Kahlo’s Koalas: 1, 2, 3, Count Art with Me. By Grace Helmer. Andrews
McMeel. $8.99.
Baby Love. By Sandra Magsamen. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic.
$8.99.
I Love My Llamacorn. By Danielle McLean.
Illustrated by Prisca Le Tandé. Random House. $9.99.
Usually small, usually square, always
limited in length and usually limited in what they try to communicate, board
books are an excellent introduction to the world of reading for the youngest
children, nearly from birth up to perhaps age four. Every once in a while,
though, a board book comes along that pushes past the typical limits of the
format and ends up giving very young children far more information than parents
have any right to expect from these generally very simple volumes. A
particularly fine example is Kahlo’s
Koalas, which basically requires parents to study or re-study a variety of
famous artists before letting their little ones engage with Grace Helmer’s
illustrations. Helmer does something truly amazing here: she turns the usual
one-to-10 counting book into a presentation of 10 different styles of art,
distilling each artist’s signature approach into broad-brush (literally
broad-brush) illustrations to go with every number. The book’s title refers to
the number two, for example, and the illustration – shown in somewhat different
form from the way it appears on the book’s cover – is of two koalas wearing bright,
Kahlo-esque, multicolored floral caps. The number one is a Cubist, dual-perspective
“Picasso panda,” the number three features “Lichtenstein llamas” against a
background of evenly spaced red dots on white, and so on. Every page is a
wonderful encapsulation of a specific artist’s approach. The number seven shows
“Van Gogh geckos,” all of them primarily yellow and swirling in circular
fashion against a “Starry Night” background that is mostly a rich blue. The number
eight is “Seurat sloths,” and a very pointillist portrayal it is. The other
artists to whom Helmer pays tribute are Matisse (four multicolored cutout-like silhouettes
of monkeys), Pollock (five paint-spattered poodles), Kandinsky (six abstract line
drawings of kangaroos), Warhol (nine different views of warthogs on a 3 x 3
grid, eight from the front and one from the rear), and Monet (10 delightfully
colored and posed mice amid lily pads). The final two pages of this marvelous
board book offer a “Gallery of Artists,” giving the dates of each one mentioned
and some basic information on their styles. At a minimum, parents should
familiarize themselves with these very short biographical sketches so as to be
able to guide their young children’s enjoyment of this very special book.
Ideally, families will have art books on hand so slightly-older-than-the-very-youngest
children who especially like one or another of these artists can see their
actual work and begin what will hopefully turn into a lifelong love of art and
culture.
Sandra Magsamen’s board books hew more
closely to the minimal-communication model than does Kahlo’s Koalas, but Magsamen is an expert at giving families more
than just a very simple set of sentences on a very straightforward topic.
Several works by Magsamen are called “Heart-Felt Books,” because the messages
they convey are heartfelt and their covers incorporate actual felt in some
form. That form, in the case of Baby
Love, is in fact a heart, which functions as an overlay of a circular
mirror that reflects through all the pages from the book’s end to its front
cover. There are not many pages here, only 10, and not much message beyond
love, either. But for the very youngest children, that will be plenty. Magsamen
uses gentle humor here, as in her other board books, to interest parents and
little ones alike. She first asks what the mommy bunny says to her baby, and
then answers her own question, “You’re some bunny special!” Next is the elephant mommy, who tells her baby, “I
love you a ton!” Then comes a cat,
then a dog, and finally the human mom’s question, “What do I say to you?” The answer, of course, is “I love you!” But there is more to the
book than this. That built-in mirror lets a child look into every page and see
himself or herself “in costume,” as it were – that is, looking like a baby
bunny, elephant, cat or dog. The words themselves draw young children in: some
are in thin letters, some in thick ones, some white, some multicolored. And
there are prettily drawn hearts of all sizes and colors sprinkled around the
pages, picking up on the “Heart-Felt Books” theme and the big red heart that
appears around the central mirror cut-through on the book’s cover. There is not
a great deal of information communicated in Baby
Love, but what is put across is
perhaps the most important information a young child can be given – and Magsamen
gives it with her usual heaping helping of joy.
There is a cut-through feature as well in I Love My Llamacorn, and here too a
heart is involved, but what goes beyond standard board-book design in this case
is the way the cut-through is used. It looks, on the cover, like a series of
ever-smaller hearts in multiple colors: dark blue, lighter blue, pink, red,
yellow and green. Each of those colors then becomes the primary
outline-of-heart color on the inside pages, so the hearts get smaller as the book
progresses, while the delightful Prisca Le Tandé illustrations take up more and
more of the page space. Danielle McLean’s concept here is also an
above-and-beyond-the-usual one: the magical animal is neither a llama nor a
unicorn but a blend of both, with a llama’s shape and furry coat, a unicorn’s
rainbow-colored horn and tail, and even a rainbow-colored blanket on its back.
It is just too cute for words – not that McLean lacks those: “You leap across
the RAINBOW sky/ and dance on clouds that float up high.” And, “When you come
near, birds start to sing/ because of all the JOY you bring.” And so forth. The
llamacorn, a less stately beast than unicorns usually seem to be, spends most
of its time cavorting with a group of suitably upbeat fellow creatures,
including a saxophone-playing bunny, a guitar-strumming fox, and birds and
butterflies and even a turtle that perches on the llamacorn’s head. All the
typical pleasures of books for very young children are here: happily buzzing
bees, a smiling sun, a crescent moon holding out its arms (yes, it has arms)
for a hug, and more. Interestingly, though, in another of its departures from
standard board-book design, I Love My
Llamacorn is the size and shape of a regular book – that is, taller than it
is wide – instead of being square, as board books usually are. As a delightful
combination of expected and unexpected elements, I Love My Llamacorn is sure to be plenty of fun both for the
youngest children and for adults fortunate enough to have a chance to read the
book to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment