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Last year was (unofficially) the Year of the Sloth.
There was Sloth Slept on by Frann Preston-Gannon, Sparky! by Jenny Offill and Chris Appelhans, The Power of Sloth by Lucy Cooke and The Lazy Friend by Ronan Badel to name but a few.
I wonder, however, if perhaps 2015 will be the Year of the Lemur…
Lemur Dreamer by Courtney Dicmas (@CourtneyDicmas) stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it; the bold beauty and energy of its cover, with a silver foil moon is genius. I immediately wanted to know where the lemur is off to, and then I noticed that actually he was in a rather perilous situation (can you see the board he’s stepping off?)…
We all know the power a good opening line to reel us into a story, but with picture books, front covers can have the same task; a single snapshot to seduce us, to pique our curiosity and get us to turn inside. And Lemur Dreamer manages to do that perfectly, drawing us into a tale of an innocent lemur whose habit of sleepwalking takes him on all sorts of adventures but also puts him in danger. He’s got some great friends, however, who keep an eye out for him and come up with an ingenious solution to the trouble he finds himself in.
Dicmas believes her superpower is “drawing crocodile eyebrows“. She certainly has a real knack for fluid, expressive and joyous animal illustrations, drawn with simple outlines and filled with washes of colour, reminding me at times of the brilliant Polly Dunbar. Dicmas also has a self-confessed addiction to the the colour blue, and this gives the book a perfect soothing tone, ideal for a giggly yet calming and reassuring bedtime read.
Harold Finds A Voice, Dicmas’ début picture book, was shortlisted in the UK for the 2014 Waterstones Book Prize and I suspect more official recognition of her work will follow swiftly. I certainly will be on the look out for future books by this talented artist.
Inspired in particular by the shiny cover and one of the interior spreads we turned our hands to creating a Dicmas inspired picture.
First the girls gave their paper a watercolour wash and once dry, they stuck tissue paper on in the shape of simple buildings. On a separate piece of baking paper (tracing paper would have worked too), they drew another row of buildings, in outline with a few windows and other details.
M and J stuck the baking paper over the watercolour-washed paper, and then cut out a moon from silver foil, a length of string for a washing line, and copied the lemur’s legs and a pigeon to stick onto the top layer of their image.
These are the latest additions to our home gallery, alongside last week’s printing and fishing nets:
Whilst painting, drawing and sticking we listened to:
Other activities which could work well alongside reading Lemur Dreamer include:
What book cover has recently made you stop in your tracks?
Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of Lemur Dreamer by its publisher.
Aardvarks, now lemurs. Does it get any better than this? The eactivity with the girls is looks very engaging, thanks, Zoe.
A fun post.
Thanks Simone, the girls certainly enjoyed doing the collage-y art, and lemurs are sooooo cute
Well we had Sloths in our Pojo Saves the Rainforest book last year perhaps we will have to write one with Lemurs this year. Not on the horizon at the moment as we are writing about the Romans and the Vikings – but you never know in this strange land of children’s fiction.