Sausages, sausages, sausages!

Front cover

At the beginning of November I wrote about a book called The Cloud, which is published by Child's Play.  They were really happy about my post and wrote and told me so.  They were the first publishers to actually notice I was writing about their books, so I congratulated them!  In return, they sent me a small selection of their latest titles, which was really nice - my first experience of getting books for free and it felt wonderful!  I didn't get a buzz from all the books they sent, but I did like this one, Star Gazer's Skyscrapers and extrardinary SAUSAGES by Claudia Boldt (I'll be featuring at least one more in later posts).   I like sausages and I love dogs, so that's a great help as it's a book which features a fat, sausage-loving dog and his owner! I also knew that Claudia Boldt had been nominated a Book Trust Best Illustrator of 2011, so it was good to get a look at this new talent first hand. 

The front cover shows us one of the main characters, Frank, the fat, sausage-loving dog.  He's got a Labrador look to him, and I instantly liked his podgyness (I have a naturally podgy black Labrador of my own, her ears woggle just like Frank's do, and she also enjoys a sausage or two!). I am already making all sorts of personal connections with this front cover, that's a good sign! If we look at the back cover, it does what I like picturebooks to do: shows one continuous illustration, and it presents the other half of this dog-owner-duo, Henrietta (her name is written in the blurb).  She's swinging dangerously from something as sausages float by beneath her.  

Back and front covers

This image together with the title leaves you wondering, what are we going to find inside? 

Endpapers show us all that is a sausage, fresh and smoked ... alongside icereams and sundaes. 

Endpapers

Curioser than ever, what is this book about?

There's a lovely "This book belongs to..."page in the forematter. Henrietta teasing Frank with a sausage. Then the title page has a little illustration of a loving dog licking his owner, a cross-eyes owner! 

Title page

This illustration actually leads us into the main body of the picturebook ...

Opening 01

... for the first opening is Henrietta's reaction to an over affectioante dog, "Careful Frank!  Don't knock my ice-cream!" This is when we disocver that she likes ice-cream and wants to make ice-creams when she grows up.  And what about Frank? 

Opening 02

A sausage dog of course! It's that image from the front cover, "I want to make sausages, eat sausages, do sausages.  Sausages, sausages, sausages."  And so we have our dilemma, Frank wants sausages and nothing but sausages.  Henrietta continues with ideas of what she would like to do when she grows up.  She wants to climb "the steepest skyscrapers, up amongst the ice-cream clouds."  But Frank wants sauasges.  She wants to be a lighthouse keeper ... "I could flash the light, while you guide the ships safely out to sea!" 

Opening 05

Frank wants sausages... "Sau-sea-ges, splash!"  Lovely sausage fish all over the place, lucky Frank! Can you see Henrietta swinging from the lighthouse in the background. 

Henrietta would like to be a star gazer, on a mission to Mars.  

Opening 06

This is a wonderful spread.  We can see Henrietta and Frank in different poses.  Flaoting together in the distance and whizzing by, Henrietta on a shooting star and Frank on Space-sa-ges!  There's a constellation of stars too... the Canis Major maybe?

When Henrietta is a super dancer, so is Frank, for he dances "Sass-se-ages, siss-se-ges, sou-sa-ges, and salsa-ges."   She's a queen bee and poor Frank is a worker, no sausages in this spread.  Finally she decides she's going to be a mechanic, and Frank is her assistant. 

Opening 09

But all he can say is "Sausages!". Henrietta has had enough.  So has Frank. 

Opening 10

That's a grumpy looking dog!  He's right, they have nothing in common. So they sit and grump at opposites ends of the page: Henrietta slurps her icecream and Frank chomps his sausage.     And that's when Henrietta has an idea. Can you guess what it is?

Opening 12

WOW!  Ice-cram sausages and sausage ice-cream!  Hooray!  A spread full of yummy sausage ice-creams and ice-cream sausages.  

Crazy story!  But I really like its quirkiness, and I think children will too, (I still have to try it out in the classroom).   How many of us have tiffs with our friends, when they won't do what we want to do?  This little story demonstrates what great solutions we can all come to. And what fun primary children can have thinking what they'd like to be when they grow up, and why not have some wild ideas, just like Henrietta? 

Thanks again to Child's Play for  sending me this picturebook.  

A cautionary tale ... whatever

But

Front cover

A colleague told me about Whatever by William Bee, and when it arrived, sometime over the summer holidays, I immediately took to its clever simplicity.  I laughed outloud on the first read, then returned slowly to take in the different parts and look carefully at the illustrations.  

Anyone remember those silly tales about boys who ran away from their nurses, and were eaten by lions or girls who told lies and were burned to death? 19th century children's literature at its best and probably the most well known collection, Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc, is still available in ever more modern editions. Whatever has that cautionary tale feel to it, and a lovely retro look too.  

Our protangonist stands, arms outstretched, on the front cover.  He's dressed like a miniature business man, and you can just imagine the kind of child he is ... prim and proper and ever so annoying. 

Back and front covers

If you open out the book, you'll find the back cover is the mirror image of the front.  Witty!  Endpapers are nice and decorative too.  

Front endpapers

I'm wondering whether Willaim Bee has been influenced by 1950's wall paper designs for this pattern? The title page is plain and simple: contains the title, the author/illustrator's and the publisher's names. But the facing copyright page is neat.

Copyright page

One bare tree - all its leaves are lined up on the endpapers - and can you see the way some letters have been enlarged in bold?  (If you click on the image you can see better) What do they say?  "Whatever", yeah, who gives a damn about the copyright blurb?

This picturebook uses lots of white space.  It contributes to pacing the narrative, makes us pause and look as the information is given to us in bits as we turn the pages. 

Opening 1

First we are shown Billy (diminutive of William, by the way), hands down now, the half smile stuck on his face, looking bored.   Then we meet Billy's Dad.  

Opening 2

He's a bigger version of Billy, the only difference being his hat, his larger feet and his bushier eyebrows ... oh and his exuberance.  It's oozing off this page already.  

And so we begin.  Our problem is that Billy is difficult to please.  Dad is exuberantly waving puppets, while discarded soldiers are left behind and Billy looks away uninterested.  

Opening 3

Show Billy something very tall ... 

Opening 4

"And he'll say 'whatever'".  (Love the way the book has to be turned to portrait for the giraffe). 

Opening 5

Notice as you turn the pages how Billy's face shows all sorts of expressions: surprise, disgust, disinterest, annoyance - all with those simple dots for eyes, angled lines for eyebrows and a little red mouth that moves mostly downwards.  

And so we continue showing Billy "something very small" (pretty butterflies); the world's curliest trumpet (and it really is curly!); the world's bounciest castle, and he always says "Whatever".  

Opening 9

Take him on the world's steamiest train (there's even a fish leaping around!), or "fly him to outer space" ... what does he say? "Whatever". And so what happens when Dad tries to scare him with the world's hungriest tiger?  Why, Billy says "Whatever" of course!

Opening 10

Isn't he a handsome tiger? And a hungry one too ...

Opening 11

Oops!  All but Billy's shoe is swallowed.  Lots of lovely white as the tiger plods off. 

Opening 13

Can you see the tiger's bulging tummy?  And Billy decides it's time to say something ..."Dad! I'm still in here you know".  Guess who's leading the tiger away from the story, and  what do you think he says when he hears Billy?  I'll leave you to guess!

Reviews describe this as being a picturebook for all ages.  Absolutely right.  It could be used in primary, where everyone will quickly call out "Whatever!", or with teens, where they will mutter "Whatever" under their breath!  Get them to say "Whatever" in a dozen different ways, using Billy's facial expressions as clues to his mood.  With these students, you might also want to show them some of the original cautionary tales for fun.  And with adults in a teacher training context use this picturebook for them to see how cleverly words and pictures can be used to create irony and humour suitable for a wide range of ages. 

And if you really want to ensure there's a bit of formal language work, why not have some fun with superlatives, they're even highlighted in the verbal text - what more could we ask?

But most of all, it's a great little picturebook.  Great for just reading and sharing and laughing together over.  

I was prompted to feature it on my blog when I saw it had recently been published in Portuguese by one of my favourite Portuguese publishers, Planeta Tangerina.  Well done them for bringing it into Portugal.  Well done me for featuring it on my blog!

Every one has bad days

Front cover

Bad Day, written by Jeni Couzyn and illustrated by Paul Demeyer,  was a picturebook I read to my son when he was small.  It's a title I've often returned to and enjoyed.  I like Couzyn's rhythmic verbal text and Demeyer's illustrations bring the picturebook together beautifully.   It's now out of print but still available second hand on amazon. 

It follows on nicely from The Cloud, which I featured at the beginning of the month, and also depicts a child who's not happy, cross and angry with his family, and who decides to "Go away".  

The title page has a small picture of a yellow canary, and in many of the following illustrations the canary can be seen fluttery around in the illustrations. 

Opening 1

The picturebook opens on a single recto page, facing the copyright and dedication pages.  Nice little dedication up at the top! 

All the illustrations are shown in a frame, this is supposed to make us feel detached, as though we are watching the events from afar.  Each page, or occasionally a double spread, has a short sentence accompanied by a framed illustration.  The verbal text really is rhythmic and lovely to read and children pick it up very quickly.   The illustrations skillfully expand upon what the words are hinting at.  Here, on opening 1, we see a happy little family, all getting on with life, smiling, except for our protangonist - he's easy to spot with a face like thunder!

Opening 2

And so it continues, the family gets on with life, mum and dad, big brother and little brother, the little yellow bird and their energetic dog, and in each illustration we see the thunder faced child get crosser and crosser with the world.    The words continue quite matter of factly, and we gradually see the family notice that he's not having a good day - big brother does seem oblivious though!   It continues ... "Hate my big brother. Hate my little brother." The angry child covets his older brother's freedom, fiddling with his toy motorbike as the brother zooms off on his real one. Then he gets cross when his little brother takes the toy motorbike.  Then everything comes to a head, as it does on all bad days ...

Opening 4

Baby brother cries and dad gets cross.  If you click on the image above, you'll be bale to see the headlines in dad's newspaper, "Bad news", "Pretty bad news", "Worse news", More bad news"!   Then poor mum has just had enough!  Her two sons are crying, the dog is howling and dad has given up.  "Go away", she cries!  Children and teachers will empathise with this illustration, we've all experienced a day just like this!  

Our cross little boy goes up stairs, packs his favourite toys and runs out, escorted by the family dog and his pet canary. 

Opening 6

Then out in the street, he checks his wings, which we may have noticed sticking out of his case on opening 5, (and most likely children will notice them upon re-readings).  The canary has gone, but the dog is around.  The wings are yellow like the canary and  we wonder if they've been fashioned to imitate the small family pet.  And he's off, up into the sky and over the cars. The family dog has his case, maybe it's a regular thing this flying away business?

Hate is still a BIG feeling though...

Opening 7

"Hate these aeroplanes." Possibly justified - that's a lot of planes!

He flies over the Atlantic and asks, "Is this away?".  He asks a bird, who happens to be on the Statue of Liberty, "Is this away?" and of course the reply is, "No, this is New York."  Finally he pauses on a branch.  And the rhythm slows, the colours are deep bluey greens and we are gradually calming down.  "Is this away?", Owl replies, "No."...

Opening 11

Here we see owl, comforting the little boy, who's not angry any more.   So what is "Away"?

Opening 12

"Away is a feeling."  Suddenly, like one of those Hollywood movies we see a dozen little faces and heads pop up, are they about to break into song?  And Owl asks, "Love anyone?" Oh my goodness, the million dollar question.  

Opening 14

Why, "Yes!", our once-upon-a-time-angry little boy realises and off he flies.  And look at all those animals, suddenly they are in little family groups, and they are waving off our protangonist.  

Opening 15

The focus on hate in the beginning is replaced with love ...

"Love my Mum, love my Dad,

love my monkey, love my dog,

love my bird, love my big brother,

love my little brother,"

And the family is all happy, our little boy is being pampered by mum. Everyone is ready for bed, the boy's case, wings and toys are scattered on the floor.  Everything is normal again. 

Opening 16

And the final illustration shows our little boy, snuggled in bed, asleep, his wings, the dog and canary nearby and we read the words, "Love owl" ... and he's there in a framed picture above the bed.  Wise old owl, he knows. 


As we've shared this picturebook, we've felt the words through the way we say them and the images that have accompanied them.  Once again, it's an excellent support for developing  emotional intelligence.  Children will empathise with the little boy and be carried with him on his emotional roller coaster. Did he really fly away?  Was it all a dream?  How do we deal with our bad days?  Lots of possibilities for discussion, in particular with primary children.

Jeni Couzyn is a poet and the verbal text is a poem. I've copied it below so you can read it in its entirety.  Feel the emotion as it peeks then slowly dissipates, to be replaced with calm and comfort. 

Hate this day. 
Hate these toys. Hate this food.

Hate my big brother. Hate my little brother.

Hate my dad. "Go away."

Going away. Got my suitcase.  

Got my wings. Work OK.

Hate these aeroplanes.

Is this away?

No, this is the Atlantic.

Is this away?

No, this is New York.

Is this away?

No.

Away isn't a place. Away is a feeling.

Love anyone?

Yes.

Love my Mum, love my Dad,

love my monkey, love my dog,

love my bird, love my big brother,

love my little brother, 

love owl.

The cloud - a book that shows emotions

Front cover

I saw The Cloud by Hanna Cumming in a catalogue by The Story Bag for workshops that brought together art and literature.  I ordered it to satisfy my curiosity, it was the only picturebook on the list which I didn't know. 

Child's Play the publisher's give a short description of The Cloud on their web site "Everyone has bad days, and children are no exception. When a black cloud descends on a little girl at school, support from a classmate with a great deal of imagination helps to brighten up everyone’s lives. The atmospheric illustrations really tell the story in this delightful picture book from a new author/illustrator."

It is the atmospheric illustrations that I am going to focus on in my blog post.  

What mood or emotion do you associate grey with?  Most of us will go for sad, negative, angry, upset.  Grey is a depressing colour and suitably so it is the background of the front and back covers for The Cloud.  The top part of the child's face we just see under the foreboding scribbled cloud, confirms the negative, sad feeling the background grey gives us.   Those touches of colour coming in from the edges look hopeful though, I wonder why they are there?

Endpapers

I find the endpapers quite shocking in their bright red, with the coloured crayons dispersed among the black squiggles. I'm not sure why Cumming chose red, maybe because the main character has a red t-shirt?  Why do you think she chose red?  What do your children think?

Title page

Though this page appears grey in my photo, it isn't!  It's actually white, with just the oval under the title in grey!  All those arty materials look fun.  Upon rereading this picturebook children will identify with these images and understand that it was through drawing, colouring and painting with a friend that our character was helped. 

Opening 1

Opening 1 shows us the art class.  We are told it's fun, and despite the grey looking classroom (it's raining outside as well!)  it does look like everyone is enjoying themselves... "Well, almost everyone." There's our character in her red t-shirt, with scowling eyes, arms crossed and tightly closed mouth.  "There was one girl, who sat by herself and drew nothing."

Opening 3

The illustration on the verso page is the one we saw on the front cover. Look at those kids chatting and having fun in the recto, but no one talks to the girl with the cloud over her head.  I'm not surprised are you?  She looks very grumpy.  But one little girl in the class is keen to make friends, so off she goes ...

Opening 5

There's a lovely sequence in verso, showing the little girl being engulfed in black cloud ... having a chat didn't seem to work. I wonder what the reply was?  It is a particularly useful activity to ask the children in your class what they think - a way for them to have a go at reading feelings and emotions and sharing these personal readings. 

Opening 7

But this little blond-haired girl was not put off, she looked at her crayons and thought maybe there was a way.  It didn't go too well to begin with, but she kept on trying, kept on drawing and finally ...

Opening 8

Our girl with a cloud over her head was smiling, only a tiny smile, but it's a smile.   Cloud is a bit smaller too!  And look out the classroom window ... it's almost stopped raining ... and the classroom wall is not quite so grey either - everything looks brighter. 

But it doesn't stop there, the children in the classroom liked the idea of creating pictures together, so they all had a go ...

Opening 9

And here they are!  Can you see the blond-haired girl who didn't give up?  And how much smaller that black cloud is! What fun they are all having, and how much brighter that classroom is now!  Look back at opening 1, just to remind yourselves.  They end up doing a huge class drawing, which really does look fun, but best of all ...

Opening 11

"... the cloud was gone. Well sort of!"  And our classroom window is there again, and even if we can still see a tiny cloud in the sky the sun is shining, shining so brightly that the classroom is all yellow and warm.  It matches the big smile across the girl's face.  

There's a small circular illustration before the back endpapers, showing a happily integrated child playing hopscotch with kids in her class.

Opening 12

There's a solitary figure by the gate, I wonder if the children will invite her to join their game? 

The Cloud is a very simple, clear  story.  It's about accepting and not giving up on people, and the illustrations help readers see and feel emotion clearly too.  This little book is excellent for actively working with emotional intelligence, but as mediators we need to give our children pointers, ask them to look and think:  what colours are the pages and what do these colours make us feel? What are the characters feeling, how do they know this?  Can we imitate their postures and facial expressions, what do they feel like? Encourage children to empathise with the dark haired girl whose cloud eventually disappears, what could she be so upset about? By identifying emotions in others and seeing how problems can be resolved, young children can learn strategies of their own, both when they have problems, or to help others overcome their own. 

Who was Goldilocks?

Front cover

Goldilocks and the three bears is a well known children's story in English speaking countries and when I first began using it in Portugal in the early 90's very few Portuguese pre-school educators knew it, it's more well known now I think.  It's a story we use in ELT for numbers and family (mummy, daddy and baby); every thing comes in threes (three bears, three bowls, three chairs, three beds) , and there are some nice adjectives (hot and cold, hard and soft and just right!).  We assume , if we think about it at all, that Goldilocks is a spoilt little brat, going where she has not been invited, doing what she's not meant to do and generally well deserving of the fright she gets when the bears find her in their bedroom. Anthony Browne, takes us on quite a different visual journey in his picturebook Me and You.  In an interview about his picturebook, he says: 

"I always thought that Goldilocks got a rough deal in the original and I'm trying to redress the balance. How do we know that she was a greedy, selfish little girl? Perhaps there was a reason for her to enter the bears' house? I'm trying to tell the story from two different points of view: the baby bear's story shown in warm, reassuring coloured pencils, and Goldilock's harsher existence painted like a graphic novel, in sepia tones."  The result is a perfect picturebook, to be contemplated from front to back cover, with nothing missed out. 

Back and front covers

The front and back covers of the hard back edition are one whole image, a grassy area in front of a long row of terraced houses.  The bear family are presented on the cover, looking out as us, as though we are taking a photo of them all, a happy little family. In the background, by chance we've also photographed a solitary figure, walking head down, hands in pockets.  

Front endpapers

The endpapers are plain with no illustrations, however the baby blue and orange are prominent in the two narratives we find in the picturebook.  The blue belongs to the bear and his family and the orange to the sepia illustrations of the little girl. 

Title page

The title page contains two illustrations which are copies from later in the book.  They are fittingly inside frames, two very different characters in different worlds, and placed under the three title words, "Me and You", for the story that follows is told in the voice of the little boy bear. The two illustrations are different in both tone and style, the bear is drawn with coloured crayon, the bright colours contrast the duller, darker sepia tones of the watercolour illustration of the little girl, who has a tiny piece of auburn hair sticking out from under her hood, (it almost connects her to the bear).  The title uses different fonts which emphasise the difference between the two characters as well. The dedication on the facing page reads, "For all the underdogs". 

Opening 1

The little boy bear introduces us to his house, a warm yellow home, number 3 (of course!) in a spot of bright green, in the background the rest of the city appears to be big and industrial-like, (but those chimneys and towers could also be tall tree trunks).  There's a menacing looking wolf-like dog entering the illustration, but everything else looks serene and peaceful.  The three bears are each seen from separate windows, in different parts of the house and a solitary red ball bounces alone in the garden outside.  

Opening 2

The book continues in double page format, verso in sepia showing us the little girl's story and recto in bright, picturebook-like colours showing and telling us the little boy bear's story.  The little girl's world is daddy-less, it's cold and drab, they live in a small house in the city, and when we see mummy pause in front of the butcher there is confirmation that there may not be much money to spare either. Now the recto, and if you look carefully at the pencil crayon illustrations, you will see everything is outlined in the orangey brown of the bears, uniting the images within their world. Daddy is tall and wide, behind a more fragile mummy and their cute little son, they ooze affluence - I love mummy bear's skinny ankles, all rich mother's have skinny ankles!  

Opening 3

As little boy bear tells us his story, the story we know so well about porridge that's too hot to eat, the little girl's story visually unfolds - a story we don't know at all, about a little girl who sees a balloon, tries to catch it and gets lost.   We see her face properly for the first time and she is frightened.  

Opening 4

The bears walk in their very posh neighbourhood - three together, yet very seperate, little boy bear describing the events. "Daddy talked about his work and Mummy talked about her work.  I just messed about."  (Look carefully at the background trees, notice anything odd?) We see the little girl walking, getting more and more lost and suddenly coming upon the bears' lovely yellow house in the middle of the greyness she has been runing from.  It is glowing, enticing her with its warmth and she pushes the front door open.   As she moves around the table trying the porridge, the bears walk back home.   As she tries the three chairs (and breaks the little one), they walk through their open front door, mummy and daddy accusing each other of leaving it open.  As the little girl walks up the stairs, we see the three bears begin the  someone's-been-eating-my-porridge-routine.  She tries the beds as the bears find the three chairs...'"We'd better take a look upstairs", whispered Daddy.  "After you, Mummy." '

Opening 9

The little girl is asleep, comfy in little boy bear's bed, her auburn hair flowing as though it's part of the wood grain in the headboard.  The bears are quietly climbing the stairs, '"Do be careful dear," said Daddy.' 

Opening 10

And there they are!  We see the same scene from both perspectives. The little girl in her sepia watercolour illustration is suddenly confronted by three scarey bears.  Browne has skillfully painted their fur to make them look prickly and mean, the background is dark, a darkness which seems to radiate from the bears. We are feeling so sorry for the little girl whose red hair is reflected in the bears' eyes. We see her terror in the little boy bear's version, as he continues with his well known monolgue ... "Someone's in my bed,"I said, "and they're STILL THERE."  Even the bears carved into the head board are surprised. 

Opening 11

The little girl flees. As the little boy bear describes her actions, we see her leave the bedroom, go down the stairs, out through the front door and into the street.  As she runs into the rain we can just make out the bear family peering through their windows at her, the little boy bear upstairs, the adults downstairs.  The graphic novel frames take the girl back into the grey city, past railings, walls topped with barbed wire and others covered in graffiti.  We see this as well as glance across at the little boy bear.  In his colorful picture he is deadpan looking through his window.  At first we are uncertain if he is in or out, the reflection of a wooded landscape looks like it is behind him... the forest that belongs to the original story maybe?  "I wonder what happened to her?" he says to himself.  
The ending is a hopeful one, I say this as Anthony Browne has described it so himself. And of course it is, the illustrations in the final spread are full of hope, at least the final frames are ...

Opening 12

Janet Evans interviewed Anthony Browne in her latest collection of chapters Talking beyond the page  and he explained how the story wasn't originally in its present form. He had thought of telling two stories, first the bear's then the girl's, but it was the editor who suggested telling two stories simultaneously, in parallel, with a hopeful ending. It works wonderfully and we all sigh a deep sigh as we see the girl reunited with her mum.  Do we think about the bear again? A lonely little chap, in his pretty house with a lovely garden.  


Anthony Browne is a genius - this picturebook is challenging on many levels. It needs to be read and re-read, and the children/teens/young adults you are showing this picturebook to, need to be encouarged to talk through what they see and think about as they piece the puzzles together.  When Browne was the UK Children's Laureate  (2009 - 2011) he said the following: " ... Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book."   Me and You does just that and can be used with children and teenagers as a spring board for discussion. 


If you go to the CKG website here, you can download some excellent visual literacy activity sheets for a number of picturebooks, including Me and You.