, illustrator of children’s picture books. She has illustrated at least eight other books written by other writers, including Abracadabra to Zigzag: An Alphabet Book by Nancy Lecourt and Susan Whitcher, Moonfall by Susan Whitcher. In this illustrator study, I will be reviewing the books she self-illustrated: The Red Book, Museum Trip, and Rainstorm.

I must admit, I’m fascinated by wordless picture books. Give me a fascinating David Wiesner or Barbara Lehman tale done completely in pictures, and I’m hooked. I think it’s because as a reader or a viewer, I can take part in deciding so much of the story myself.

I like Lehman's wordless picture books because her stories really capture the imagination of a child. Each child in the three books I’m reviewing this week are whisked away by their own imaginations, which leads them to places only imaginations can take them. And isn’t that the beauty of childhood?

The Red Book
Illustrated by Barbara Lehman
Houghton Mifflin, 2004

This book is probably one of the most easily recognized of Barbara Lehman’s book, probably because it got attention when it won a Caldecott honor. We follow a child who finds a red book in the snow. She takes it with her, and when she opens it up, she finds a map. The child imagines herself in the map, walking around the island. On that same island, a boy finds a red book. He opens it up and sees a picture of a snowy city. Then the little girl sees the boy looking at the book looking at her. Confused? In other words, they see each other through red books.

The girl finds a man selling balloons on the street and she buys them all. She loses the red book on her attempt to fly away to the island. She does reach the island and finds her friend. But someone else has picked up the red book she lost.

This book reminds me very much of the concept of Flotsam (by David Wiesner, Houghton Mifflin, 2006) because of how children are connected through their sense of imagination.

I really like how Barbara Lehman makes it easy to follow the characters in her book and see what they are seeing, but also giving us perspective. I have been studying some older wordless picture books. Many of them have so much on a page that it’s more like reading “Where’s Waldo” and hunting for the character on a busy page rather than feeling connected to a character on their journey. I don’t feel like that with modern wordless picture books, and especially not with Lehman’s work. Her characters are front and center and I am easily pulled into their stories of imagination and where they might take me…

Christmas is here, and I present to you one of my favorite Christmas picture books. It's fairly recent, and I think it has probably flown under many radars. But that's okay, because that fits the message of the book. It's Eve Bunting's We Were There, and it tells the Nativity story from the point of view of the lowliest, ugliest, creatures of the dark--the scorpion, the snake, the bat, the toad, the spider, and (my personal favorite) the rat. While the beautiful sheep and cow and donkey stood by the glow of the Christ child, the forgotten creatures watch from the shadows. But they, too, followed the star, and they too worship. And of course, they are as precious to Him as the beautiful animals. The story is told in prose and is illustrated with outstanding paintings by Wendell Minor. This is a handsome, thoughtful reminder of why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

Museum Trip (Lehman, Barbara)
Rabbit's Morning (Tafuri, Nancy)

In order to facilitate the fact that I can't talk because I have no voice tonight (nasty head cold,) we read some wordless picture books. "Rabbit" isn't strictly wordless; there is a single sentence which is split between the first and last page of the book. But I didn't even need to read that much, because my daughter could handle it ably on her own. "Museum" reminded me a lot of Rainstorm, because in both books the opening of a door leads to unexpected adventure. This is hinted at on the cover itself, as the protagonist of the story peals back a plain white corner to reveal a maze beneath. Very clever.

I might be a new convert to the charms of Lehman's picture puzzles, but I am a long time fan of Nancy Tafuri. I love the clean, uncluttered lines of her drawings. She manages to make her characters (almost always animals in their natural habitat) look realistic and anthromorphized at the same time. I use her books a lot in my baby story times. Her books are generally over sized, which makes them easy to show to a group. And there is always just enough to look at, without having to take in too much.

Not since William Steig's Pete's a Pizza has a rainy day been so much fun. Barbara Lehman's Rainstorm tells the story of a little boy, alone in his tidy nursery in his big old house, and the adventure he discovers when he finds a key under a chair. This is yet another wordless picture book, a genre which is rapidly becoming my favorite in children's literature (and the third featured as a Book of the Week.) And cliche though this might sound, words here are unnecessary. The images work so well on their own, that even the title is one word too many. The combination of full page pictures and comic style blocks advance the story perfectly. 1000 words? These pictures speak volumes.

Gargoyles: Monsters in Stone (Dussling, Jennifer)
Un-Brella (Franson, Scott E.)
Gimme Cracked Corn and I Will Share (O'Malley, Kevin)
Someday (Spinelli, Eileen)

Rather an eclectic selection tonight. We had a wordless picture book (Un-Brella,) a pun-fest ('Cracked Corn",) a prose picture book (Someday,) and a highly informative early reader. Did you know that "gargoyle" comes from a French word meaning "throat"? and have you noticed that it sounds very much like "gargle", which is technically what a Gargoyles do, since they are decorative water spouts? Bedtime reading that is not just for kids indeed!

Check out this trailer for Un-Brella. It doesn't really give an idea of what the book is about (a little girl and her magic umbrella that turns a snowy day to a sunny one, and vice-versa.) But it's sweet and gentle, and the book is certainly all that.

Still going on about wordless picture books....

Sara Varon will follow-up the fantastic Chicken and Cat with (is this a working title?) Chicken and Cat 2. She will be in the Boston area in October (still tentative according to her website) for a book signing. Count me in!

I have not intentionally chosen another picture book as Book of the Week. Nor, to be more specific, have I chosen another wordless picture book to be Book of the Week. That was just a fluke. Peter Collington's The Tooth Fairy was selected last week to commemorate the loss of my daughter's first tooth. It just so happens that ever since we snatched Bow Wow Bugs a Bug (Newgarden, Mark and Megan Montague Cash) from our local library's stacks, my daughter has insisted on "reading" it every night. I have tried wordless picture books on her before, with little success. I don't know if she feels ripped off because there are no words or what, but for whatever reason, the illustrations were never enough to spark her imagination. Not so with Bow Wow--and she's not even a dog person! Each night we have taken turns making up the story to go along with the--truly daft--illustrations. The story is simple enough--a terrier is perturbed by a speck of a bug and follows him around town. My favorite bit is when the terrier comes face to face with an identical terrier sniffing down an identical speck of a bug. The two dogs take part in a mirroring montage straight out of Duck Soup. It's a sly bit of cultural knowledge slipped into a children's book: funny for the kids, a wonderful tip-of-the-hat for Marx Brothers buffs. See? Not just for kids!