fourteen: the black book of colours by menena cottin

The Black Book of Colours by Menena Cottin

London: Walker, 2010

Review published 2010 at CMIS Resource Bank

The Black Book of Colours captivates everyone who gets their hands on it. Ask yourself on finishing: do you really see our world, or have you become blind to its brilliance?

Thomas is blind, but that doesn’t mean he misses out on the rich rainbow of colours that fills our world. His mother has worked with him to identify the smell and feel of colours, the taste and the sound of colours. The Black Book is presented from Thomas’ third person viewpoint, incorporating Braille text with white typeset text on the left of each completely black double spread, with raised black line drawings on the right.

Evocative text describes colours through sensory imagery to allow sighted readers to understand how blind and low vision people may experience colour.

Red is sour like unripe strawberries and as sweet as watermelon. It hurts when he finds it on his scraped knee.

The Black Book will have many applications in the classroom, from disability awareness to history (of Braille), art class and English. Students may make their own sensory picture story books or use vivid imagery to describe colours. Scratch and sniff strips, siren sounds, fluffy feathers and sandpaper are found in various tactile toddler books to link words and senses. The Black Book uses descriptive language to bring those senses to life. It targets sighted people to develop understanding of a blind or low vision person’s life experience. On a more complex level, tolerance of others’ viewpoints could be taught – we all see things differently.

Readers may begin to imagine what it is like to read by touch, but decoding these line drawings is surprisingly difficult. Their structure is not truly tactile as outlined by IFLA.

For futher literacy extension, students may develop their own black boxes in the style of Vision Australia’s Feelix kits. Such kits may contain the storybook with typewritten and Braille text, an audio version (or the children may read to a visually impaired student), and a variety of tactile props to support the story. Props for The Very Hungry Caterpillar could result in quite a feast!

thirteen: the river by libby hathorn and stanley wong

The River by Libby Hathorn & Stanley Wong

Curriculum Corporation, 2001

“The story is about a treasure!  You’ll see…”

What is Xian’s treasure, and what does it mean to Hong?  Stanley Wong’s design expertly sets the scene with his brushstroke title, Chinese lettering and faithful depiction of scrolls, furnishings and landscape.  Single spread illustrations cover each page with the two interwoven stories differing in layout.  The use of frames for today’s indoor urban scenes is perhaps a metaphor for its controlled nature, where Hong’s father is single-minded:

“Hong! You haven’t done your homework… get on with your duties!” 

Rural China (of 50-60 years past) is depicted in sprawling landscapes that reach the edges of each page.

Children enjoy The River for its adventure and introduction to Chinese culture.  Insertion of three panels within the larger illustration (p. 30) cleverly shows action essential to the plot.  The blue and white pot (of the past) is placed near the blue and white iMac computer on the next to last page suggesting a coming together of past and present (as is the theme of Xian’s treasure).

Libby Hathorn clearly has a strong interest in presenting Asian stories.  Notes mention the Vietnamese story on her website which readers will want to explore.  In this book, Hong is gifted the story of The River and the reader shares it with her. 

Xian’s remembrance of home, “Keep to the river. Remember, it’s your friend,” sets the linear path that she must follow from her old life (when her mother dies) to the future with her grandparents. 

Two notes of incongruity in this family tale concern Xian’s father not being mentioned, and

the incident with the boy and girl which happens in her grandparent’s village, her safe haven.

Hathorn presents a good adventure, but it did not flow as strongly as the story’s river.  More exploration into Hong’s family life would have served the story better.  We are left wondering why Ming gave her story to Hong and not her own granddaughter.

If the reader can ignore these small points of discontent, they will indeed have found a treasure and will perhaps be inspired to ask about their own family’s stories.

two: platypus deep by jill morris and heather gall

Platypus Deep, by Jill Morris & Heather Gall
Greater Glider Productions, 2006
Reviewed in Aussie Reviews, June 2006 online

Having recently met the author, and having seen much of her work collected together, the abiding regard she holds for Australia’s native wildlife became vividly apparent. Along with many talented artists, Jill has brought the bush to young readers with such characters as golden wombats, fig parrots, crocodiles, geckos and platypuses. In this she could be compared favourably with another Queenslander, Narelle Oliver.
Platypus Deep follows Orni the platypus as he searches for a deeper home. It is this search that shows both platypus and reader how important the creek system has been to many animals over millions of years.
Orni’s journey visits the familiar imagery of Jill’s books – native animals facing nature while living in a world dominated by humans. The author lives in Maleny where non-fictional platypuses have recently experienced the disruption of human intervention.
A reading of this lyrical narrative suggests a quiet creek setting with just the trickle of a waterfall and FLIP FLOP of Orni’s flippers to rustle the peace. A carefully measured repetition of sounds and the appearance of echidna hunting for ants leads to a beautifully balanced book. It is hoped that Platypus Deep will continue to introduce this curious animal to children, and not be the only remaining evidence of its existence.
(For children aged 3-10)

one: bertie and the bear by pamela allen

Bertie and the Bear by Pamela Allen
Penguin, 1990

Review published in Aussie Reviews, April 2006, online

Rambunctious, vivid, active and full of wonderfully repeatable words – this could be said of any of Pamela Allen’s picture story books, and is true of Bertie. No wonder she is often in the awards lists and her books are in library bags everywhere.

Allen’s colourful illustrations ‘above the line’ suggest movement from the first endpaper. Her use of white space focuses the eye on her characters. Bertie is being chased by a bear (who I think is really his friend) so the Queen steps in to shoo the bear away. The others join the chase for the fun and the opportunity to make a lot of musical noise (trumpet, gong, horn, flute, drum and voice playing BLAH! BLAH! and BONG BONG-NG-NG and OOOOOH! etc).
Impossible to read quietly, children in the three to six year old age group love to imitate the sounds and stamp and twirl with the characters. Allen has used handwritten crayon text within the illustrations to emphasise sounds. Her words are expressive with onomatopoeia used infectiously. The whole story is like a very active musical and movement piece (which could be printed on a scroll) fading gently to a pom pom at the last. As Bertie and the Bear so vividly conveys, children enjoy music and movement and this makes storytime fun!