Prize Draw: Picture Books Beyond Primary School

By Joanna Norland on October 30, 2016 in book reviews

Rediscovering picture books — favourites from my childhood, and stacks of new ones — has been one of my great unanticipated joys as a parent.

I devoured picture books as a child, and would read myself hoarse at bedtime during my my babysitting years.

So why did I stop reading them in the decades leading to the birth of my kids?

Because picture books are for children, of course . . .

Or are they?

Undoubtedly, picture books are essential nourishment for growing hearts and minds.

But, like Pixar films, zoos, and puddle walks, they are often best appreciated with the vantage point of some extra life experience.

The best picture books engage in a dual conversation with children and parents, and contain subtlety that rewards multiple re-readings. Their nuggets of wisdom speak to some of the most pressing challenges we face as adults seeking to live with empathy, integrity and a measure of joy.

Sophisticated ideas emerge from deceptively simple texts.

As a teen, I attended an excellent conflict resolution workshop that was structured around Dr. Seuss’s cold war classic, The Butter Battle Book.

A revered professor at my law school earned the instant allegiance of his first-year civil procedure class by kicking off with a Max and Ruby story that illustrates a key procedural principle.

More recently, here are some picture books that I’ve shared with the grown up kids-at-heart in my life:

Mummy Goes to Work by Kes Gray (illustrated by David Milgrim) is my go-to gift for new mothers heading back to the workforce at end of maternity leave. The resilient protagonist explains that his mother goes to work, but still thinks about him when she’s at the office. He knows that she would rather be with him, playing, tickling, roller blading and cuddling because of the ferocious enthusiasm with which she does all of the above (sometimes, all simultaneously) when she returns home. Toddlers may not fully appreciate the surprise punchline. But for a guilty back-to-work parent, it offers a burst of reassurance, sage advice about how to communicate love to your kid — and a light-hearted reminder not to overdo it.

In So Few of Me, written and illustrated by Peter Reynolds, busy Leo struggles to tick items off his expansive to do list. When a second Leo shows up, he hopes that they will be able to finish the task list together – but more Leos (ten, at the final count) only generate more work. Maybe the answer is to sneak away and snatch a little dreaming time? . . . I run a reading group on time management at my office, where we have diligently studied worthy tracts on productivity such as Getting Things Done by David Allen and Laura Vanderkam’s What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. On a whim, I reserved the final ten minutes of the last session for Leo’s tale. His parting insight, “What if I did less, but did my best?” charmingly and memorably incapsulates a year’s worth of earnest reading and discussion.

The Very Inappropriate Word by Jim Tobin (illustrated by David Coverly) tells the story of Michael, a boy who loved words. One day, he hears a VERY INAPPROPRIATE one blurted out by a classmate who receives a bad report card. Despite many admonishments, Michael can’t stop saying the new word — until his canny teacher prescribes a clever cure. I discovered this quirky gem while perusing the picture book stacks for my 5-year-old daughter, but took it home for my ten-year-old son, who was cramming for an important standardised test. Reviewing Michael’s wacky, wonderful word finds — “pompous”, “metamorphosis”, and “smithereens”, to name a few — may have nudged my guy’s score up by a point or two, and certainly made for the summer’s most (okay, only) enjoyable study session. And later that evening, when he cuddled up with his little sister to read Michael’s story to her, I remembered that being a loving bro is more important than hitting an arbitrary 320 pass mark. So we all learned something important that day.

Zagazoo, by Quentin Blake. A dear friend sent this to us upon the birth of our first child. Like us, the book’s protagonists, George and Bella, were overjoyed with their gurgling package, a cheery baby named Zagazoo. But then, their bundle of joy turns into a greedy vulture . . . and a raging elephant . . . and an indescribable, hairy something-or-other. Just when George and Bella fear they can’t take it anymore, a final, miraculous transformation occurs. A must-read (and re-read) for any parent requiring reassurance that they are not the only one to be suffering a warthog day, or damage-controlling a destructive baby bat.