A Family of Readers

by Roger Sutton

  The true test of a picture book is, of course, the child. Children’s choices are personal, just as adults’ are. It all boils down to finding books that speak directly to your child — and then getting more of them. How you find the books that fit your child, in this age of vanishing independent bookstores, may require some trial and error. You might want to start with the classics in your library and bookstore and go from there. Was Curious George a hit? Mischief abounds in picture books: try Rathmann’s Good Night, Gorilla, in which a sleepy zookeeper makes the rounds, wishing all the zoo animals good night — not realizing that sneaky Gorilla has stolen his keys and is opening all their cages. Somewhat older readers might enjoy Janice N. Harrington and Shelley Jackson’s The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County, in which a young (and unrepentantly naughty) girl just can’t help herself from chasing the elusive Miss Hen — until she discovers what Miss Hen has been hiding. Picture books featuring beloved pets (Where’s Spot?; Martha Speaks) are myriad: one of the best of recent years is Marc Simont’s The Stray Dog, in which words and pictures work together in tandem to tell a dog story with a very happy ending. And if cars and trucks are the current draw, move from classics such as Anne Rockwell’s Big Wheels and Byron Barton’s Machines at Work to Kate and Jim McMullan’s I Stink! (featuring an unforgettable, in-your-face garbage truck) and William Low’s Machines Go to Work (with close-ups of favorite hardworking vehicles, a narrative that encourages interaction, and flaps that reveal surprises to boot — toddler heaven).

  You will certainly know it when you have found the books that work for your child. You will know by the simple measure of how many times a child must hear it every night (“Again! Again!”), how dog-eared it becomes, how much milk gets spilled on it, and how much it becomes part of your child’s frame of reference, her whole way of looking at the world. Picture books do have that power — it’s the power of literature. Literature, and readers’ strong response to it, knows no age boundaries. I have never forgotten the anecdote I heard years ago about a toddler whose mother found him jumping up and down on his copy of Goodnight Moon, trying desperately to find a way into its pages, to find an entrance into the great green room.

  Just as the reading of picture books is personal, so is their creation; each picture book creates its own demands for illustration and text. Consider two brilliant picture books, both for young children, that are as disparate as can be, visually and conceptually: Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s First the Egg, a tour-de-force concept book about order and transformations with a playful twist at the end, and John Burningham’s Mr. Gumpy’s Outing, a story beloved by generations of two-year-olds in which Mr. Gumpy’s boat takes on more and more passengers, with predictable — and very funny — results.

  Seeger’s pages are color-saturated full bleeds in warm browns and golds, cool greens and blues, a bright yellow, and a pink that approaches hot. The impact is immediate, lush, and sensual, as thick visible brushstrokes on canvas draw the hand to the page as well as the eye. The portraits of the animals and the flower are detailed and painterly; because this is a concept book, not a story, the animals are objects to examine, not characters with whom to engage. Mr. Gumpy, on the other hand, is not at all painterly — the crosshatched illustrations, set in generous white space, look as if they might have been originally dashed off on a napkin. Two dots for the eyes and two lines for nose and mouth suffice to depict Mr. Gumpy’s face and reveal his mood.

  The texts are unlike, too. Seeger’s text is so minimal, so honed to the essentials, that it eschews verbs completely: “First the egg/then the chicken . . ./first the seed/then the flower . . .” The brevity of the text lets the viewer’s attention center on the art and the transformations. Burningham, on the other hand, employs a conversational text: “This is Mr. Gumpy. Mr. Gumpy owned a boat and his house was by a river. One day Mr. Gumpy went out in his boat.” Yet how complete and authoritative is this introduction: readers have all they need to enter the story. The simple declarative sentences propel readers forward — just as Mr. Gumpy propels his boat. And there’s the humor of the repeated silliness of Mr. Gumpy’s name — a foreshadowing of the hilarity to come. As soon as Burningham launches into the action, the text segues into variations on one simple exchange — “Can I come along, Mr. Gumpy?” [asks the rabbit]/“Yes, but don’t hop about.” The repetition gives toddlers structure and lets the story build tension; the slight variations make each interaction distinct, add flavor, and ratchet up the potential for disaster, as each animal is admonished not to bleat, flap, kick, trample, or — my older daughter’s favorite, much echoed — “muck about.”

  Despite their differences, the two books have crucial elements in common that make them successful. For one thing, each book gives viewers something specific to look at while listening to the text. Both Seeger and Burningham do this spectacularly, focusing on one single kid-appealing item or animal per page or double-page spread until very close to the end of each book. Secondly, each book uses a predictable structure, absolutely necessary for young children, who need that sure footing to negotiate the picture book. Seeger’s and Burningham’s books stand out because they provide the structure but then put it to work for a more interesting purpose. Seeger stays with her structure from beginning to end, but uses the age-old unanswerable question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, to playfully subvert her careful delineation of order. Some readers will laugh; others might begin asking some rather profound questions. Burningham putt-putts along on his placid river ride and then metaphorically guns the engine, with two double-page spreads and two pages of lengthy text bringing us in quick succession to the action-packed climax (“for a little while, they all went along happily, but then . . .”) and the homey, satisfying, very English resolution (with Mr. Gumpy, the children, and the animals all gathered around a table having afternoon tea).

  Speaking of endings — the endings of picture books are important. They can easily be too tidy, too finished, boxing readers in rather than releasing their imaginations or making them eager for more. Seeger and Burningham provide endings that are satisfying, circular, and open-ended. Seeger, with her seemingly flat-out reversal, will bring readers back to the beginning immediately to see why they were so sure about the chicken-egg order in the first place. Burningham follows his adventure with an invitation to “come for a ride another day” — and most children will take him up on the offer sooner rather than later. Great picture books don’t stay closed for long.

  Before I became a parent (this was back in the 1990s), I would never have believed that a sixteen-month-old could have strong tastes when it comes to choosing books. But my son knew exactly what he liked and disliked. He would stand at the bookshelf and locate his favorite books by their spines. He would go through his stack of board books, tossing the less-than-favorites aside, saying, “No, no, no,” until he found what he wanted.

  If his mother and I were trying to do something else and he wanted to read, he would follow us around clutching the book of choice, holding it up with outstretched arms. “Book! Book!”

  The day came when he learned to say and understand “again.” Sometimes he said “again” at the end of a story. Sometimes he said “again” twenty-three times for the same book. Once, I read School Bus by Donald Crews for close to an hour without a break.

  Luckily, his “again” books were books his parents liked as well. “More More More,” Said the Baby by Vera B. Williams; Truck and School Bus by Donald Crews; Tractor by Craig Brown; Little Donkey Close Your Eyes by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Ashley Wolff; Of Colors and Things by Tana Hoban; Bam Bam Bam by Eve Merriam, illustrated by Dan Yaccarino; and Now I’m Big by Margaret Miller.

  All of these books were ripped and bent and chewed and spilled on. All had to be taped and glued, or replaced. Again and again.

  The beginning of a picture book comes before the pictures. In Margaret Wise Brown’s beautiful Goodnight Moon, it was the magic of her words, their simplicity and the music in them, tha
t made Clement Hurd’s now-famous visual interpretation possible. Unless the writer is also an illustrator, the writing always comes first.

  Many fine writers can write about children but are unable to write for them. Writers such as William Maxwell awaken in adult readers an understanding of childhood that many of us don’t have, a sensitivity to children that is exquisite. But writing for children is different. The writers writing about children are looking back. The writers writing for children are feeling back into childhood.

  Many adults think of children as an emotionally different species from ourselves. But if there is any difference between the adult’s and the child’s feelings, it is in the greater intensity of the child’s. Humor, irony, religion, resignation — anything to give us control and protect us from the full impact. Kids don’t have those defenses yet. Their emotions are the same as those of adults, except for that one tremendous difference: children experience anger, loneliness, joy, love, sorrow, and hatred whole and plain; we experience strong emotions through our adult protection and veneer.

  There is no feeling that can’t be explored in picture books. Everything from birth to death is the province of those who write them. When we experience an emotion as adults, when the power and the mood returns with the force of childhood, we use writing to reach back to ourselves, to our own childhood, where we still need comfort or understanding. This desire to communicate with someone still alive within us is the source of certain children’s picture books.

  There are all sorts of picture books. There is a place for them all. There are those with plots and those without plots, stories that are funny and stories that are sad and stories that can be both at once. There are books comprised entirely of a mood that the words, like a piece of poetry, evoke. But in the great variety of books that are picture books, each so different from the others, there is one common gift. Ursula Nordstrom, one of the great children’s book editors of our time, called it “retaining a direct line to one’s childhood.”

  Picture books are written from a child’s point of view. That is the direct line to childhood Ursula talked about, the off-center way the world looks to children, to whom the world is new and who are trying to make sense out of everything adults take for granted.

  The details in illustrations create a cohesive picture that tells you more than the story tells. The text says, simply, “a poor woodcutter.” But how poor is he, really? And how will I show it? What was it actually like to be hungry, with one pot of food cooking in the fireplace of a small cottage? Or to live in a world of flickering firelight and shadows? Or to be part of a family in a folktale, with the whole family living and sleeping in one room? It behooves the illustrator to find out through research, and figure out how to re-create the essence of that life for the viewer.

  I could put the woodcutter and his wife in a traditional folksy cabin, wearing shabby clothes and holes in their shoes, but that’s been done before. Illustrators do that every day. I would like to show how poor they are in a new way. Hmm. Much of the action takes place in front of a fireplace, on nine double-page spreads. It had better be a good fireplace: I’ll have to draw it nine times, and people will have to see it nine times. Aha! Maybe the fireplace can tell us something about their financial condition. So, I look at a lot of photographs and old paintings of English country life in the late 1800s. Quite by chance, I see an old English watercolor of an interior, and there it is: the fireplace I need! The woodcutter and his wife wear clothing that is heavy and cumbersome, thick and baggy, for warmth and durability. Their cottage is set into the hillside, built of dirt, wood, and stone. It is shadowy inside, and misty outside among the trees.

  Later, the pan of cooking sausages will smoke up into the woodcutter’s face — even fill the room with smoke. The amount of time the woodcutter has the sausages hanging from his nose will be crucial. It is important to have an extra double-page spread there — to rub in his dilemma. It’s no good if on one page the sausages are on his nose and then — bingo! — they’re off again, too quickly, on the next page.

  As to the great forest they live near: what a chance to extend our understanding of what it would be like to spend one’s life in a forest! So we’ll add a line to the story to the effect that “all year round, the woodcutter and his wife worked, cutting and chopping and carrying.” Now there’s the extra richness of seeing them in all seasons. Maybe it’s snowing, and I’ll show how physically difficult it is for the woodcutter and his wife to work outside in the cold. Also, it gives us a time span in which we can get acquainted and begin to care about these two people.

  I think I’ll stick in a dog. Because the woodcutter and his wife go hungry, he’d probably be a hungry dog. I’ll put the dog in to underline the action. He’s always there, reacting. When you’ve seen the dog for a couple of pages, you’ll start looking for the dog throughout the story: “Uh-oh — this or that happens — how will the dog take it?” He gives me more comic possibilities, though he’s never mentioned in the text.

  On the cover, we first see the woodcutter and his wife, resting in the forest. It’s very pastoral. Then, on the half-title page, we see a man and a woman arm in arm, returning from work. We understand something about their simple, simple standard of living and what their relationship is to each other. “OK,” we say, “husband and wife, probably. They seem to be fond of each other.” I want it to be an old-fashioned love story — one that is seen in the pictures, though it never appears in the words.

  Before the story itself has even started, I’ve said without words that the woodcutter and his wife are two people who work hard, love each other, are very poor, and live very simply in a cottage by a forest. The stage is set.

  In his tragically short career as a picture-book creator, John Steptoe received attention for his groundbreaking early books (Stevie; My Special Best Words) and, later on, for his lavishly detailed folktale retellings (The Story of Jumping Mouse; Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters). Published in 1988, a year before Steptoe died at age thirty-eight, Baby Says is, compared to his other work, deceptively simple. But surely anyone who has ever shared Baby Says with a group of two- or three-year-olds will recognize the ingenuity behind Steptoe’s repeated use of three baby words or phrases — uh, oh; no, no; and okay — which, put into context by realistic pastel illustrations, tell a familiar story of sibling rivalry and harmony. (The entire book contains just seven words: baby; says; here; uh, oh; okay; and no.)

  Baby Says is a true first story; appropriately, the illustrations carry much of the narrative. At first glance they appear to be relatively straightforward: as big brother plays with his blocks and a toy airplane, a baby repeatedly throws a teddy bear out of his playpen in an attempt to engage his older brother.

  But there is an underlying story being told in the illustrations. Throughout the book, Steptoe uses horizontal lines to connect the two brothers, vertical lines to separate them. On the opening double-page spread, for example, the horizontal lines of the baseboard and toy truck and airplane point at big brother, while the bars on the playpen confine the baby and upright building-block towers occupy big brother’s attention. Baby brother does everything in his power to destroy the vertical lines by dropping his teddy bear out of his playpen over and over again, a time-tested diversionary tactic. When big brother returns the bear, it results in not just a bond of brotherly love but also a very strong horizontal line that fills the double-page spread (and the playpen bars are barely visible).

  Baby’s second attempt to get big brother’s attention by dropping the bear results in a much more angular return, with the lines of big brother’s arm more vertical than horizontal. Baby tries again, this time with a sideways attack that not only gets big brother’s attention but also sends a building block flying and releases baby from his playpen and its restricting vertical lines.

  Free at last, the baby finds one more vertical empire to topple. If you’re reading the pictures just in terms of horizontal versus vertical lines, this picture speaks for itse
lf (despite the fact that it’s the wordiest section of text). We’ve got the original (horizontal) horizon line connecting the two brothers. Babies, when engaged in their chief mode of self-propelled transport, are horizontal anyway. In this case, the baby is given an even stronger horizontal presence, extended as he is by his teddy bear companion. And look at the big brother — he’s leaning forward in a way that mirrors the baby’s horizontal position, and he’s turned his attention to one of the toys that had originally extended their connecting horizon line. So things are looking very hopeful for the baby. But first, there’s this vertical structure to be gotten out of the way. In fact, all the horizontal lines point right to it. Of course, the inevitable happens, and the baby topples the tower of blocks. A dramatic wordless spread shows the big brother’s reaction to the baby’s intrusion.

  Interestingly, Steptoe again uses the play between vertical and horizontal lines to depict the big brother’s anger. The normally horizontal lines of his eyebrows and mouth point up and down rather than across. To make amends, the baby reaches across the space separating the two brothers to draw them together. Once, as I was reading this aloud to a group of preschoolers, a four-year-old observed, “Look! Their heads make a heart!”

  Over the years, I have read Baby Says aloud countless times, and one of the things I’ve observed is that anyone under the age of five identifies with the baby rather than the older brother. This, I think, is another indication of Steptoe’s genius — to have made the big brother old enough so that the conflict between them can be playful. He’s also old enough that the baby will be recognized by young children as an underdog who gains the upper hand, a favorite theme among the most powerless in our society.