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!

Inspiring peace

I discovered Todd Parr recently, while preparing for a presentation about emotional development and picturebooks. I think I'm behind the times though, as Todd Parr even has a TV series.  He's a wacky chap, and I do like his child-like scribbles ... and he's a fellow dog lover too.  This is what he writes about himself: 

The Peace book is one of a whole collection of brightly coloured, smile provoking, I'd even say, inspiring picturebooks.  On the back of many of Todd's books you find a statement of intent ...

"This book is designed to:

Engage Early Literacy

Enhance Emotional Development 

Celebrate Multiculturalism

Promote Character Growth"

... Yeah!  I'd go with that!  Look at the cover of The Peace Book, a wonky world made of unidentifiable continents, surrounded by smiling faces.

Most 5 year olds draw like this, but they don't forget the noses! (I love the inclusion of the punk in glasses!)  And despite the naive look to the illustrations, they are entertaining and thought provoking. 

I have bought the paperback edition, so no exciting endpapers, but that's OK. The title page has a heavy looking multicoloured dove, flying against the bright blue, which Todd Parr likes so much, and he's dedicated the  book to the world.  

So what is Peace?  Lots of wonderful things. Parr opens with this single page ... 

But most of his definitions come in twos...

There's no double meaning in his illustrations, but they do show more than the words tell.  What kind of music are we being shown in the illustration above?  And below we are shown examples of the "different books" we can read: books about worms, food, fish, the world...

He occasionally pops in a doublespread, carefully selected to use the visual space... a nice long centipede here, each foot wearing a long awaited shoe. 

The  saturated colours of the backgrounds remind me of Jan Pienkowski's Meg and Mog books, first written in the 70's, and I do like the sparseness of many of the pages. 

And so... Peace...

Peace is thinking about someone you love, saying you are sorry when you hurt someone, helping your neighbour, planting a tree, sharing a meal, wearing different clothes, waiting for it to snow.  Peace is keeping the streets clean, offering a hug to a friend.  Peace is everyone having a home, growing a garden, taking a nap, learning another language and having enough pizza in the world for everyone ...

Peace is keeping someone warm, new babies being born, being free ...

Peace is travelling to different places, wishing on a star.  Peace is being who you are. 

Peace is an amazing thing, and its variety is what I find so useful for our ELT classrooms.  Despite the illustrations being so child-like, I'd like to suggest this can be used with students right through primary: the definitions and their illustrations will make everyone think hard and come up with several other very appropriate ones - a perfect follow up to sharing this picturebook is making a class book about Peace. 

Todd Parr very nicely completes his book with this last page...

If you are interested in some other titles, I'd recommend It's Ok to be different, but do check out his website and look at the selection of his books at The Book Depository

Yellow Bird, Black Spider - a primer in individuality

Yellow Bird, Black Spider is by Dosh & Mike Archer and published by Bloomsbury Children's Books.  I came across it in an airport bookshop while on a long journey to somewhere far.  It made me giggle out loud. The Sunday Times wrote: "Not just a very funny book, but it is actually a primer in individuality."  

It's got that visual rhythm that good picturebooks have, a surprise ending and is provocative enough to get discussion going.  The front and back covers are a whole illustration.  Not exactly like any of the pages inside but almost - they're a taster of what's to come. The illustrations are quirky, a mixture of flat colours, horizontal or angled horizons and carefully placed cut and paste montages.  I like them a lot, clear and easy to see at the back of a room. 

The endpapers, both front and back are the same but for one detail, (I leave the detail for you to discover).  They show us eight of the objects which appear in the story, repeated in no particular order on the left and right sides.  They are lots of fun to return to as they act as a visual support to help children remember and retell  the story.  The leopard skin cushion will have their brains whirring!

The copyright page shows us the stripey socks from later in the story.  So, past an illustration of the two protangonists in a boat and off we go...

"Yellow Bird, blue boat" ... and we know that the bird is going sailing as we've seen her on the previous page.  

And here she is with the spider and they have a short conversation, "'Why don't you fly across the sea?' asked Black Spider. 'I like to sail, actually,' said Yellow Bird."  This is the visual-verbal format that we follow for several pages: the bird + object; page turn; the bird interacting with the object and the spider asking a question; the bird flipantly justifying her individuality. 

We see a close up of the bird and a hotel, the words tell us: "Yellow Bird, white hotel".  Turn the page and we are shown the bird lounging on cushions a very real looking strawberry milkshake being offered by a waiter, and the question is, "'Why don't you make a lovely, cosy nest?' asked Black Spider. 'I like hotels, actually,' said Yellow Bird."

"Yellow Bird, red guitar". And can you guess the spider's question?  Of course you can, for we know that birds fly, build nests and go tweet, tweet!. 

"'Why don't you sing tweet, tweet, tweet, in a beautiful way?' asked Black Spider. 'I like strumming, actually,' said Yellow Bird."  ... and she contunues:  She likes dancing on the beach, having baths, vanilla ice-cream and wearing stripy socks.  We are shown Yellow Bird in an overflowing bath with a  Mr Softy ice-cream and those stripy socks we saw earlier.

Socks hanging up to dry, (after all she got them wet while having a bath) and Spider is perplexed, "'Birds don't usually wear stripy socks,' said Black Spider." It's just too much for the Yellow Bird... and we return to the original visual-verbal rhythm, "Yellow Bird, Black Spider"; The Yellow Bird is looking at the spider and the spider is surprised, nervous even. Page turn; "'Why don't you eat some yummy, squelchy worms?' asked Black Spider.  'Actually', said Yellow Bird,"

"... I like to eat spiders."  We are shown a nonchalant Yellow Bird munching on the Black Spider, his legs are still wiggling for sure.  That did shut him up though, didn't it?  All those silly questions! 

If you go back and look at the spider in each illustration his eyes are terribly expressive, showing surprise, annoyance and fright.    And Yellow Bird looks right annoyed too! 

Those endpapers again... and what's missing?  Can you see?  

Our Yellow Bird wears stripy socks, which is unusual true, but she does all sorts of unbird-like stuff, what an unconventional thing she is! Does it matter?  She's still a Yellow Bird, much like other Yellow Birds, who may fly across oceans, make nests and go tweet, tweet - but they all eat annoying Black Spiders!  

Giggle-worthy!

My nose, your nose - celebrating individuality

One of the picturebooks I read to all my pre-school groups, no matter what, is My nose, your nose by Melanie Walsh... and in preparing this blog post I discover that it's not that easy to get hold of: only second hand copies available through Amazon.co.uk and hardback editions at The Book Depository.  But I'll post about it all the same. 

In addition to the message this picturebook carries, I think what I like about this particular title is the bright bold colours and the structural rhythm, which is very visual. 

The cover is fabulous, those two faces, simply outlined looking at each other and the title fitting snugly just above their noses.  On the back it says:  "Arthur's nose turns up. Agnes's nose turns down. But they both like the smell of chocolate cake. Spot the differences and similarities between people in this celebration of individuality." 

There's no exciting peritext and we open immediately onto the title page, showing us another of the  characters we are going to meet inside ... We know about Arthur and Agnes, and here's  Kit and later we'll meet Daisy - Negro, Caucasian, boys, girls, tall, short, curly hair, straight hair, blue eyes, green eyes - they are all different but the same too. Let's see how Walsh helps us discover this important lesson in life.

Here's Daisy in all her glory.  "Daisy's skin in brown." Those hot colours and the beach scene are natural associations to the brown skin ... I love her sun glasses!

"Agnes's skin is white."   As white as her porcelain bath, which we can see her peeking out of.  And the pink background is another association to pale skin.   "But ..." 

 "... they both have cheeky pink tongues!"  They certainly do!  

And so our celebration of individuality continues. "Arthur's hair is brown and straight." It's easy to comb, and there's a comb in view.  "Kit's hair is black and curly."  No comb in site, just a bobble hat which keeps him warm.  "But ... they both hate washday!" Poor Kit and Arthur, shampoo on their heads, glumly staring out at the reader.  

"Arthur's nose turns up. Agnes's nose turns down."  You can almost smell the cheese and socks! Yuck!  We aren't told they don't like the smells, just shown this information.  But then we are shown and told what they like smelling, emphasising the similarity. Yummy, delicious chocolate cake!

The above is a great little sequence, "Daisy has short legs.  Kit has long legs." ... and we have to turn the page over so that Kit's legs fit in.  This is a trick we saw in Small Mouse BIG CITY.  The inclusion of the kitten on each page  is a nice comparison too, she's looking up at Kit, he is BIG! 

So we've seen Daisy and Agnes, Kit and Arthur, Arthur and Agnes, Daisy and Kit.  There's a nice rhythm here, the two children shown as different, each on different spreads, then brought together with a similarity onto one spread.   Melanie Walsh uses this rhythmic, visual structure to reinforce her message, which culminates in bringing all four children together. We see a pair of children on the same spread, peeking out at us from under bed sheets.  "Agnes has blue eyes.  Kit's eyes are brown."  "Arthur has grey eyes. Daisy's are green. But ..."

Ahh!  That is so nice, and what a great way to end!  My pre-school kids usually pretend to go to sleep too and then quickly call out, "Again!".   We read this book several times over and then find things we like and dislike and similarities and differences.