Six Men: a story about war

Front cover

David McKee created the picturebook Six Men very early in his career. First published in the UK in 1972, it's now only available new in the US edition I think.  I blogged about another of his picturebooks, Tusk Tusk a while back, also about conflict and war, but published a little later (1978).  These two picturebooks are similar in theme, but quite different visually.  Unlike Tusk, tusk, which is brightly coloured, Six men is black and white, the only colour appearing on the covers, the deep brown, which, as in all good picturebooks, unites both back and front covers, creating the heavy ground and a heavier sun.

Back and front covers

On the publisher's website it has been described by Ken and Sylvia Marantz, who write:  "Once upon a time six men search for and finally find a land where they can settle down and grow rich. But they fear thieves, so they hire six strong guards. When no robbers arrive, the men worry that paying the guards is a waste of money. So they put them to work capturing a neighboring farm. Enjoying the power, they add soldiers and capture more land. Some, who escape their expansion, work and live happily together across the river, but still worry about the six belligerent men. So in case of attack, they take turns being both farmers and soldiers. Unfortunately one day the bored soldiers on both sides of the river shoot at a passing duck. The anxious armies, fearing they are attacked, gather and a mighty battle begins. In the end, only six men on either side are left. And so they set off in opposite directions, beginning again the search for a place to live and work in peace. ..."

The story is one we all know, the causes of war.  The picturebook is a modern-day parable and very suitable for older students, I'd say teens in particular, but if the topic is suitable and the children's level of English is good it could be shared with children down to about 9 or 10 years old. 

Peritextually, other than the covers, it's not very exciting.  Lots of white pages and space, with the two word title sitting alone in the middle of the page.  

Opening 1

On the spreads, the white space is used cleverly balancing McKee's illustrations, which are made up entirely of fine line drawings in black ink.  If you look at opening 1 the recto page is full of neat lines juxtaposing each other, creating a sort of mountain of jagged rock for the six men to climb over. The verso contains those oft heard words "Once upon a time ..." and and single circle, representing the sun, hanging empty, yet together with the white space, balanced against the rocky crags of the facing page. 

I don't now if McKee was influenced by Paul Klee, but as I look more closely at his lines they remind me of some of Klee's work, though lack the colour which would have been present in the Swiss painter's masterpieces. 

The balance that McKee manages to obtain on each spread is visually very satisfying. McKee also uses pattern and symmetry very successfully.  

Opening 4

Look here at opening 4, where he has illustrated six soldiers.  They all look alike at a glance, their helmets resembling bullet heads, yet as we peer closely we can see they each have a different expression. Opening 5 is similar in its patterning ...

Opening 5

The soldiers are shown with their helmets placed neatly together, creating a whole symmetrical helmet Edam cheese shape. The change in perspective, from eye level to birds eye view is odd. The six men are laid along the verso edge, eyeballs upwards - it makes you want to turn the book round and follow their gaze upwards towards the lazy soldiers, thus returning to the more comforting eye level.  Pattern appears in a number of spreads:

Opening 8

Here in opening 8, the soldiers helmets fit neatly into the body of each soldier next to them, the drawing is almost geometrical, it's a delight. 

Opening 9

The six men's greed culminates in opening 9, where we are told that they "ruled over the land from high watch tower down to the great river." A long shot view of the land shows us the soldiers at work. You can just make out the platoon chasing two figures towards the river, which is only visible as water because boats sit upon it.  From here onwards the drawings begin to take on a symmetry that reflects two sets of men at war with each other, for those chased men cross the river and begin living with farmers, who as yet have not been conquered. Together they create an army to fight that of the six men across the river.

They took turns in working as farmers and training as soldiers and "in this way they became prepared to face an enemy:" And so it began. A soldier on each side of the river bank ... symmetry representing the two sides of the story, the conquering and those not wanting to be conquered. 

Opening 11

All  because of a duck ... the alarm was called and each soldier rushed back to his army. 

Opening 13

Each army separated from the other by a carefully drawn, thin black line. Fear spread and the war began...They fight ... 

Opening 14

... and they die. 

Opening 15

These soldiers are pilled upon each other, bullet shaped helmets nose to nose with the squared ones... it's a muddle but a neat one, with soldiers fitting into each other as they die in unison. Once the battle was over everyone was dead, every one, but for six men on either side...

Opening 17

And so the story begins again, as the six men search "for a place where they might live in peace."  If used as a prompt, the simple black lines in this picturebook, stark, sharp and pointy and very clear in their message, open doors to discussion and interpretation.  

Sharing plorringes

Front cover

Norris the bear who shared is a delightful picturebook by Catherine Rayner, where her beautifully crafted illustrations are to drool over. Norris is a big brown bear represented in chunky brush strokes, Violet is a tiny delicate mouse with a pink tail and Tulip is a fidgety raccoon in black, grey and white. They all love plorringes, but there's only one in the plorringe tree. 

From the title and cover of this lovely picturebook we know that Norris shares, we read the words and we see him giving Violet a piece of orange fruit.  If we look on the back cover, the illustration continues ...

Back and front covers

Norris has also given Tulip a piece of the orange fruit.  This is not a story about learning to share, instead it is one about knowing that sharing is part of what we do.  Small children find sharing difficult and Norris shows them that it's easy.  But he also shows them that sometimes we have to wait for good things.

Let's have a look inside... the half-title page shows us a plorringe, no bear, no raccoon, no mouse, just the object of desire.

Half-title page

The font is orange throughout, reflecting the sumptuous colour of the plorringe, which looks like a mango, cuts like an orange and resembles a guava inside. 

Title page

The title page brings our focus back to Norris, big brown Norris: the bear who shared. When we turn the page, the plorringe and Norris are together for the first time.

Opening 1

Norris stretches across the spread, as though sniffing the fruit.  "Norris was wise..."  he knew that if he waited the fruit would fall.  So he waited. 

Opening 3

Tulip and Violet weren't quite so wise, "They clambered closer to the plorringe and gazed at it.  It looked delicious."  Norris just waited. 

The next spreads use the senses to describe the plorringe. Tulip and Violet sniffed it. "It smelt of honey and sunny days." Norris waited. Tulip and Violet listened to the plorringe and of course there was no sound!  

Opening 7

"Tulip and Violet hugged the plorringe.  It felt soft as candyfloss."  (Yummy!) Norris kept on waiting. This illustration is a delight. I like the balance between the verbal text and the illustration.  Last of all ...

Opening 8

A close up of two very pink tongues and the plorringe itself:  "Tulip and Violet were just about to have a little lick of the plorringe, when ..." Those three dots tell us that something is about to happen! "UH-OH!" "WHOMP!"

Opening 11

"Norris's wait was over." But Violet and Tulip are visibly concerned. "What about Tulip and Violet?"

Opening 12

Do you see that some of the font is slightly bigger, emphasising "Violet" and "Tulip" and the words "wise" and "kind". Violet and Tulip look so forlorn... Of course Norris shared the "delicious, sun-kissed, soft-as-candy floss plorringe" (all descriptors used in previous spreads).  And Norris knew a "special thing had happened under the plorringe tree" ...

Back verso

Ahhh!  Just lovely. Friendship and sharing as well as learning to wait, all important lessons for little ones.  There's not a lot of repetition, so this is probably best shared with children in bilingual contexts, though I've shared it with a group of Portuguese L1 children and used English and Portuguese to get the verbal message across, and gradually moved into English only as I've re-read it.  The children love seeing Violet and Tulip about to lick the plorringe and call out "UH-OH!" "WHOMP!", before I've tuned the pages!  We all agree that Norris was very wise as he knew how important it was to share. 

Twenty-four robbers

November is picturebook month, check out the different activities on the official website and celebrate picturebooks!

Front cover

Twenty-four robbers is a traditional skipping rhyme, which I used to skip to when I was at primary school...

Not last night, but the night before,

Twenty-four robbers  came knocking at my door.

Went downstairs to let them in

And this is what I saw:

Spanish Lady, Spanish Lady, doing high kicks

Spanish Lady, Spanish Lady, taking a bow

Spanish Lady, Spanish Lady, that's all for now

You can hear the skipping rope swish and the jumping feet, can't you?

Audrey Wood  created a picturebook with the same name over 30 years ago, and Child's Play have recently re-edited a whole load of her picturebooks, Twenty-four Robbers is among the collection.  It's a hilarious picturebook, full of robbers, who on most spreads are grinning stupidly and showing rows of white teeth!  In fact on almost every spread you can count twenty-four robbers, it must have been a nightmare to illustrate!

Back and front covers

Here they are, the twenty-four robbers... what a jolly lot!  Go on count them!  There ARE twenty-four! I have the paperback version, so there are no endpapers.  The book opens immediately onto the title page ...

Title page

A robber is sneaking into the book ... let's follow him.

Opening 1

Just as the skipping rhyme begins, so does this picturebook and we almost chant the words,  told by the maiden in the first person, "Not last night, but the night before, twenty-four robbers came knocking on my door."  We are visually bombarded, as is the young maiden, by the robbers outside a house by the woods.  Robbers everywhere, ready to climb up a ladder, hanging from trees, sitting on the wild boar and the cannon they are pulling, peeking into windows... it could be quite frightening except for the fact that the maiden holds a lantern and its yellow light fills the centre of the verso.  Some of the robbers hold yellow lights too. Yellow is a positive, happy colour and so we look at this illustration and smile, these robbers won't do anything terrible to our worried maiden. 

Opening 2

Even when we turn the page and see her innocent face looking sideways at the robber swinging in from the right; even as we run our eyes across the spread and see pointed swords and daggers, a robber with a ball and chain (has he just escaped from prison?), even then we still know that from the yellow interior of her home that all will be well.  What do they want?

Opening 3

"H-O-T ... Hot Peppers!!!" they chorus together ... they are mad!  Their red mouths open, framed by their white teeth... HOT!

Opening 4

And so they are given peppers and off they go.  In this spread we are given a clue for why they want the peppers ... a strange mobile kitchen with hanging pot. The maiden is standing in the background, shocked, can you see her? The verbal text rhymes, "I gave them peppers, and then they rode away. But twenty-four robbers came back the next day."
This visual-verbal rhythm, for this is exactly what it is, repeats itself three more times. The robbers return again,  asking for hot peppers, but the maiden had no more so she gives them corn... "and twenty-four robbers said, 'See you in the morn!'"  The three spreads show the robbers surrounding the maiden, calling out for hot peppers and then leaving triumphantly carrying a cob of corn.  And of course they return the next "morn", asking for more corn...

Opening 9

You can hear them calling for corn in this illustration!
The maiden explains, "I didn't have corn, but I had a little flour. They put it in their sack and said, 'See you in an hour!'" And off they go, grinning from ear to ear!
Sure enough, "Not this hour, but the hour before ..."  the robbers appear again. 

Opening 12

Their mobile kitchen is decked with flowers and so are these rascal robbers!  Some of their spears have been made into flag poles and even the wild boars look happy!  "I opened my door. I saw they had a pot. And twenty-four robbers said, 'We like you a lot!'" Ahhh, that's nice!  Dancing under the garlands of flowers they take the maiden's hand, thanking her for the peppers, the corn and the flour.

Opening 14

The maiden continues to tell her story... "Now here is what they did, and this is all true. They gave me a pot of hot pepper stew."  These robbers no longer look mean and bad, but are calmly waiting in line for their bit of stew, looking almost lovingly at the maiden.  Their cook, the bearded robber,  is pointing at her ... it's for you, you gave us all the ingredients.  But this calm spread is not the end... turn the page!

Opening 15

The maiden is calling out, "H-O-T ... Hot Peppers!!!", her mouth open, rows of white teeth surrounding a deep red tongue... just like the robbers in opening 3. And can you see? Littering the floor are the robbers' masks, they have taken them off.  The maiden's kindness has persuaded them to give up their life of stealing.  What a happy bunch they are!

This is such a flamboyant picturebook with its brightly coloured illustrations of wild robbers and a generous maiden.  Each of the spreads, you may have noticed, is framed in a pastel colour, blue, yellow, pink, purple, orange and green.  This framing gives the feeling of detachment, indeed we are being told about something which has already happened, so we look through the calm, pastel coloured frames as the Maiden's story develops and know we cannot intervene, except of course chant along to the rhythmic verbal text and giggle at the illustrations. 

A nice activity to get the children thinking is to ask how long it took for the story to happen.  They could draw a time line and illustrate it with the three different ingredients and the final pot of stew.  You could also discuss with the children how the robbers learned that sharing is better than stealing.  And, if the children you share this story with are old enough and can skip, why not skip to the original rhyme.  Finally the rhythmic beat within the verbal is so catchy (that's why we skipped to it when I was a kid!), why not get your children to chant it by heart and invent some actions, it could almost become a rap.  Put on a show for the rest of the school, it'll be a hoot!

Finally, Twenty-four robbers is a Fats Waller hit from 1941, the lyrics are a little different and involve bottles of gin and shot guns, so possibly not a good idea to share it with your children, but it is fun to listen to this old recording!  

Dogs must be dogs!

I was prompted to write about this picturebook when a friend wrote and told me that the apple pie I had made her as a gift had been eaten by her dog!  Oh yes!  That's happened to me, made something yummy, leave it on the kitchen top and when I get back it's been wolfed: it has happened to birthday cakes, freshly baked loaves of bread, neatly cut cheese waiting to garnish something, cooling pieces of roast meat and whole Portuguese chouriços ready for the pot!  If you have dogs and they are allowed in the kitchen it's what happens! 

Front cover

It's not that dogs want to be bad, they just can't help it, they are dogs and when something smells good, it just has to be eaten!  The dilemma between wanting to be a good dog and following your instincts is the backbone to this wonderful picturebook by Chris Haughton. 

This is Haughton's second picturebook, I wrote about his first, A bit lost here. Chris Haughton is a designer and a picturebook creator, and this is evident when we look at the picturebook, an object in itself, every single part is to be looked at and read, every bit is there for a reason. Using his distinctive psychedelic palette, purple, pink and orange clash brilliantly on his front cover, with George's black nose weighing down the colours and keeping them together.  George is lovable, round, larger than life, and twice as big as his owner Harris! 

Back cover

... he is loved greatly by both Harry and the cat, as we can see here on the back cover.  It's an important image as George needs to be loved at the end of the book ... 

Front endpapers

The front endpapers give us a stylised vision of Harry's house, and provide a kind of map, for we will see all these areas, surfaces, objects in the following spreads. It's a neat and tidy house, everything in place.  No Harry, no George, just the cat under the table.

Copyright and title page

The copyright and title pages bring us back to the orange colour scheme and show Harry and George, one small the other oversized.  If you have a dog, you will recognize the look on George's face, it's that, "Am I going too look?"   But no ...

Opening 1

Harry is going out and George is staying in. "Will you be good George?" "Yes!", says George, "I'll be very good!".  Harry and George are brightly coloured against a stark white background.  The following page is full coloured again ...

Opening2

A trotting George, who is hoping he can behave!  The alternation between full coloured spread and colour upon white flows through the first half of the book.  

Opening 3

The white background seems to highlight what George sees and thus his dilemma: a brightly coloured cake (and boy it must smell good to a dog!) upon a white background, how could he miss it?  He loves cake, but he said he'd be good... and then the question to the reader in words,"What will George do?" and George himself visibly trying to decide what to do.  The face we saw on the front cover ... a cliff hanger?  a page turner ... why yes, we do want to know what he does don't we?

Opening 4

Back to a full colour spread and a we see George doing the thing we know he should not do.  KIds love it! They gasp, they cry out "George, no!" They cover their eyes or their mouths. Together we can all say, "Oh no, George!" This happens twice more, George sees cat, he loves to play with cat, "What will George do?"; he sees the dirt in the flower pots, he loves to play with dirt, "What will George do?".  We know the answers before we've tuned the pages. Poor George, he just can't help it.  Our rhythmic set of spreads changes and suddenly... 

Harry returns, pleased to see George until he sees what he's been up to.  George is so miserable. 

Opening 10

This great big pink dog, so full of remorse, and the repeated question, "What will George do?"  Dog owners will know... 

Opening 11

And Harry is forgiving, isn't he good?  So off they go for a walk and we are treated to several more spreads, for this picturebook is longer than 32 pages. 

Opening 12

Froliking off into the park, George sees a cake. "Will he eat it?"  No... he runs straight past it!  And past the dirt and pat the cat. What a good boy George is!  But then...

Opening 14

Trash (or rubbish if we come from the UK!), oh my!  George's nose is like an arrow, pointing towards the rubbish bin. George loves digging in trash, and so we are asked that question again, "What will George do?".  Children are shaking their heads they know what George will do, they are calling out and sighing deeply.  They know how difficult it is to be good!

Final verso

But when we turn the page we see that face again and above it the words, "George?"  Has he? Hasn't he?  My kids are convinced he has! But don't close the book yet! The back endpapers ...

Back endpapers

We are taken back to Harry and George's house, but this time everything is over turned and broken... it is the house after George has had a go at the cake, the cat and the plant pots! Can you see that his duck has moved too?  It sort of confirms what happened at the end... George must have gone for the trash can.  "Oh no, George!"

After we've looked at this picturebook once or twice we can ask the children how easy it is not to do something you really want to do!  How do they think George feels and have they ever felt like that?  Controlling impulses is not an easy thing and some 5 or 6 year olds find it very difficult.  Get them to talk about it a bit, even if in their own languages and not English.

A very wonderful picturebook, thank you Mr Haughton, and thank you to Gabriela's dog, who reminded me I had it on my shelf! 

Forgot to mention the Youtube trailer, which is just perfect ... listen out for the sound effects.

The colour of music

Front cover

I was in Hatchards in Piccadilly in August and loved being able to touch and feel all the books on their shelves (well not all, but almost!)  I happened upon Here comes Frankie, which, if you followed the amazon link, you would see is not as easy to get hold of as all that ... but I'm going to talk about it anyway.  

Why did I select it from the hundreds of other picturebooks on the shelves? First it's by Tim Hopgood, who I like a lot as a picturebook creator; and second it's about a little boy who sees colours and shapes as well as smells stuff when he hears things - he has something called Synaesthesia - when more than one sense combine. 

On Tim Hopgood's website he has a nice article about his work, describing how he uses the computer to get the wonderful textures into his illustrations.  He also loves music and this is what motivated him to create this picturebook.  

Back cover

As with all good picturebooks the front and back covers make one whole picture...  Here's the back cover to match the front one ...  Frankie's mum and dad dancing away to his trumpeting.  A joyful cat and dog scamper around Frankie's legs as he blows amazing colours from his golden trumpet on the front cover. We know he's playing music for we can see the notes, but why do we see all the psychedelic fruity colours?  

Endpapers ... lovely specimens!  Front are different to the back ones too!  The front set... 

Front endpapers

They are called the" QUIET colours used in this book", such as "Pin drop pink" or "Sssh! Green!" One more peritextual spread, to give us some more hints about what is to follow...

Copyright and title pages

Frankie is standing in the lime light, fruit, birds, butterflies and coloured swishes sprout from his trumpet.  Look at the title, now in grey.  Quite a contrast to the brightly coloured font on the front cover.  The copyright info is styled interestingly too, as though being blurted from  a trumpet, radiating from the bottom corner of the page. The two facing pages are almost symmetrical, as if sections of  a colour wheel. Bluey sections to one side and yellowy sections to the other. 

Opening 1

Opening 1 is made of all those quiet colours we saw on the front endpapers, "mumble beige", "silent night" ...  they set the scene for a very quiet life on Ellington Avenue. "It wasn't the kind of street where children played happily outside, or where the neighbours stood and chatted.  Ellington Avenue was always very quiet. Even the birds had lost their chirp." Frankie, and his dog are peering through the window and his cat stands gormless at the door.   It's even raining. 
In Opening 2 we are shown a number of quiet coloured photographs of Frankie and his family, his quiet family including the pets which neither miaowed or barked.  His mum and dad were librarians.  And of course, "They all lived together in perfect peace and quiet."

Opening 3

Lovely spread this one, and you'll see one similar later. Frankie's house, first floor and ground floor. His parents happily reading, doing crosswords, dog and cat snoozing, surrounded by quiet colours ... "But Frankie was beginning to find life at home just  a little TOO quiet. Even the big clock had lost its tick.tock."  
Frankie announced, very loudly (while standing on a chair) that he wanted to play the trumpet.  His parents suggest a book about trumpets or learning chess, but a few days later he comes home with a "shiny trumpet". After a bit, which takes place on a yellow background which doesn't appear in the quiet colours of the front endpapers, Frankie is able to make some noises ...

Opening 6

Against quiet colours, we are shown Frankie first trumpet sounds, which didn't sound very good, and smelt like pickled onions and next door's drains! Look at the way Hopgood has illustrated the sounds, swirly whirly shapes with recognizable onions floating around. When Frankie played the trumpet he could not only hear the sounds, but he could see and smell them too! 

Opening 8

As Frankie practiced and got better, so the colours and smells got better too! The shimmery, shiny spread shows "bursts of weird and wonderful smells." 

Opening 9

 Here's the house again, but this time the colourful, beautiful smelling music is winding its way through the rooms, "Amazing!" says Dad; "Delicious!" says Mum, and the cat and dog are quite transformed. 

Opening 10

Dancing across coloured, geometrical shapes the dog barks, the cat miaows and the clock begins to tick... as Frankie opens the front door, his parents begin dancing.  We turn the page and Frankie is in the street, quiet Ellington Avenue, neighbours are peering through their windows and opening their doors as the music makes everything brighter.  

Opening 12

A transformed street as everyone taps, claps and dances to "the sound of sunshine, along noisy Ellington Avenue." What a great ending and much fun to be had comparing the two street scenes in opening 1 and opening 12.  Ahh, but stop, it's not over yet!  

Back endpapers

The back endpapers show us the "LOUD colours used in this book", and all with great jazz related names like "Gillepsie's Green", "Summertime Yellow", "Coltrane Blue".  Tim Hopgood writes that "Not everyone's going to get it, but maybe it will springboard to something else; maybe they'll go and find out about something."  That's what's so good about endpapers, they sometimes add to the puzzle, sometimes not.  Maybe upon re-visiting a picturebook they'll be discovered! 

There's also a bit of blurb about Synaesthesia, explaining what it is and sharing the names of some famous musicians and painters who had the condition, Jean Sibelius, Miles Davis and Wassily Kandinsky. Here's a list of other artists and musicians who are said to mix senses (including David Hockney, Leonard Bernstein, Marilyn Monroe and Stevie Wonder). 

It's a great picturebook, the careful progression from quiet to loud colours, the use of geometric background shapes to create a number of sequences across a spread, and the structure of the narrative itself (setting, problem, and subsequent resolution) make this an exciting picturebook to share with older primary children.  Lots of discussions can be had around individual significances of colour, shape and sound; as well as recognition that there is a condition which means people mix senses ... and is there a message there?  Being allowed to express oneself as you wish can have some amazing consequences!