War and peace with elephants

Tusk Tusk by David McKee continues this month's posts related to peace.   McKee is probably most known within ELT for his Elmer books.  But he's also the creator of the  Mr Benn books and films, very much part of my childhood memories. Mr Benn is a very ordinary looking banker, who wears a bowler hat,  but he has splendid adventures when he puts on different dressing up clothes, from a very special costume shop. The films were made in the 70's and I have discovered are now available on YouTube.  A truely brilliant discovery, I shall be watching them all over the next couple of weeks.  The music gives me those shivers associated with long ago memories.  Amazing!  Here's the link to Mr Benn, The Red Knight, the very first episode of the series ...  14 minutes of memory lane. 

McKee began writing and illustrating books in the 60's,  when picturebooks really began to take shape and become as we know them today.  His contemporaries are picturebook creators like John Burningham, Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle, Pat Hutchins and Raymond Briggs.  

Tusk Tusk was written in 1978 and is about black and white elephants who love everything except each other. Look at the cover, those two elephants, ready for a duel, separted by a tree, the home to birds. Keep your eye on these birds as you look at the book, for the way they react to all the elephants do is entertaining!

How about the peritext?  There's a great copyright page, with a cameo illustration of two fighting elephants and the ironic caption "Vive la différence!"  The visual clues tipping us off to the violent content continue with the title page - a fluffy, feathery tree separting two very angry elephants, tusks touching. 

As you look at some of the pictuebook pages, notice McKee's use of symmetry in the illustrations, the elephants are the same in every way, like mirrors of each other, just different colours.  

"Once all the elphants in the world were black or white.  They loved all creatures"

Don't they look happy and relaxed?  At one with nature and those bird friends they each have, and the trees are soft and feather-like, the left one even has green shoots.  Harmony and peace. 

"... but they hated each other."

Yikes, not only are the elephants looking mean, with trunks like fists, but the trees do too.  The leaves are spikey, they look as though they are swaying in the heated atmosphere.  The background wash is a pinky red, the colour of danger.  The next spread,  "... and each kept to his own side of the jungle." is shown by a powerful image of trees looking like walls, the elephants on either side.  They are lined up, like an army preparing for battle.    Can you guess what will happen next? 

... of course!  War is declared and the elephants huddle together, fists raised and glaring, black at white, white at black. The birds in the trees are flying off, beaks downturned, worried.   

Peace loving elephants, (for there were some) ran into the jungle, a deep dark jungle - so deep and dark (a maze of a place in fact) and they were never seen again.  And so the battle began.  It went on ...  and on. 

These missile-like trees are excellent hiding places for the elephants whose fist-like trunks have become powerful firearms.  And, as with many terrible wars, it didn't stop until all the elephants were dead. 

Piles of black and white elephants, brought together in death, lying against feather-like palm trees, trees we associate with peace and tranquility.  And what happened next?

Grandchildren of the peace-loving elephants came out of the jungle, and guess what, they were grey (I always wondered why elephants were grey!).  They are shown leaping, trunks waving, happy and playful.  The birds are back too, they're a little perplexed possibly, but happy to see their friends the elephants again. 

"... and since then elephants have lived in peace."

Cool illustration, a calm blue background,  just the one tree, a peaceful green, with a canopy of foliage that covers all elephants, no matter what.  They are calm and relaxed too, playing with each other and their friends the birds.  Look at their trunk-like trunks, no fists or firearm images.  A happy ending? 

"But recently the little ears and the big ears have been giving each other strange looks." 

And look at those birds, they look very annoyed.  Not good.  If you go back to the cool blue illustration you'll see big ears and small ears are on both sides of the tree together, but here they are separate, their trunks are now like hands, pointing or hiding whispered gossip. The trees are different again, each leaning away from the centrefold. 

Oh dear, not a happy ending, but we are left wondering, as the very last page has a cameo illustration ...

What do you think?  Was there another war?  

It's a deceptively simple picturebook, bringing violence and peace together on a page, an excellent title for children in upper primary and lower secondary providing space for discussion around such themes as racism, prejudice and tolerance.  TeachEnglish has a set of lesson plans for this very purpose, which can be downloaded here.  And a very readable article by Janet Evans can be downlaoded from my website, scroll down and click on "War and conflict: books can help." Finally I discovered a link to a useful set of guidelines for using Tusk Tusk for Philosophical discussion.

To finish, here's a short film of David McKee talking about his childhood and his first pictures.   

Turns out he loves Paul Klee, one of my favourite artists... Castle and sun must have  influenced Elmer! 

A simple story of war and peace

The Manneken Pis is a statue in Brussels of a child urinating.  Its history and origins are unclear but one of the tales told to tourists is that the statue represents a small boy who stopped a war by peeing on the enemy.   Vladimir Radunsky liked this particular story so much that he created a picturebook called,  Manneken Pis: a simple story of a boy who peed on a war.  

The front cover shows us Radunski's version of the boy doing his deed, and the back cover is a montage of a photo of the real statue, with the words ... "The people made a bronze statue of him and named it Manneken Pis. This all happened a long time ago."

Radunsky's illustrations are bold and bright, made with quick brushstrokes, done in a child-like fashion, against sparse backgrounds or sharply cut paper montages.  Really nice and eye catching.  The endpapers are striking,  and change colour from front to back.  Here are the front ones: 

Radunsky is introduced to us on the back dust jacket flap ... he's dressed in the costume of the period, a little red hat and ruffles on his jacket. It's a little strange, until you recognise him later within the story and he's also on the copyright page... he's our narrator of course! 

And so we begin, turn the page and we are introduced to the setting, "a small, beautiful town behind a stone wall."  It looks calm and serene, the poplar trees neatly placed around the town walls, houses around a big central plaza. The sun is shining.  

Throughout the picturebook Radunsky uses different sized fonts, as shown here.  They cleverly focus our attention on aspects of the narrative or the illustration. The story continues by introducing the characters, a boy, and his mother and father.  In a large font we read "His parents loved him madly."  They kiss him and play with him, and go to the flower market with him everyday...

"They were so happy."  ... in a huge big font above an exuberant page showing the family swimming in flowers.  But then something happened.  

"The War".  A mustard yellow page, a stark contrast to the light flowery one, previous.  Green faced soldiers, their tongues lolling, with dogs and medieval weapons, are seen marching across the double spread towards the idyllic  town.   They look mean. They ARE mean.  

They fight the town's men, depicted as gentlemen, clad in tights with plumed hats and carrying swords.  They are different to the club holding enemy, who seem uncouth and ignorant.  The background is divided into black and white, and gives the impression of the men being either in the town or outside the walls, at the same time reinforcing the fact that they fought "Day and night,   day and night." 

And then our narrator appears in his red hat and frilly collar, he points to the town, "... a small, sad town." ... now sombre, against a black background, two red crosses apparent on the church-like buildings.  

The little boy has lost his parents.  "Where did they go?"  He called but no one came. He looked and looked, but all he saw was fighting, all he heard was "Bang - Bang, Boom - Boom, Cling - Clang."  Poor chap.  He was scared and he needed his mum and dad ... "but he also needed ... to pee."  So he did! And here we see him urinating over the fighting soldiers.  

"Suddenly everything was still." Surprised faces look up, women and priests, men and soldiers.  Then somebody laughed ... "ha-ha-ha-ha." 

Radunsky has used that same mustard yellow, yet with all those smiling faces this yellow gives us a happy page.  Even the green faced enemies are grinning, everyone is happy! And so ... "On and on it went, until the sun has set and the first star came out, and the people had grown so tired of laughing that they dropped their arms and went to sleep.  When they woke up the next morning there was no more war.  Why? Because of that wonderful, wonderful little boy. Hurr-a-a-ah!!!" 

We are treated to an "Epilogue".  

We see our little boy reunited with his family; the narrator is answering questions from his audience of child and animal listeners. And of course, now you know the story, the whole story, you "... can tell it to your children, and they will tell it to their children, and their children will tell it to their children, and so on, and so on."  

The back end papers are a jovial, bright, peace-loving green ... 

... and it is here that we are introduced to our narrator, on the inside flap of the dust jacket:

What a quirky little book!  Could you use it in your classrooms?  The message of peace is clear.  Upper primary could possibly do a short project in which the students researched other statues, in their own country or other countries.  Are there any that have stories of peace behind them?  Are there any statues of children? 

It's thanks to my friend, and fellow picturebook lover, Janet Evans, who I was chatting to about 'peace' books, that I discovered this title ... Thanks Janet!

Small Mouse BIG CITY: an authorstrator at work

IBBY

Yesterday was International Children's Book Day and I didn't manage to co-ordinate my post, but better late than never.  Here's the IBBY page with the yearly posters and messages from different countries, they make interesting reading, so do follow the links. 

Small Mouse BIG CITY is a picturebook by Simon Prescott, a new illustrator on the block, well not that new, but fairly new!  He's an example of what Martin Salisbury would call an "authorstrator" (2008): he comes from the world of fine art, and creates picturebooks - both the words and the pictures.  He took the MA in Children's Book Illustration at the Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and he would have been one of Martin Salibury's students.  The course is churning out some really interesting picturebook creators, and Simon Prescott is one of them! He was nominated as one of the best emerging illustrators in 2009 by the Book Trust Early Years Awards, who described the picturebook like this: 

The atmospheric quality of the illustrations – dizzying impressions of light, space, movement and colour – and the inventive page layouts capture Country Mouse's breath-taking first-timer's experience of the city in this visually absorbing re-telling of Aesop's fable.

Small Mouse BIG CITY is a sort-of-version of The town mouse and the country mouse, the well known Aesop fable, but it it only features half the story: the country mouse visiting the city bit of the story.  

The format is interesting, it's a long book and incorporates Prescott's wonderful wide-angle illustrations brilliantly. The front cover shows us a tiny mouse in the city, with huge human legs walking quickly along the pavement, rubbish as big as the mouse at their feet, and a floating bit of litter with Simon Prescott's name on it.  The mouse is asking for help and it's quite a worrying illustration, as no one is taking any notice of him. The title fonts visually support the concept of big and small, using lower and upper case letters, and in different fonts: smaller, more fragile looking lower case and big strong upper case. The back cover gives us a peek of what's inside,  a series of illustrations from the mouse's adventures inside, accompanied by a wordy blurb.  

The endpapers are a dark evening outline of a city.  Nice!  The title page is also deliciously full of all sorts of information important to the narrative sequence. (It reminds me a little of the title page in Wolves by Emily Gravett.)

You can see all sorts related to the story, much of which you only pick up once you've read it through.  Could this be some of the paraphernalia Mouse brings back from his trip?  A city map, bus tickets, a postcard, the invitation letter from his friend, (great address by the way!) a photo of the cheese he saw (maybe even some cheese crumbs as a souvenir?), some photo-booth shots of his friend (you can just see  a tuft of his mousey hair above the postcard) ... lots to wonder about.  And of course the publisher info is there too, on a wafting piece of paper. 

Prescott's illustrations are lovely.  On his website he says he uses all sorts of mediums, but it's the crayon here that I love (I'm a pencil crayon devotee!), coupled with the washes of colour.  Really lovely and they capture both the country and city scenes magnificently. 

Here's Mouse sitting on a tree reading that letter we just saw, the vast green fields below, peaceful and idyllic. We see these fields through the train window as he journey's to the city, the scarf we see on the branch above, tightly wound round his neck.  "His heart raced, as the countryside swept by in a blur of leafy green." All we can see is the mouse peering through the train window, and the red train really does look like it's speeding! 

Then suddenly... WOW! 

There we are, in the city.  Yikes!  We have to turn the book around, as it's portrait format, and it's such a shock.  It's a different world.   "The city took his breath away."  And it took mine away too! Very clever Mr Prescott! Then we return to the landscape format for those wide-angle shots of the vastness of the city...

... where the Country's Mouse's feeling of loneliness and concern builds ...

"The streets all looked the same ... strange ... dark ..."

"...  and dangerous!"

This sequence of illustrations is delicious, with the middle one made of four separate frames, almost rushing us along, making our heart beat quicker, and to stop when we turn the page and see that frightening traffic.   But as in all good page turners, cliff-hangers even ... our Country Mouse is saved, as his friend turns up just in time.   The colours change from dark bluey black to a light yellowy orange and "Suddenly the city didn't feel so strange".  We see the mouse friends walking arm and arm through the more friendly city, jabbering away. "'You'll love it here,' said City Mouse."  (The page in the book shows the mice at a window looking over the city, with a city landscape much like the one we saw in the endpapers.)  And of course Country Mouse did love it! 

"The city was amazing! The city was intoxicating! The city was magnificent!" 

But as he sat with his friend, admiring the expanse of the many rooftops,  he catches a glimpse of the green fields, his green fields, and he suddenly feels sad. He misses his countryside, and so he returns.  "He loved City Mouse and he loved the city.  But it was time to go home."  City Mouse waves good bye at the train station, he's holding his friend's scarf, (a thank you gift maybe?)  ...  and Country Mouse returns to his green, tranquil countryside. 

"There's just no place like home."  

(Absolutely! I get that feeling too when I go on trips.  I see amazing things, but I love getting home.) And look!  Can you see all the stuff he brought back?  Some cheese as a souvenir, postcards, there's a map in the bag, and a cloud-full of wonderful memories.  Nice! The shot from above works really well too, you can almost imagine the camera at the end of a film moving out and showing the field as one of many, then the towns and cities, and more fields and forests and the sea and whole continents and then the world.  Little Country Mouse in his field happy in his place in the world. 

Good little, BIG story huh?  Children will be mesmerised by the illustrations, and will be caught up in the heart-stopping, first impressions of the city.  The different perspectives will also help them feel empathy, though looking at big things from small places is something they are familiar with! And a followup could be talking about the city and the countryside and the different experiences.

I found an interesting CBeebies film on YouTube.  Small Mouse BIG CITY is read by David Tennant.  He does read it well, in his lovely Scottish accent, but the pages they selected from the picturebook, to accompany his storytelling, are disappointing.  But it's another version your children could listen to. 

Here's the reference to "authorstrators": Salisbury, M. (2008) The artist and the postmodern picturebook, in: L. Sipe & S. Pantaleo (Eds) Postmodern Picturebooks: play, parody and self-referentiality (New York, Routledge).

Lost and found: a story of friendship

Lost and found is Oliver Jeffers' second book, published in 2005.  It was inspired after a funny event which took place in Belfast, his home town: a group of school children went on a trip to Belfast Zoo, and a child managed to smuggle a baby penguin out of the zoo, into the school bus and all the way home, without anybody noticing.  When it was eventually discovered in the bathroom of his home, the parents kept it overnight in the bath tub, until the zoo came to collect it the next day. It was the talk of the town for days! Lost and Found emerged from this story as an award winning picturebook.  Quite different, but the influence is recognisable.
In 2009, Studio AKA produced a film inspired by Jeffers' picturebook. The film has gone on to win 60 awards, that's right, 60, and its still winning awards, quite amazing - they are listed on the Studio AKA site, if you want to be WOWED! The 2009 BAFTA Award is probably the most prestigious. 

It is a wonderful, really wonderful film, and is very different to the picturebook, yet still contains  the essence of Oliver Jeffers' story and characters. Philip Hunt, who directed the film, admitted to creating a longer story line, as the 32-page picturebook would have given no more than a five-minute film.  What makes it so special is that Oliver Jeffers worked with the studio to create the new storyline and the new look to the story, as well as providing some of the visuals. 

Screen shot from one of the film scenes.

You'll notice the signs are all in his well-known, hand-written, slightly lopsided fonts! If you manage to see the film, the accompanying "How the film was made" is fascinating, as it takes you through the extended storyline and shows how they created the 3D sets and scenery, including the fabulous life-like sea scenes. 
I did have a link to a youtube trailer of the film here - but it's been removed from youtube.  Great pity ... it was a good trailer. 

Jacket flap photo

Oliver Jeffers has been making picturebooks for a decade and his style is recognizable a mile off. Those stubby little figures, with large heads and stick legs belong to no other illustrator.  But, if you visit his website, you'll be surprised when you see his art work, which is very life-like, he is extremely tallented.   I met Oliver in February 2009 at a British Council Seminar, Words and beyond, in Kuala Lumpur.  He talked about  his  work and what impressed me was that his fine art, (paintings and installations / objects), feeds his picturebook artwork and vice-versa - he is a complete artist. Oliver also talked about his interest in how pictures and words work together, the essence of picturebooks. His first picturebook, How to catch a star was created when he was still at art school in Ulster.  He was extremely lucky to get a publishing deal within days of sending off the maquete to Harper Collins USA: every young picturebook illustrator's dream.   As you can see from his photo here, he loves hats, and he wore about six different ones in the four-day seminar we both attended!

I digress!  The picturebook Lost and Found is one of Carol Read's  favourite six picturebooks.  It's a cutie, illustrated in Jeffers' watercolour style,  with pastel tones. Unlike most picturebooks, Jeffers does not use double spreads as whole illustrations, but instead the left and right pages provide the reader with separate sequential steps to the narrative.  Sometimes the ilustrations appear as vignettes, other times as framed illustrations, (sometimes more than one frame per page), and other pages will be covered right to the edges with his watercolour washes: skies and the sea are often portrayed like this. He uses scale very well too, you'll see an example later in this post. 
The front and back covers, when opened out, create a whole scene, the boy and the penguin floating in the cold antartic waters.  This is a culminating image as it is from the end of the story: the friends have been separated and reunited.

The title page is a balmy seaside esplanade, the boy and the penguin walking side by side as though deep in conversation.  The sun setting into a salmon pink sky.  It's a beautiful though odd illustration for a title page, I'd associate it with the ending of the story not the beginning.  

And so we begin our story: "Once there was a boy and one day he found a penguin at his door." It's a sunny illustration, yellow is a positive, happy colour, it's the beginning of a relationship. (My photo doesn't do the colours justice, they are much brighter in the book).

The penguin followed him everywhere, and because the penguin looked sad, the boy presumed it was lost.  So he went to the "Lost and Found Office" and he asked the birds in the park, "But no one was missing a penguin."

Once the boy had discovered that penguins came from the South Pole he decided he had to take the penguin back. So off to the harbour: the right hand page here is fabulous, a huge boat and a tiny boy and penguin. "His voice was too small to be head over the ship's horne." Lovely illustration. 

And so, together with the Penguin, the boy made a boat and they sailed to the South Pole.  Here is where Jeffers' wonderful double spreads come into their own - a great sea scene showing the boy and the penguin in a bad weather "... when the waves were as big as mountains." They remind me of The great wave off Kanagawa, by the Japanese artist Hokusai. 

The boy and the penguin survive the sea adventure and get to the South Pole, where there's a neon sign written in Jeffers' characteristic writing:  "Welcome to the South Pole".  The boy is happy he's arrived, the penguin is sad. There's a great illustration of the boy and the penguin looking at each other, unable to say goodbye, though the words tell us, "The boy said goodbye ... ". The boy leaves the penguin, alone on the edge of an iceberg. "... and floats away.  But as he looks back, the penguin looks sadder than ever."  That's when he began to wonder.  

The illustrations show us the sequence of his thoughts and the sudden realization that, "The penguin wasn't lost. It was just lonely." And so he returns to the iceberg but there's no penguin in sight.  

We know he's not there, because we have been shown the penguin floating back to sea on his umbrella. Can you see him on the other side of the floating berg?  The boy is unaware of this, and so he returns to his boat and rows home. It's a very sad scene,  children audibly take a breath, some adults probably do too.  But as in all good stories, the boy catches up with the penguin  and they hug.  

This is one of the best picturebook hugs ever, just look at how their forms become one, both anchored to the ground together by a single blue shadow.   It's a truly beautiful embrace.  

And so they row back home together, "... talking of wonderful things all the way."

This is my favourite of illustrations.  A warm blue sea, cradling  a single boat with two friends in it.   Jim Broadbent narrates the film, and his final words, said in that Jim Broadbent granddad-like tone he has, are: "This all began with someone lost and someone found, and who's to say which was which?  There was a boy and there was penguin, strangers from the opposite sides of the ocean. And like the beginning of any friendship, theirs is a remarkable story indeed." 

Whenever, I see this last page, and the shot from the film, it I think of the book cover for Life of Pi, and wonder.  (All those intertextual connections we make as individuals.) 

Lost and Found: I like both the book and the film, but they are so very different.  I'd decline from using the film with a group of younger students, just tell the picturebook, it's such an experience - those illustrations accompanied by Jeffer's almost rhythmic prose. It's perfect for just sharing.  The film and the picturebook might get a group of teenagers talking, discussing how the two media can bring such a message across, and how the extras in the film are used to extend the narrative.    

I've just watched the film again, and the theme tune is playing nonchalantly in the background - deep sigh,  it IS such a wonderful film.  Isn't Oliver Jeffers lucky to have been involved in creating two versions of a story that began with a small child and a smuggled baby penguin from Belfast Zoo?