Beautiful Book #42

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:  A Pop-up Adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Original Tale by Robert Sabuda. Little Simon. 2003.

While we're on the topic of movable books, I might as well share my contemporary pop-up selection. Robert Sabuda has been designing pop-up books since 1994 and is widely considered a contemporary great of 3D paper engineering. He won the biannual Meggendorfer prize three times in a row between 1998 and 2002, and he's the one name people tend to know off the top of their head when the topic of pop-up books comes up. I'm sure you've seen at least a few of his his books, as he has been remarkably productive over the last 20 years. On occasion, I've seen his books show up at Chapters and Winners in their bargain books sections. If you ever have similar luck, snatch them up, because they are fabulous to own, to show off, to collect and to give to others.

I could have chosen any one of a number of his titles for this list but not only am I partial to his take on Alice I am also keen to have his version stand next to those of Moser and Oxenbury who are also on the list. Influenced by paper engineering greats such as mid-20th-century, Czech Vojtěch Kubašta who also produced a pop-up version of Alice, Sabuda has pushed the boundaries of the movable format further than any of  his predecessors. His 3D designs spring high from the page, he uses uses ingenious devices to accommodate text, he hides sub-pop-ups inside attachments on the page, and he sometimes uses telescoping devices to play with perspective (as shown below with Alice's fall into the rabbit hole). Enjoy the pictures I've included here, but make a point to get your hands, delicately, on the real thing. And if there is someone on your Christmas list for whom a wow-book would be appropriate, Sabuda might just be the answer you're looking for.

Beautiful Book #41

Magic Windows and Playtime Surprises. Reproductions of late Victorian movable books by Ernest Nister. Philomel. 1980 and 1985.

"Keep these posts short," I tell myself. "Limit yourself to one book per person," I tell myself. "You have 10 books to go before Christmas," I tell myself. "Don't get bogged down in the details."

But then my mind jumps up and down like a puppy: "but I haven't had a single pop-up or movable book on the list! I don't know how to choose a single pop-up or movable book! Nister is a must but so are Lothar Meggendorfer and Raphael Tuck! And that's only the pre-20th Century tradition of movable books! I'll want to talk about Bavarian colour printing and the influence of Germans on movable book history!..."

And that's when I try to calm the mental puppy down and get on with the business of selecting and featuring a book. So, Nister it is. Many of my choices so far have featured a compelling darkness in children's literature. Not so today. It's hard to imagine children's books more sweetly sentimental than the late 19th movable books of Ernest Nister. With verses likely written by Edward Weatherly (the writer is not acknowledged on the books nor are any specific artists) and pictures of cherubic Victorian children and kindly animals, Nister's books drip with the nostalgia of an idealized childhood. And, you know, sometimes, that can be a very good thing indeed.

The two books I've chosen each use a different form of dissolving picture mechanism that I've tried to show in action below. Magic Windows relies on the reader twisting a circular image until it creates an entirely new picture. Playtime Surprises is constructed more like pull down blinds where one picture dissolves into another. If you want to see these books in action, we have 25 of them in the Wallace collection thanks to a generous donation from J.C. Belzile. We also have a small handful of reproduction Meggendorfer books as well. Feel free to stop by. While you're here you might want to linger over Peter Haining's Movable Books: An Illustrated History, so that you too can turn your mind into an exited, book-loving puppy.

Beautiful Book #40

Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs. A tale from the Brothers Grimm translated by Randall Jarrell. Illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 1972.

I have to remind myself that this book was published in 1972. On the one hand, the illustrations have a medieval European feel to them, but on the other hand the book feels so contemporary, or, more to the point, it feels like a 90s picture book--and that is high praise coming from me because I think the 90s were a golden decade for the picture book genre. In a world swimming with interpretations of Snow White, this version is my favourite. The text is from the original with all its Grimm darkness. Jarrell's translation is suited to oral story-telling (with its pace, cadence, repetition and spareness), which is good given that text and illustration alternate pages. Burkert's illustrations are detailed and naturalistic with heraldic touches that lend it that medieval feel. I am also enamoured of the way she uses light subtly and to great effect. More than any other folk tale, Snow White carries a cartoonish legacy, not just because of Disney but because those dwarfs are, time and again, depicted as comic. Burkert, thankfully, doesn't fall into this trap. Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs was a Caldecott Honor Book for 1973.

Beautiful Book #39

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. Hamish Hamilton. 1978.

December's here and it's time for a winter book. Some might call The Snowman a holiday book given the story's ubiquity as an animated Christmas favourite in the UK, not to mention all the product merchandising around it, but I'm not one of them. Neither is Raymond Briggs, whose own grumpiness about Christmas is rivaled only by that of his Father Christmas from his 1973 book of the same name. A pioneer of comics format in children's books, Briggs is comfortable writing for adults as well as children. Political/social issues are never far from his works, as evidenced in titles like the anti-nuclear Where the Wind Blows or the class-aware Gentleman Jim.

In all his works Briggs, conveys remarkable depth of character with nothing but subtle strokes and minimal dialogue. The Snowman, a wordless comics picture book in which a boy's snowman comes to life to spend one night with him before melting in the morning, has fantastic narrative flow and takes the reader through a range of emotions from pure joy to grief. Created entirely with pencil crayons, the illustrations are soft, child-like and accessible. The book, like the snowman himself, feels like an old friend you want to hang onto as you soar to imaginative places. Our library copy is so beat up, one could scarce call it beautiful anymore...which I guess is testament itself to the beauty of the book.

Beautiful Book #38

The Visions in Poetry Series published by KidsCan Press. 2004-2008.

Jabberwoky by Lewis Carrol. Illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch. 2004
The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. Illustrated by Murray Kimber. 2005
The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Illustrated by Geneviève Côté. 2005
Casey at the Bat by Ernest Thayer. Illustrated by Joe Morse. 2006.
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. Illustrated by Ryan Price. 2006.
The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear. Illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch. 2007.
My Letter to the World and other Poems by Emily Dickinson. Illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault. 2008.

KidsCan Press took  bold, artistic step in 2005 when it began publishing classics from the children's/young adult poetry canon re-envisioned by daring Canadian illustrators and published in small, beautifully designed and bound keepsake books. Given the relatively small market for poetry in general, let alone children's/YA poetry, and given the ubiquity of these texts in other editions, the press's creative and financial risk was not insignificant. I do think they pitched the project perfectly, though; The Visions in Poetry books are equally at home in a collector's hands as on the shelves of a high school library. The first title released, Jorisch's dystopian urban war-scape vision of Jabberwocky, won the Governor General's Literary award for illustration in 2004, as did his subtle class/species segregation version of The Owl and the Pussycat in 2008. Don't stop with the two award-winning titles, though. The entire series is worth poring over time and again as you will see from the glimpses below. I've included the cover and an image from each.

Beautiful Book #37

Zoo by Anthony Browne. Julia MacRae Books, 1992.

Art history playfully demystified. Human apes and ape humans. Anxious children encountering empathy. Simple stories that peel back family and societal dysfunction. The gap between text and image widened to profound inference. Damn. Fine. Art. Any single Anthony Browne picture book will entice you but his body of work as a whole will impress upon you the significance a single voice can have on the picture book genre. The Hans Christian Andersen medal committee saw this significance when they awarded him their medal, the highest international award for a body of work in illustration, in 2000. The British Booktrust also saw it when they appointed him the 2009-2011 Children's Laureate. Browne's books are highly decorated: two have won the Greenaway Medal (Gorilla and Zoo) with others making the honour list. He's also been awarded the Emil/Kurt Maschler Award, the New York Times Best Illustrated Book and The Boston Globe Book Award. Gorilla is his most highly decorated book (maybe _the_ most highly decorated picture book of the contemporary award age), but all his books are worth falling headlong into. Me? I'm a fan of his Willy books but his takes on fine art also always reel me in. I also have a soft spot for Silly Billy because it came to me and my daughter at exactly the right time.

I've chosen Zoo because in many ways it is his ugliest book (at least in terms of theme). The beauty of this book lies not only in the quality of Browne's art but in his ability to start a conversation that he leaves the reader to finish. You will never see a family trip to the zoo in the same way once you've read this book. What I find most astonishing about the book is how my reading of it has changed over the years. When I first read the book, all my empathy was for the animals. Now, my empathy shoots off in all sorts of directions at once. The book leaves me feeling deeply conflicted and, frankly, I can't think of higher praise for a book than that.

And a treat from Willy's Pictures:

Beautiful Book #36

The Circus by Brian Wildsmith. Oxford, 1970.

Someday I would like to see Brian Wildsmith's original art for the well over 80 books he has illustrated. Sure, the mountains of trade paperbacks and beat up hardcovers that surround me are grand, but that art...those colours...those splashes and shapes...I want to see them big. I want to put my nose so close to them that the museum guard must clear his throat to hold me at bay. I want to stand 15 feet away from where they hang on a wall, close my eyes, inhale deeply, and then open my eyes to drink them in.

When his ABC was published in 1962, Brian Wildsmith gave birth to the joyous, 1960s revolution of colour in children's literature. In his books, each illustration is a work of art and most don't really need text at all. This is why the wordless Circus is my favourite of his books. I am afforded the privacy I so demand with his illustrations.

Some day, if I save my pennies and am lucky, I may get to the Wildsmith museum that has been built outside of Tokoyo--or maybe there will be an exhibition somewhere in striking distance to Atlantic Canada. Until then, I will content myself with his books. If you are looking to give a gift to a young child this Christmas, you can still get new copies of Brian Wildsmith's Favourite Nursery Rhymes and Brian Wildsmith's Favourite Fables for a good price. Many of his other books are also still in/back in print but the two I mention do make excellent gift books.

And here are a couple of online articles about him: one from an interview with The Independent and the other which is short and sweet but features pretty pictures.