I’ve just come across Carin Berger’s All Mixed Up. It’s one of those mix-and-match flip books where you can mix and match body parts from different people to create lots of new people. You can actually virtually turn the pages here.
I’ve been reading Odysseus to my class over the last few months, and as part of the work we did, we created some mythical beasts. At first I had the idea that it would be a mix and match book. Then I wanted them all to have collaborated in creating one combined beast. Anyway, I liked what they created and wrote so much I didn’t have any flipping or flapping. Here’s the book.
“There are Seven Skills in the Way of Jalal,” whispered the Elder Paw. ”We know only three of them. Their names are these. Slow-Time. Moving Circles. Shadow-Walking.”
SF Said‘s Varjak Paw is a tale of a pet cat who must grow up, learn to survive Outside, and learn the Seven Skills of his ancestor Jalal. He uses the skills, which he learns from Jalal in his dreams, to help his new street cat friends, Holly and Tam.
As usual David McKean’s illustrations are amazing, and complement the text brilliantly.
The frogge vppon a tyme whan she sawe the crabbe swymmynge by the watersyde spake and sayde: “What is he, this so fowle and vncomly, that is so bold to trouble my watyr? Forsomoch as I am mighty and stronge both in watyr and lond I shal go and dryue him away.”
And aftir this saying she made a lepe as though she wold haue oppressyd the crabbe and sayde: “O thow wretche, why art not thow shamefaste to entyr in to my restynge place? Arte not thowe confusyd to defyle the watyr that is so fayre and bright whan thow arte so fowle soo blacke and soo odyows?”
The crabbe as he is vsyd to do went euyr bakwarde, saynge to the frogge, “Syster, saye not soo, for I desyre to haue thy loue and to be at peace withe the. Therfore I praye the entyr not vppon me withe vyolence.”
And the frogge, seynge hym goynge baltwarde beleuid that he had doone soo for fere of her.
Wherfore she began to greue him more and more both with woordes and dedys, saynge: “Withdrawe not thy self, thowe moost fowle, for thow mayst not escape, for this same daye I shall fede fysshes with the.”
And euyn forthwith that same woorde she made a lepe wyllynge to sle the crabbe. The crabbe, seynge the greate iubardye and that he cowde not escape, he tournyd him self and disposyd him to batell and caught the frogge with his cleys and bote her and plukkyd her to smale pecys and sayde:
Already they’ve been generating all sorts of fantastical fictions.
Not only that, but I obviously think, “How would that work with children?” I’m going to try it out.
And then I think, “What if the pictures were different?” and “What pictures would I put on the dice, that would lead to the most interesting and various places?”
There’s heavy cloud sweeping over Skye, so already they’ve been in use today.
Then again, maybe a more complicated story generator is needed.
I saw, via the Internet, at the Story Museum in Oxford they had reconstructed a nineteenth century Storyloom.
The machine is more precisely known as Rochester’s Extraordinary Storyloom. This page tells us that “Victorian inventor Barnabas Rochester had an interest in stories but little talent for writing them – which is why he is said to have built the Storyloom.”
It’s Ted Dewan who is the engineer behind the reconstruction of the storyloom. His website is wormworks.com
Ted Dewan is an amazing illustrator when he’s not doing reconstructive engineering. I especially like his black and white pictures for Robert Ornstein’s books:
Just read the amazing Rabbits written by John Marsden and illustrated by Shaun Tan. The pictures taken from the book here are from Shaun Tan’s website.
In the story the rabbits come, they take over, they build, they remove, they subjugate. Shaun Tan documents the tragedy of their conquest in beautiful detail:
I’ve just sat outside on this warm autumn evening and read La Folle Journée de Nasreddin Hodja, a picture-book by Laurence Fugier, wonderfully illustrated by Véronique Joffre.
Some stories I didn’t know too! Here’s Nasreddin when he learns that small song birds are sold for three pieces of silver, selling his turkey – which after all is much bigger – for ten pieces of gold:
Here he is pouring hot water from the baths into the stream, because his donkey likes his herbs in tea form:
And here he is – this one’s familiar – “keeping an eye on the door” in case of burglars – by carrying it around with him:
Véronique Joffre’s simple collage-style illustrations in cool colours suit the spareness of the tales perfectly!
Seeing this diagram by Stephen Wildish, reminded me of the very satisfying formula at the beginning of Allan Ahlberg‘s Funnybones:
Allan and Janet Ahlberg produced so many fantastic picture books, and often what made them so good was the simplicity of the idea.
The opening lines of this one:
In a dark, dark town there was a dark, dark street
and in the dark, dark street there was a dark, dark house,
and in the dark, dark house there were some dark, dark stairs
and down the dark, dark stairs there was a dark, dark cellar
and in the dark dark cellar….
Three skeletons lived!
The pictures work brilliantly too, with the black background throughout. The book worked so well that the Ahlbergs made lots of follow-ups.
The cartoonified version stuck fairly faithfully to it, though there’s not a really good quality version on YouTube. Griff Rhys Jones was the ideal narrator:
Just finished Patrick Ness and Jim Kay’s A Monster Calls. What a tale! So good that when Matthew came round , I straight away got him reading it! He’s taken it away with him now.
The circumstances of the book’s making are interesting in themselves. As Patrick Ness says in The Guardian:
My editor, Denise Johnstone-Burt, had commissioned a book from Siobhan Dowd, based on a idea Siobhan had talked with her about. I’ve seen emails from Siobhan talking about how she couldn’t wait to get properly started on the notes and early prose she’d written. But very sadly, she died from breast cancer before she could finish it. Denise didn’t want the idea to disappear, though. I wasn’t perhaps the most obvious choice at the time, considering that Siobhan’s books tended towards the realistic and mine tended to the fantastical, but what I hope we have in common is a kind of wanting the emotional truth for our readers, of wanting teenagers to be taken seriously, as complex beings. And that can be true no matter where your story is set.
It is a tale of a boy, Conor, with a mother who is fighting a long battle against life-threatening illness. The monster that calls is in the form of the yew tree from the graveyard, but a yew tree that walks and talks. It tells Conor that it has three stories, and that it will want Conor’s story, the truth, his truth afterwards. There are things Conor doesn’t want to tell. There are the nightmares that he always has. But the tree drags it out of him, makes him tell the truth he didn’t tell even to himself, makes him realise the lie that went with it.
As the BBC said this evening, Patrick Ness’s novel A Monster Callshas won both the prestigious Carnegie Medal and its sister prize for illustration for the first time in the awards’ history. I haven’t read it yet, but have just looked at the pictures, and want to.
I like what illustrator Jim Kay has to say about his way of working:
When I got the commission I started collecting thousands of marks and smudges and objects. I remember reading that before Wimbledon Steffi Graf used to hang tennis balls all round the house, so she was aware of where balls were all the time. So I did a similar thing. I put thousands of abstract marks and splatters all round the flat. As I went about my daily life I started to see things in them – maybe an arm or a hedgerow. Things took on their own little life. The most unusual objects I used in the book were bread boards I picked up from junk markets. Old bread boards are wonderful – they have a whole history of cuts and marks. When you make a print with one you get an abstract piece of art.
I’ve just come across Carin Berger’s All Mixed Up. It’s one of those mix-and-match flip books where you can mix and match body parts from different people to create lots of new people. You can actually virtually turn the pages here.
