Chorao Draws Outside The Lines, But Too Many Images Bring Down The Joy
Written: Jan 13 '05
Product Rating:
Pros: Illustrations are artful, beautiful and captivating, telling each story well (sometimes too well: see cons)
Cons: A third of the characters' expressions are negative, and could disturb baby's naptime.
The Bottom Line: I cannot recommend with a whole heart. Nearly one third of the faces illustrated (albeit beautifully) project negative & even frightening images.
I agree with the first review of this book in one definite way--Kay Chorao's "The Baby's Bedtime Book" is one of the finest compilations of children's sleepy verse I have seen to-date. I highly recommend that it be purchased for every home where children are present!
I do not agree, however, that this book is up-to-par with the quality and joy of the other. In fact, because of my full satisfaction with "The...Bedtime Book" I was sure I'd love this Chorao compilation as well, but had obviously set my expectations too high.
And here is why: there are more frightening, sad, and even terrifying, images in this story than I could bare sharing with my 21-month-old toddler. In fact, I found myself flipping past pages as soon as I opened to them, so I wouldn't put images in his head that he doesn't need to manage right now. So far his life has not included pictures, movies, TV-images or real-life encounters with all that much fear, worry, anger, sorrow, animal abuse and parental neglect...
I am not naive--I know these emotions and situations will come, and that he will have to face & deal with issues of sin in the world, etc., but it doesn't seem that a book with a title specifying a "Baby" audience should have been made up of THIS selection. There is plenty of time for this awareness to naturally come to pass without having to force it on him.
ILLUSTRATIONS
With negative emotions: 19
With positive emotions (including title & dedication pages): 19
Non-emotional: 8
Yes, these are well-rendered, creative and artful illustrations, every one!
The delightful image to accompany the poems on page 1 ("This Little Pig," "Tickly, Tickly," and "Pat-A-Cake") is of the Chorao quality I was anticipating. A mother interacts joyfully with her toddler girl as they play pat-a-cake together. Both are dressed in pretty, feminine, pastel colors and fabrics. Five little pigs who demonstrate the first poem are illustrated in a framed piece of artwork behind the pair (art within art). Three bright flowers emerge from the lower right corner of the piece. The image pushes outside the frame and pulls you in, easily. It is a wonderful way to begin.
Pages 2 and 3 share one long pastoral image of peaceful farm life for "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep," and "Little Boy Blue." Layers of rolling hills give depth and mystery, while a playful boy climbs a tree to pick an apple, and a farming couple work in the yard of their thatch-roofed home. Ah--I am so pleased! This is precisely what I expected when I opened the pages of this book.
In fact, some illustrations are so beautiful (like the above), you may want to frame them to decorate your child's room!
But not all.
For example, every face on pages 4 & 5 is disturbing. The queen and king pig are a bit weirded out about the blackbirds ("Sing A Song of Sixpence") emerging fearfully from the pie, and a solo crow stares down a young mouse (the maid in the garden hanging clothes) with evil red eyes. The sweet bent-over mouse looks worried her eyes will get plucked out. That, alone, wouldn't ruin the book, but since there are over a dozen more miserable drawing of little animals & people in this compilation, it does not seem to me suited for infants and toddlers.
A warm and welcoming sunset falls behind a one-room schoolhouse on page 6, but Mary, of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," is scolding her sweet little lamb, who looks quite ashamed of himself for following her to school. Funny, the whole theme of this rhyme is the love between these two--"'Why does the lamb love Mary so?' The eager children cry; 'Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know,' The teacher did reply." You wouldn't know it from the expressions they are exchanging! The teacher should be the one to scold, not his precious Mary.
Too bad the illustration & rhyme chosen for page 7 (the opposite of Mary & her lamb) is sad Little Bo-Peep who has lost her sheep (they happen to be standing all around her, but...). So, you have these accompanying pages of scolding a shamed lamb and then four little lambs wandering aimlessly about making their shepherdess miserable. Makes sense to put the lambies together, but it presents a sad life for sheep, for sure.
The dress and style of these illustrations is fitting the period in which the poems were most popular. Mary attends a one-room school house in button-up boots, a Laura Ingall's-style dress and smock, and a couple braids down her back. Bo-Peep wears a bandana on her head, and carries a too-long staff, which also breaks out of the illustration's frame with classic Chorao styling. Good research.
Thank goodness there are smiles and magic on the next page's drawings, as Charley Barley flies through the sky away from Anna Maria. However, the 1st poem, Anna Maria, is about a gal who sat on the fire. For a "Baby" who is learning about fire, and specifically that it's a "Don't Touch" item, I think this this is one badly chosen rhyme among many in this collection aimed at a Baby-audience. Still, the Anna Maria image is reminiscent of Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are," when Max is playing with the Wild Things, with his eyes closed & a big silly grin. Here, Anna Maria rides on the back of a cat. Pairing these two rhymes was a fun decision. The fire pot shares a hill with Charley Barley's ducks, as these poems share space in one illustration.
Another double-page illustration that is light and sweet is of the next rhyme, on pages 10 & 11 with a hefty and content king and his cat/pig/dog fiddlers, as a bear cub brings him his bowl. Faded color pencil hatching fills in a background of the interior of a castle, and there is plenty to occupy a child's eye as the story is read aloud.
On page 12, A sleepy "Willie Winkie" runs through the town on the opposite page of an unfaithful man, punished by Goosey Gander, who threw him down the stairs for lack of penitence. That kerplunk is rather humorous & I'm sure would have my little boy in stitches (he likes it when things fall down & go boom). Pages 14 & 15, again, intelligently incorporate the telling in pictures of two tales in one--while the old man snores away in the rain, Doctor Foster marches on below him, hip-deep in a puddle that has apparently been there long enough to attract sea life. This is a brilliantly captivating image of a horribly rainy day. Chorao's signature comes through in wild & cultivated flowers, and "drawing outside the lines."
Little Miss Muffet's spider would terrify anyone, and so will her expression. Yikes! Her little doll sits precociously and primly on a nearby chair while Muffet takes a cushy bean-bag-type pumpkin-shaped lounger for her meal. The spider looks like it's cross-bred with an ant--oh, my! Facing the frightened Muffet is the good boy, "Jack Horner," with a proud grin on his face, Christmas holly & a precious horse pull-toy nearby, and the plum pie beside him. Here, fear is balanced with pleasure. It's a humorous coupling.
Two dog poems follow, where the very long tail of the puppy in the house stretches far out beyond the boundaries of the image, into the white page with print. At the tip of his tail--a monarch butterfly.
Old Mother Hubbard is poverty-stricken--my empathetic son would stay focused on this one for a while, whimpering as the dog does. Her home couldn't be more bare--even the mouse has come to beg.
But beside her (p.21) are three chubby professionals, the butcher, baker and candlestick maker, tightly sharing a wooden barrel as they float down a heavily-reeded river. It's a new rendition to me--I didn't realize they'd come from a rotten potato!
Creatively, Chorao has the "Cobbler, Cobbler" fixing the largest shoe of all time--the one that houses at least a dozen munchkins! Beneath him, they play wildly and mischievously, and even sweetly, but they're in for something horrid 'round the bend; "The Old Woman in a Shoe" has pulled a switch to whip her children. I never have cared for that rhyme...I wonder, always, who thinks it is a good one to still teach children? This lady won't feed her children when they're hungry, then thinks a good whipping will quiet their cries so they'll sleep through the night. I am most disturbed by the inclusion of this Mother Goose "classic" in Chorao's collection.
A classically presented illustration of "The Cat and the Fiddle" offers no surprises, as "Three Little Kittens" weep, sob & belly-ache across the page (p. 25).
Then Jack falls down to break his crown and thankfully we have been spared an image of his head cracking open--we just see his fearful expression as the ground moves closer to his face. Next to his miserable clumsiness is a sweet and gentle image of little John sleeping soundly in "Diddle, Diddle, Dumpling."
"Three Blind Mice" are accompanied by a sighted one (from "Hickory, Dickory Dock"), running amuck and chasing the farmer's wife to high heaven. We're racking up the count on negative facial expressions.
Then the most pleasant smile you could dream of spreads wide across the face of "Humpty Dumpty" on page 30 (though the wall below him paints a picture of his infamous fall before he cracked to bits), just before Peter, Pumpkin Eater's wife scowls on the opposing page. If I were ole Pete, I couldn't keep her either! What a miserable hag.
Lucy Locket cries because someone's stolen her penny...an onlooking rabbit looks on with empathetic sorrow. The "Crooked Man" on page 33 is crooked in every joint, muscle and point of style. He has that frightening look of the candyman in Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang, however, who creeped me out intensely, even as a preteen; unnaturally long, crooked nose with spaghetti-strand greasy hair and a gummy closed-mouth grin.
Pages 34 & 35 offer a curious and active winter picture of "Poor Robin" interacting with "Poll Parrot" and the little brown mouse who steals from him. More stealing to come: on page 37 "Tom, The Piper's Son" gets beaten for stealing a pig, following a poem about a shy pig getting a shave from "Barber, Barber." He pays for his shave in snuff. Am I ready to teach my son what snuff is? Not yet...
Pages 38 & 39 are as entertaining & light as the flying Charley Barley/Anna Maria combination from pages 8 &9--simply delightful childish play. But then, someone has tried to drown the poor kitty cat on p. 40. epinions won't let me tell you the name of that poem--it's a word few use anymore to describe cats. Here it is used for two-in-a-row. A different p-cat has frightened a sweetly dressed little royal mouse on p. 41.
Among my favorite illustrations is p. 42 where a lady of days-gone-by rides her horse side-saddle. Wonderful dimension, play and gentleness live here. However, I cannot tell you the name of the horse on p. 43, either, by epinions regulations. Words have taken on new meaning in today's world haven't they? P. 44 is stiff, and the hen described as "My Black Hen" is rather white or gray to have that nom de plume, so to speak!
On p. 45 "The Little Nut Tree" is sweet and generous like Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree." Then the "Little Girl With a Curl" is just plain mean, as she and "Contrary Mary" battle it out in a garden of cockle shells, etc. (p. 47)
Tweedledum & Tweedledee hold each other in fear for their lives as a "monstrous crow" swoops down to "frighten both the heroes so." (p. 48), then Georgie Porgie's making all the schoolyard girls cry for kissing them (p. 49).
The stars have gossamer threads on pages 50 & 51, and draw you in to explore every inch as an "Old Woman Tossed Up in a Basket" sweeps to clean them up. The blues in this image are both warm and cool at once.
"Baby Bye" appears to be strangling his mother! (p. 52), but Mother Goose gently draws in her gosling on p. 53, "Goose Feathers."
In "Derry, Down Derry" we see the life of a privileged child, in contrast to "Little Polly Flinders," who gets "smacked" for trying to warm her toes by the fire & getting her clothes dirty (pages 54 & 55).
A sweet drawing with a rising full moon fills the final page (57), that is reminiscent of Van Gogh paintings, but a poor little rabbit is about to get skinned in the last rhyme selection of all, "Rabbit Skin"! Now, there's the stuff nightmares are made of--what a way to close!
I have mixed emotions with this selection. I cannot recommend it with a whole heart because half of the illustrations and nearly one third of the faces presented here project a negative emotion: sad, threatening, condemning, angry, suspicious, frightened, terrified, sly, angry or just plain creepy! They are drawn convincingly, and this illustrator is enormously talented, but what I question is the selection of poems included.
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