I just read a lovely new picture book...It's called Once Upon an Ordinary School Day by Colin McNaughton and it isnpired me to make a list of my favourite uplifting picture books.
Once Upon an Ordinary School Day is about an ordinary boy who goes to shcool. The first few pages are all drawn in plain greys and blacks and whites and the text is peppered with the word 'ordinary'. In class there is a new teacher who plays the class music and inspires their creativity. The pictures become colourful and the text disappears as we see the boy get lost in a world of storytelling. Gorgeous!
The story of Frog Belly Rat Bone by Timothy Ering is another greys to colours story, this one with an environmental theme and very strange art. It's about a boy who finds a box of treasure in his rubbish dump world. He is disappointed to find the treasure is nothing but specks, but he follows the written instructions and plants them anyway. He makes a rubbish creature called Frog Belly Rat Bone to protect the growing specks from a rabbit and a rat who want to steal them but everyone ends up being friends in a huge garden.
Ish by Peter Reynolds is about a boy (I sense a theme...) who draws pictures. He draws everything he can see. Then one day his older brother makes fun of the pictures for not looking enough like the real things. He screws up his pictures and throws them away and hates himself until he realises his little sister is taking the thrown away pictures. She has been sticking them up on the wall in her room because she loves them, when asked why she likes the pictures even though they don't look enough like the real things she says they look "ish". The flowers are flowers-ish, the vase is vase-ish. Then the boy is free again to draw whatever he likes and be appreciated for it.
Emily and the Dragon by Lyn Lee is about a girl who loves to dance. Her brother likes to fight dragons, when she says she'd like a turn he says "Everybody knows girls don't fight dragons!" Emily replies with a succint "I don't know that" and goes ahead into the dark forest to find the dragon. Along the way she makes friends with a witch, teaches a knight to knit and eventually finds a dragon. She's all set to fight him when the dragon says "Actually I'd rather dance". Quite a lovely non-violent story with a classic last page. (The brother looking up in terror, shadowed by the dragon who is asking him to dance.)
Might add some more later. We'll see.
Posted by jenni at November 11, 2005 03:39 PM