Robin Smith

Ever wonder how authors and illustrators work together when they make a picture book? Well, if you read Chloe and the Lion, a smart and hilarious new book by Mac Barnett and Adam Rex, you’ll get an idea of what the process might be like if the author and illustrator collaborate a little too closely.

The setting for the story looks like an old-school diorama, giving it a delicious 3-D feel. The narrator is the author, Mac, and he appears to be made of plasticine clay and roughly sewn cloth. Adam, the illustrator, is drawing the story that Mac is writing. And that’s where the trouble begins.

Chloe looks for loose change, and, when she has enough money, wants to spend it on a ticket for the merry-go-round. After the ride, she is walking home dizzily when a dragon jumps out at her. This would all be well and good except that Mac’s words say a “huge lion leapt out.” At this point the author breaks the wall between reader and creator to address the illustrator directly. "Adam, could you come out here?" he asks. As in the brilliant Interrupting Chicken, the reader watches the process as author and illustrator get into an argument over the relative coolness of dragons vs. lions. Mac and Adam duke it out, with Adam drawing unflattering illustrations around Mac’s body—turning him into a package with a pink bow on top, a cowboy and, finally, a lavender gorilla. Eventually, Mac fires Adam and has to find a new illustrator, a search that doesn’t work out too well.

There are many wonderful images in the book, but my favorite might be when Mac decides to be both author and illustrator himself. At that point, he dances across the gutter, breaking a cardinal illustrating rule and showing the reader that he has no idea what he’s doing. Two pages later, the spread is all white except for a tiny bit of the bereft Mac saying, “I give up.”

This is not the first time that Barnett and Rex have created havoc and hilarity together (they have also done the Brixton Brothers mystery series and the picture books Guess Again! and Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem) and I, for one, hope they make their peace, respect each other’s gifts and make many more books together. Children find their brand of humor irresistible and will return again and again to Chloe and the Lion, looking for the small details left behind as visual gifts for the reader.

Deborah Hopkinson is the kind of writer who puts the accent on the “story” part of the word “history.” If you look back at her work for young readers, from picture books to middle grade nonfiction, you’ll find she uses this approach carefully and in a way that brings the reader right into the time and story. Even if the reader had little interest in the topic at the beginning, she or he finds this new place or time or person just as fascinating as Hopkinson does. It’s a special gift.

This time, as we near the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, she tells the fictionalized tale of Charles Dickens’ childhood in A Boy Called Dickens. And what a childhood it was, downright . . . Dickensian. Told in the first person, there is a sense of mysterious immediacy that draws the reader right into the story.

“We are here to search for a boy called Dickens. . . . There are ragged children here, to be sure, scrambling for bits of copper and wood to sell.” The reader finds Dickens and he is not on his way to school (he has long since sold his books) but on his way to work—10 hours a day at a blackening factory, where he and other boys make shoe polish. And if this isn’t enough, he spends his weekend visiting his family in debtor’s prison. When his family is released and no longer needs his income, “Charles is still sent off to work ten hours a day, six days a week.” And how, reader, does Dickens keep going? He tells stories to the other boys and writes them down, filling them with “pickpockets; a miserly old man; a young gentleman with great expectations; a proud heartless girl.”

Adding to the feel of the place—the old London of child laborers, squeaking rats and debtor’s prisons—are John Hendrix’s atmospheric mixed-media illustrations. Using pen and ink, acrylics and charcoal, it’s the charcoal that lets the reader know what life was like for everyone, even children, in Dickens’ time. The soot and smog serve as indicators that things were far from easy for Dickens and his fellow workers. When Charles’ father is shamed into letting Charles quit his job, the tone of the illustrations lightens considerably, a visual cue that things will get better for this little boy with big stories and an even bigger dream of becoming a writer.

This fascinating slice of life will allow young children to understand the life that inspired A Christmas Carol and Oliver, stories they are likely to know. And if they don’t know these stories, Hopkinson’s fine book (with a very interesting author’s note) will certainly pique their interest.

A second grade teacher at the Ensworth School in Nashville, Robin Smith served on the 2011 Caldecott Committee.

I love Johanna Wright’s art. When I saw her first picture book, The Secret Circus (2009), I read it three times before I would share it with anyone. There was something so honest about the illustrations that I was hooked. I stalked her website and drank in the details about her efforts to sell her art on the streets of New York City and celebrated when she moved to Portland and had a baby. I hoped that motherhood would not slow her down.

In her new picture book, Bandits, Wright takes a raccoon and transforms it into a charming bandit with only a sly stroke of her paintbrush and black pen. When I read this book for the first time, I was staying in a cabin where raccoons were anything but adorable. Though my tolerance for the little garbage-tippers was at an all-time low, one look at Wright’s clothed raccoons, sneaking and creeping, doing just what they please, made me remember just how much I liked raccoons in any books I read as a child.

Most of the story takes place at night, allowing a fabulous palette of dark blue, brown and green, lightened by a sliver of moon or flashlight. The hound dog (called “the fuzz”) does his best to stymie the bandits, but clearly is no match for the thieves, who beat a hasty retreat (stopping for a picnic on the way) to their tree house, where they “lay low” (reading and drinking tea) until the next night. With each turn of the page, the sky lightens a little, the colors changing as sunrise appears, allowing for a perfect visual passing of time.

Adults will identify with the weary townsfolk who are forced to clean up the dumped trashcans. Children will root for the raccoons all the way. Why not? The raccoons are having all the fun and facing none of the consequences and they get to live in a fantastic tree house, keeping an eye on the town all day long. Little details (raccoons on swing sets, brushing their teeth in the town hot tub, carrying baskets of loot in their stick-figure arms, picnicking under the owl’s watchful eye) on each spread will entice young readers and listeners to return to the story over and over. It might even convert some of their parents. Maybe.

Newbery-winning author Katherine Paterson re-imagines Saint Francis of Assisi’s beloved canticle praise song to the natural world in a beautiful new picture book, Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Paterson’s clear prose takes this ancient text and makes it accessible to everyone.

Breathtaking papercut and watercolor illustrations invite the reader to slow down and explore the pictures that extend the text and add a level of grandeur not often seen in books for children. Pamela Dalton’s illustrations start as Scherenschnitte, an old German technique of cutting a large piece of paper into astoundingly intricate details and later adding paint. This style is particularly well suited for book art. The gutter of each spread is the center of each symmetrical illustration; the visual symmetry works especially well with the text, which shows exquisite balance as well. Paterson and Saint Francis speak of Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, Wind and Air, Water and Fire, War and Peace, Death and Life, all with a gentle cadence that reminds the reader of the love of God.

Each spread is a self-contained story, with children in old-fashioned clothing living their rich lives. When Paterson speaks of forgiveness and comfort in sickness, Dalton’s illustrations serve as a place for the reader to consider what these words really mean. Framed in a large oval are scenes of children comforting one another and treating each other in kind and forgiving ways. On the left, we have a boy helping a girl pick up a spilled basket of oranges. Above them are two girls sharing a doll. Even the animals joyfully observe this very human ritual.

Paterson comes from a religious family and is married to a minister, but this is no simplistic Sunday School book. Her love of life and deep appreciation for all gifts, even the gift of “Sister Death, who will usher us at last into your loving presence, where we know and love you as you have always known and loved us,” lead the younger reader to consider difficult questions in a comforting context.

This treasure has the feel of an instant classic and should be part of any family’s library. It would be a perfect gift for a baptism, confirmation, birth or any special celebration.

If you read this fantastic new picture book to children, I suggest you put off telling them who the knobby-kneed girl on the title page really is. Then, when you’ve read Me . . . Jane from beginning to end, they’ll want to hear every word of the author’s note to learn more about the book’s title character, Jane Goodall.

Patrick McDonnell’s loving illustrations celebrate Jane’s rather solitary but happy childhood. Whether she is reading in a tree or happily stretched out in the grass, this little girl is in love with and curious about the natural world. Accompanied by Jubilee, her stuffed chimpanzee, Jane observes squirrels, shells, leaves and birds, and even hides in the hay to see an egg being laid. The book’s font has a hand-stamped look, and what appear to be rubber-stamped pictures float lightly beneath the text, just like the replicated pages from Jane’s childhood journal.

Children will enjoy looking at Jane’s handwriting and puzzles, her observations and research. Her passions are so obvious and she loves nature so much that it is not at all surprising that this little schoolgirl would one day be recognized by the Queen of England for her work with animals. Some might have seen Jane’s dreams as ridiculously big, but, happily for us, she did indeed go on to live in the jungles of Africa, like another Jane in Tarzan of the Apes.

Little girls—and this big one, too—will be inspired by the childhood of Jane Goodall and will, every time they read this charming volume, get a little misty-eyed at the book’s closing photograph, which shows Jane holding her hand out to a baby chimp. It’s a perfect image of “Dr. Jane,” reaching out to animals and inspiring young naturalists everywhere.