Yesterday we went to the library and signed up for the Summer Reading Challenge – this year it’s called Team Read - and judging by the piles of books we all came out with, we’re really going to enjoy it. A new book in was Kanako Usui’s The Fantastic Mr Wani. Hooray! It’s been out since 2005 and I certainly knew of it before now but we’d never actually read it – and since it features in our current Big Picture Gallery, it couldn’t have appeared on the library shelves at a better time.
Mr Wani is a crocodile who is in a hurry to get to a party but the journey proves to be rather eventful. The story is helped on its way by expressive punctuation and font sizes and the illustrations are just superb. I love the way Usui draws the various animals’ eyes and there are lots of expressions for listening/ reading children to enjoy imitating – like the squashed mice with their tongues hanging out. There is a glorious moment where you just know the inevitable is about to happen as you turn the book end on to see Mr Wani hurtling down from the sky over a sledge carrying three penguins.
That is the other lovely thing about this story. It completely enters the spirit of young children’s imaginations – the journey is totally matter-of-fact in its acceptance of mice carrying umbrellas, balloons attached to the signpost pointing to Town and then the three penguins sledging down a snowy hillside, followed by Mr Wani’s “Bump! into Mr Elephant’s rump” (a very satisfying rhyme that I can see finding its way into the family lexicon) and bouncing from prickly hedgehog to prickly hedgehog through the Froggies’ door and so into the middle of the party. There’s an extra little surprise at the end as well…
This is a great readaloud, with lots of potential for “audience participation”! Kanako Usui also has a great Japanese/ English bilingual blog – well worth a visit.
…that’s a fear of solitude or “I don’t like being alone, or in the dark”, as Little Mouse puts it in Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears by Emily Gravett, which has just been awarded the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal. While bedtime itself can be such a cosy, reassuring end to the day, with a story and a cuddle, there often comes a time when children don’t want to be left alone in the dark. Logical reassurances go unheeded and sometimes the turning-out ritual takes on the stuff of the very stories they’ve been laughing at, as monsters are chased from under beds and spooks are ousted from wardrobes… This is where Little Mouse comes in.
The book’s template is a self-help book for people to log their own fears: and each pair of phobias on a double page is cleverly interlinked.
“Each page in this book provides a large blank space
for you to record and face your fear using a combination of:
Drawing
Writing
Collage.
REMEMBER!
A FEAR FACED IS A FEAR DEFEATED.”
Only, what we have here is Mouse’s personally completed copy – and what a timorous wee beastie he is! He has filled in every page, from Entomophobia, a fear of insects, through monsters, yes, to, well, everything (that’s Panophobia!). In fact, Mouse has chewed it and glued it; and with all he goes through, it’s amazing that both he and his pencil survive until the end.
There is genius behind this book – every time I look at it I am struck by the lightness of touch Gravett has brought to this tricky subject. There is so much humor (not least in the way it ends) and this provides a very real opening for children to talk openly about their fears, however irrational – and, in fact, not just their own: my Arachnophobia (though I’m loathe to acknowledge it by its proper name) was pounced upon gleefully by my two…
The artwork is stunning, right down to the tiniest detail of a dog-eared page corner. As well as the holes and torn edges, there are collages with flaps, some terrifying feathers and an annotated “Visitors’ Map of the Isle of Fright”. This is a book to be drooled over - though perhaps not literally. Button and Mr Moo, the rats to whom the book is dedicated, have already done their business… In fact, some of the illustrative techiniques involved seem set to cause a furore – but that mustn’t be allowed to detract from the quality of the book itself. I go along with The Ultimate Book Guide’s comments about the publishers too – Macmillan are indeed to be congratulated; and I can only envy Daniel is preview peek at Gravett’s soon-to-be-published The Odd Egg!
Here’s a link to yesterday’s interview with Emily in The Guardian and do look at her own website, including this activity to “Make Your Own Collage of Fears”. She was also recently selected as one of The Big Picture campaign’s ten Best New Illustrators in the UK, as announced at the Bologna Book Fair. You can read The Big Picture’s interview with her here.
And a little PS – we will be featuring three of The Big Picture’s longlisted artists in our Gallery in our next PaperTigers update…
Yesterday we went to the library and signed up for the Summer Reading Challenge – this year it’s called Team Read - and judging by the piles of books we all came out with, we’re really going to enjoy it. A new book in was Kanako Usui’s The Fantastic Mr Wani. Hooray! It’s been out since 2005 and I certainly knew of it before now but we’d never actually read it – and since it features in our current Big Picture Gallery, it couldn’t have appeared on the library shelves at a better time.