When a writer and an illustrator blend their gifts to create a picture book, that is a very special kind of magic. When a picture book comes into being because one person has been both author and illustrator, using each of these arts with equal skill, that goes beyond magic into the realm of miracles.
Kam Mak has created one of those miracles with My Chinatown–a book that is impossible to ignore because of his glowing, colorful paintings that dominate the front and back covers and the vivid images within that he has created with his words.
A small boy scuffs through ”drifts of red paper,” ”a snowfall the color of luck,” missing Hong Kong as he faces New Year in a place that is not yet home. “So many things got left behind,” he says, “a country/a language/a grandmother,” and the simple poetry in this statement aches with loss, expressed in new words that “taste like metal in my mouth.”
The words and paintings follow him through the year as he explores his new surroundings, makes friends, finds familiar sights in a place that slowly becomes familiar as well. When the New Year comes around again, with its “lions in the street outside,” he’s eager to be nearby watching them “shaking their neon manes.”
Although this book was wonderfully reviewed by PaperTigers’ contributor Jessica Roeder when it was first published in the spring of 2002, I was so enchanted by it when I recently found it in a Bangkok library that I had to bring it home with me to write about the treasure that had come into my hands. It’s a book that addresses the joy of childhood, the pain of leaving family members when coming to a new country, the excitement of exploring the unfamiliar and making it your own place. Each page of text has its own painting, and the words combine with Mak’s masterful use of color and light to make this book unforgettable.
Anyone living near a United States post office can own a small piece of Mak’s art for the price of a postage stamp–he has designed a set of stamps that illustrate the Chinese Zodiac and are released annually, one at a time as the lunar New Year begins. Happy Year of the Ox, everyone!
Michael Morpurgo is one of the greats in contemporary British children’s literature - he is a master craftsman of storytelling who weaves fiction into such convincing historical contexts that you have to pinch yourself to remember the characters came out of his imagination
Two of his recent stories for older children have a wartime setting: but both stories also have roots in the present and a new generation, which bring a perspective of hope and renewal to counterbalance the feelings of despair engendered by these examples of the futility and madness of war. The Best Christmas Present in the World (Egmont, 2004) centres around a letter from Jim Macpherson, an English officer in the First World War, which relates the extraordinary events of the momentary truce and famous football game between the British and the Germans on Christmas Day, 1914. Many years later, at Christmas time, the letter is found in an old, second-hand desk by the narrator. It is marked as “Jim’s last letter, received 25th January 1915. To be buried with me when the time comes.” And so our narrator sets out to find “Dearest Connie” - and gives her the best Christmas present in the world…
Meanwhile, The Mozart Question (Walker Books, 2008) is the story of a world-famous violinist, Paolo Levi, whose parents’ lives were saved in the Second World War through playing the violin in an orchestra at a Nazi concentration camp. Lesley, the story’s narrator, is a young journalist who is sent to Venice to interview Paolo. She pointedly does not ask him the forbidden Mozart question - but the time is right for him to talk about it. He tells her about how he secretly began to play the violin, not realising that there were secrets he did not know about his parents’ past; and how eventually his playing “made music joyful” for his father once more.
Reading these books aloud to older children prompts a lot of questions and discussion. As Morpurgo says in his Author’s Note at the end of The Mozart Question:
It is difficult for us to imagine how dreadful was the suffering that went on in the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War [...] It is when you hear the stories of the individuals who lived through it - Anne Frank, Primo Levi - that you begin to understand the horror just a little better…
By presenting these individual, albeit fictional accounts, Morpurgo is helping to ensure that the facts continue to be put before a new generation, that they may learn from them - and, dare I say it, he does so in a way that will probably have much more impact than a history lesson. His prose begs to be read aloud; and both books also have the distinct advantage of being illustrated by Michael Foreman - Morpurgo and Foreman really do make a wonderful team! And when they’ve listened to the stories and talked about them, children will want to go away and read them quietly on their own - again and again.
You can find other reviews of The Mozart Question on 100 Scope Notes, Shelf-Employed and Achukareviews; and one I could really empathise with at Findlay Library Kids.
A few postings ago, I wrote about books about winter in Canada. Today’s featured book is considered a Canadian classic. It depicts the life of a family of homesteading Mennonites in northern British Columbia. Mary of Mile 18 is set in the remote community of Mile 18, so named because of its location, eighteen miles off of a turn-off on the Alaska Highway. Author Anne Blades worked as a teacher for the children of this community a few years before the book’s publication in 1971. The beginning of the book sets the tone of the story:
It is a cold winter in northern British Columbia. At the Fehr farm snow has covered the ground since early November and it will not melt until May.
Little Mary Fehr is the oldest of five. It is through her eyes that the reader gets a glimpse of the harsh realities of homesteading in such a severe climate. There is no running water nor electricity in the Fehr house. Snow is brought in by pailfuls by the children to be melted for household water needs. The house is heated by a wood-burning stove and a barrel heater; both of which consume a lot of wood and keep the house just barely warm enough. The truck engine must be heated with a propane torch for an hour before it will start.
Despite these conditions, Mary is cheerful and sees beauty in her surroundings. One day she discovers an abandoned half-wolf pup near her house and wants to keep it. Her father however, is stern. “You know the rules. Our animals must work for us or give us food.” Mary is devastated. How could such a pitiful creature prove useful to the household? The rest of the story is about how Mary and her father come to terms about his rules and her desire. And it is the outcome that has made this story the classic that it is.
