Reeder review

The art of communication

Stephanie Owen Reeder

Like all books, picture books are a vehicle of communication, narrative, information and emotions. Because of the adaptability of the picture-book genre, which communicates using both verbal and visual language systems, it is sometimes possible for authors and illustrators to challenge the underlying precepts of the role of language in the communication process.

This is especially the case in picture books for older readers. Woolvs in the Sitee, by Margaret Wild and Anne Spudvilas (Viking, $26.95 hb, 32 pp, 067004167X), definitely presents such a challenge. Innovative, intriguing and potentially controversial, this book contains everything that a good picture book should possess — except correct spelling. But that is part of its appeal and a large part of the reason why Wild’s text communicates so effectively. Like Mark Haddon in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003), Wild has created a convincing voice, getting inside the head of her teenage protagonist, Ben, in such a way that she uncompromisingly communicates his innermost thoughts and feelings. She does this using the phonetic spelling, awkward grammatical constructs and made-up words of an undereducated, or perhaps dyslexic, teenager. However, like the ever-evolving language of SMS and e-mails, Ben has no trouble communicating.

Even with its creative spelling, Wild’s text rolls off the tongue — at times lyrical, with rich cadences and unusual word pairings, and at others prosaic. However, it is always true to the character of the terrified but determined boy in his nightmare ‘sitee’, where he is beset by ‘woolvs’ as he searches for his missing neighbour, and himself. The book poses the question: are the woolvs real or imaginary, allegorical or analogous? Whatever they are, the sense of menace and fear is palpable, identification with the lonely boy inescapable, and Wild’s ability to write uncompromising, demanding and ultimately heart-wrenching text undeniable.

However, the appeal of Woolvs in the Sitee is not confined to Wild’s text. In a reprise of their award-winning collaboration Jenny Angel (1999), Wild has again joined forces with Spudvilas, and the result is electric. Just as Wild challenges the way that we perceive the role of words in the communication process, Spudvilas similarly plays with accepted modes of visual communication, mixing traditional and non-traditional devices. She moves from the representational to the abstract, using darkly shadowed, evocative images with expressionist overtones. Jarring diagonals, symbolic images and variations in tonal quality add atmosphere and gradations of meaning to Wild’s text. When the words are powerful, Spudvilas provides images of colours and shapes without obvious connotations, thus resting the reader’s eye while the mind concentrates on the ideas or emotions that the text communicates. However, as with the majority of Spudvilas’s work, some of her most commanding images are portraits, especially those of Ben, which, like Wild’s text, invite the reader to gaze deep into his soul, and their own. This is verbal-visual communication at its best.

While picture books for older readers often manipulate the communication process, books for younger readers tend to use more traditional language to communicate. However, they can still challenge the imagination, while exploring more comfortable themes. The Wrong Thing, by Isobelle Carmody and Declan Lee (Viking, $26.95 hb, 32 pp, 0670888265), explores the importance of belonging. When something obviously in the wrong place enters his home, Hurricane the cat hunts it down. While Carmody’s simple but poignant text carries the storyline, Lee’s illustrations explode across the double-page spreads into a nightmare world where everything is wrong: pictures break out of frames, toys come to life, fish sprout wings, and symbolic and surrealistic images collide and feed off one another. This is an out-of-this-world visual trip with an ultimately reassuring message.

Picture books can also provide new insights into familiar stories. Dimity Dumpty: The Story of Humpty’s Little Sister (Walker Books, $27.95 hb, 40 pp, 1844280675) presents a well-loved nursery rhyme with a double pike with twist! If you have ever wondered how Humpty Dumpty got to be on that wall, or whether he was a good or a bad egg, wonder no more, because the inimitable Bob Graham has come to the rescue. This is the unexpurgated version — graffiti and all! But the story really belongs to Dumpty’s sister, Dimity, who, unlike her extrovert brother, is quiet, solitary and withdrawn. However, like all of Graham’s characters, she has a heart of gold and, when pushed, can rise to the occasion. This is vintage Graham — compassionate, warm and engaging, with old-fashioned English-style illustrations in keeping with the traditional nursery rhyme theme. And, as with all of Graham’s books, at its heart are family and community — albeit the family lives in an egg carton, and the community is a travelling circus. The text is longer than Graham usually writes, but it is eminently readable and fairy tale-like in construction. This is an endearing story, with a shy and retiring heroine, and a charming ambience.

Nigel Gray and Andrew McLean have also taken a well-known tale and reworked it for the picture-book genre. Pip and the Convict (Cygnet, $26.95 hb, 32 pp, 1920694234) is an adaptation of an extract from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1861). In communicating the essence of Dickens’s story while still capturing his dialogue and turn of phrase — including the familiar ‘brought up by hand’ — Gray has produced an illustrated story rather than a picture story book. He captures the essence of Dickens’s prose without making the text inaccessible to a picture book audience, although, as with any condensed version, there are some disjunctions. McLean’s familiar loose drawing style, with flowing pencil outlines worked and reworked and allowed to show through the watercolour washes, has a compelling immediacy that serves the story well. His predominately grey palette captures the bleakness of the landscape and of the characters’ lives, as well as enhancing the sense of menace and fear. This is a competent retelling of a familiar tale, and one which should whet the appetite for further Dickensian experiences.
The Boy Who Built a Boat, by Ross Mueller and Craig Smith (Allen & Unwin, $24.95 hb, 32 pp, 1741143934), also communicates traditionally, using a fun cumulative text. Smith’s busy and colourful illustrations are full of action and visual interest. He conveys the young boy Henry’s determination, enthusiasm and ability to immerse himself in what he is doing as, in a lush coastal landscape, he collects all the things he needs to build a boat — inclu-ding his sister. It is refreshing to find a book that champions the satisfaction children derive not just from playing outdoors but also from making something for themselves.

The theme of overcoming or dealing with the childhood fear of noises in the night is a favourite of authors and illustrators, and has almost created a tradition of its own. Noises at Night, by Beth Raisner Glass and Susan Lubner, and illustrated by Bruce Whatley (Omnibus, $24.95 hb, 32 pp, 1862916829), deals competently and engagingly with this theme. Glass and Lubner have written a solid rhyming text, with good read-aloud rhythms. It explores the wonder of the imagination, as a young boy puts a positive and adventurous spin on the noises around him as he tries to get to sleep. Whatley successfully bring the boy’s adventures to life in colour-saturated illustrations with strong design elements that engage the eye. This is warm and comforting bedtime reading.

Picture books for younger readers often use humour to communicate with readers and to engage them in the narrative. In Grandad’s Phase: My Family Project (Lothian, $27.95 hb, 32 pp, 0734408552), Archimede Fusillo and Terry Denton set out to entertain both children and adults alike with a quirky, cheeky text and sometimes over-the-top illustrations full of visual jokes. Terry Denton’s slightly lunatic cartooning is at its best as he illustrates Fusillo’s ‘school project’ on his far-from-ordinary family. The harried and conservative dad is a wonderful foil to the rebellious grandfather who, as the title implies, is going through a phase — something usually ascribed to children. He has decided that he does not want to be an old fuddy-duddy anymore — with hilarious results. Grandad’s Phase challenges the stereotypes of old age, but it is also an irreverent romp through family life, with child appeal aplenty.

However, picture books can also explore more philosophical subjects. The Smallest Bilby and the Midnight Star, by Nette Hilton and Bruce Whatley (Working Title Press, $19.95 hb, 32 pp, 187628871X), is about the smallest bilby in the bilby patch, but it is also about love, determination and the power of kisses. Well-established picture-book author Hilton has a fine way with words, and her story of the bilby who wants to kiss a star is highly readable and engaging, while Whatley’s illustrations have a beguiling clarity and luminosity that suit this sensitive exploration of the power of love.

Visual language alone can often communicate the intensity of childhood emotions such as love. The award-winning Korean picture book Waiting for Mummy, by Tae-Jun Lee and Dong-Sung Kim (Wilkins Farago, $26.95 hb, 40 pp, 0958557144), has been translated into English for the first time in this Australian edition. However, the text is minimalist, and it is the illustrations that carry the narrative in this touching tale of childhood persistence and faith. Ink paintings and sketches bring the Korean setting to life, evoking another place and culture, while exploring the universal principle that the most important thing in any child’s life is the mother. The illustrations convey the child’s isolation in a world of adults, and highlight his incredible single-mindedness. No matter how long it takes, how inhospitable the weather or how indifferent the adults he meets, he is going to wait at the tram stop until his mother comes. Not surprisingly, the most moving and evocative pages, and the ones that communicate most affectingly are those without any words at all.

The picture book can also provide a very effective format for non-fiction material, using verbal and visual narratives to impart knowledge, pique curiosity and engender wonder. Mustara, by Rosanne Hawke and the incomparable illustrator Robert Ingpen (Lothian, $27.95 hb, 24 pp, 0734408994), brings to life the world of the camels and Afghani cameleers who played such an important role in the exploration of Australia. Mustara is a young and rather small camel that belongs to the Afghan boy Taj. Taj has strong and affectionate relationships with both his camel and his friend, the somewhat rebellious Emmeline. They all feel constricted by the lives they lead and by the fact that they cannot go into the desert with the explorers. A dust storm helps to change that. Hawke’s poetic and well-researched writing effectively combines with Ingpen’s sublime illustrations to capture the grittiness, the heat and the grandeur of the desert and the characters who inhabit it.

Jane and Christine Christophersen evoke another iconic part of Australia and the life of the Aboriginal people who inhabit it. My Home in Kakadu (Magabala, $14.95 pb, 28 pp, 1875641939) has naïve illustrations that present the family life of the girl Tarrah in a series of snapshots. Like photographs in a family album, they effectively capture the vibrant colours of Kakadu and the strong ties between the land, the people and family members. The story is underpinned by facts about the bush tucker that can be found during what Aborigines identify as the Northern Territory’s six distinct seasons. This picture book abounds with information about traditional and modern-day Aboriginal life, presented in an appealing package.

As well as communicating information about how people live, picture books can effectively communicate more com-plex concepts such as evolution. In When Elephants Lived in the Sea (Lothian, $27.95 hb, 32 pp, 0734408420), Jane Godwin and Vincent Agostino present a whimsical interpretation of the elephant’s evolution from a sea to a land animal. The book design is impressive. There is physical interplay between the words and images (for example, words tumble across the page with the water squirted from the elephant’s trunk), and the mellifluous cadences of the language used to describe the elephants and their surroundings are well matched by the strong colours and tactile representations of the elephants’ hides. This compelling book uses well-known facts about elephants, such as their wrinkly skin and their purported long memories, to present the wonders of evolution in an understandable, but by no means simplistic, manner.

As shown in Woolvs in the Sitee, a secure living environment is an essential part of existence. Like Margaret Wild, Narelle Oliver effectively captures the voice of another being in her latest picture book, Home (Scholastic, $27.95 hb, 32 pp, 1862916683), while at the same time questioning the nature of perception. Based on the true story of a pair of peregrine falcons that are refugees from a bushfire, Oliver recounts their search for a home and their attempt to survive in what appears to be an alien and inhospitable environment. She cleverly counterpoints words and images: the spare text is written from the birds’ perspective, while the illustrations show the human reality. The illustrations — visually arresting montages of collage, linocut, photography, painting and drawing — create strong images that successfully contrast the natural with the built environment. The text and illustrations loop and wheel around each other, just as the falcons loop and wheel around their new home. Like many of the books examined here, Home illustrates just how versatile a vehicle of communication the picture book can be.

Stephanie Owen Reeder is a Canberra-based author, editor and reviewer.