The Only Child. By Guojing.
Schwartz & Wade. $19.99.
Paddington and the Christmas
Surprise. By Michael Bond. Illustrated by R.W. Alley. Harper. $17.99.
Pinkalicious and the Snow Globe.
By Victoria Kann. HarperFestival. $4.99.
There have been some
remarkable children’s books released in recent years in which illustrations without
words tell either the whole story or at least a great deal of it. The works by
Shaun Tan and Brian Selznick stand as prime examples. To this rarefied group
may now be added The Only Child by
Chinese illustrator Guojing. A tale of the inward effects of the recently
reversed one-child-only policy in China, this is the entirely wordless story of
a young child – intended as a girl, but drawn androgynously – whose loneliness
at home, after her mother goes to work, leads her on a journey that starts in
the mundane world but soon leads, through the child’s sighting of a marvelous
stag in the woods, to a place of beauty in the clouds. It is a world that may
or may not be imaginary – Guojing carefully leaves both possibilities open –
and it is one in which the child encounters a playful, roly-poly, panda-like
cloud creature, a whale whose enormity is almost beyond description or
depiction, and a series of exhausting adventures that eventually bring her home
to her distraught parents and grandmother and to a peaceful sleep at a window
outside which tree branches look just stag-shaped enough to leave readers
wondering about what has happened. Certainly the story is a highly sentimental,
even maudlin one, but Guojing’s black-and-white pencil illustrations take it
beyond the treacly notion of a child who, feeling unloved, visits a place of
delight (and modest danger), a realm where wonders just may be real and the
loneliness of childhood most certainly is. There are a few mildly frightening
scenes here, but the overall impression is one of wonder in discovery and
delight in finding playmates – even cloud-based ones – to relieve a pervasive
feeling of aloneness that, one senses, not even the happy family reunion at the
end of the book can fully dispel. The Only Child can be read purely as a
wondrous adventure, and will surely seem that way to young children; but adults
will see more in it than that – and will understand how Guojing’s own
experience as an only child under China’s government mandate would have
instilled in her the feelings that she brings out so effectively here without a
single word.
Michael Bond’s Paddington is
no longer lonely and no longer wandering after he comes to live with the Browns
in London, and his adventures are more mundane than those of Guojing’s child –
and filled with words. In Paddington and
the Christmas Surprise, matters are also distinctly seasonal. Originally
published in 1997, revised in 2008, and now reissued, this is the story of
Paddington’s trip to a department store that has seen better days, Barkridges,
to see Santa Claus and ride the train through a display called Winter Wonderland.
The store trip is Paddington’s treat for the family – he has “been saving his
bun money for ages,” Mrs. Brown says – but the experience proves less than
enthralling. The store is rather dingy and the winter displays are distinctly
rundown, to such a degree that an annoyed Paddington at one point “was counting
the number of buns it had taken to pay for the outing.” Of course, for both
seasonal and Paddington-story reasons, matters cannot remain so downbeat. Nor
do they. Paddington finds trouble, as he always does, through his usual
well-meaning attempts to make things better – and by the end of the book,
everyone is happy, big crowds have again thronged to Barkridges, and even the
ultra-crabby store manager, who at first refers to Paddington as “a large
creepy-crawly,” is left talking about how “honored” the store is that the bear
from Darkest Peru paid it a visit. Everything ends, of course, with a huge jar
of marmalade and a very happy bear. Paddington
and the Christmas Surprise is not really one of the best Paddington books,
and gets a (+++) rating. But Bond’s portrayal of the mistake-and-accident-prone
bear remains endearing, and if R.W. Appel’s illustrations are on the
straightforward side, they are colorful and expressive enough so that young
readers will find them a seasonal treat.
Speaking of colors, Pinkalicious and the Snow Globe serves
up Victoria Kann’s usual heaping helping of pinkness, with this short seasonal
book (which contains more than a page of stickers) informing readers who may
have forgotten that Pinkalicious’ family is the Pinkertons and the town where
they live is Pinkville. Pinkalicious and her younger brother, Peter, are
frustrated at the lack of snow, so they try making their own with shredded
newspaper in the living room – resulting in predictable chaos. To give them
something less messily confetti-ish to do, their mom takes them to a gift shop
whose owner, Maggie, makes snow globes – but there is no snow yet this winter,
so she has not been inspired to make any. However, thanks to Pinkalicious and
her family, Maggie finds her inspiration after all, and thanks the Pinkertons
with a special snow globe that contains, among other things, pink snow. At that
point, the only thing missing from this pleasant little (+++) story is a happy
ending that includes snow, and that is just what Kann delivers at the
conclusion. Pinkalicious and the Snow
Globe is a brief and modest entry in the extensive Pinkalicious series, but
as with Paddington and the Christmas
Surprise, it is a book that existing fans of the title characters will
enjoy looking at – and whose words they will enjoy reading.
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