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Hats off, to Klassen

3/8/2022

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A lesson in 3-act plot structure for picture books

SP’s current favourite bedtime story is the last in Jon Klassen’s famous Hat trilogy, viz. “We Found a Hat”. It’s about a pair of friends who find a hat together and decide to walk away from it as there is only one. One friend secretly struggles with this noble decision but is eventually reconciled to it by the other’s generosity of spirit.

Profound sentiments, I think, but made accessible to our 4- year-old by humour and the simple setting. The latter is a desert rock with tantalizing view of the 10-gallon hat. The morally less-steadfast tortoise sneaks on and off the symbolic rock, where the other sleeps with a clear conscience. ​ ​

SP gets the sub text: that one tortoise plans to snaffle the hat; that his friend’s generous dream shames him into doing the right thing. Like the best lessons in morality, this is never explicitly stated. Instead Klassen writes: 
“I am dreaming I have a hat. 
It looks very good on me. 
You are also there.
You also have a hat.
It looks very good on you too.” ​
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We Found a Hat
Written and illustrated by Jon Klassen
​Walker Books 2016.
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Sanctimony avoided with deadpan humour
Thereafter, the pictures do the work. In the final spread two little tortoises in ten-gallon hats drift side by side up into a night sky.

There’s not a whiff of sanctimony thanks to Klassen’s signature deadpan humour. And, I suggest, what the New York Times called his “poetic restraint”? I’m saying nuffin’, but you’ll see an example on the spread where the only text is “Nothing.” This page cracks SP up.
Structure
Klassen’s arrangement of the picture book into 3 parts: “Finding the Hat”, “Watching the Sunset”, and “Going to Sleep”, echoes the classic 3-Act plot structure. “Finding the Hat” is Act 1– an inciting incident: 2 tortoises find one hat, have second thoughts about taking it as a hat can’t be shared.
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Act 11, an obstacle to harmony – dodgy tortoise is conflicted (shown simply by the angle of his eyeballs. Genius!) Obstacle two, he fibs. The action continues to rise (Klassen’s “Going to Sleep”) when dodgy tortoise sneaks back to the hat. The Act III climax occurs when Dodgy learns of his friend’s generous dream and settles down beside him… hat-free.  So, three acts following the Exposition, Conflict, Rising Action, Falling Action structure. (See template.) 

What did I learn from this top-class story:
  • The best way to do sub-text for non-readers is visually.
  • Less is more, especially when writing morality. Avoid sanctimony by saying less. Say it humorously, if possible. 
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'We Found a Hat' written and illustrated by Jon Klassen

P.S. When reading this story I was struck by how odd it would seem for a San audience. Anyone who found an abandoned hat in the Kalahari would immediately don it, until a friend admired it, whereupon it would be gifted to them. And so on and so on, until everyone in the group who liked/needed a hat got a chance to wear it. Just goes to show that even the best picture books might not work in other cultures. 
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WONDERFUL WORLD-BUILDING

2/21/2022

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light touch for dark subjects

​I was delighted to discover a joyful book on this heart-breaking subject. There are many good things to say about The Forgettery but I’m going to use this analysis as a way of thinking about world-building in a picture book.

​Not that easy, considering one has fewer than 800 words to do it in. But there are visuals, I hear you say, and creating a setting is an illustrator’s job. True, but setting is not just location, it’s also the moral climate at work in a book. It’s the author’s job to convey this. And I think it dictates the story’s tone and therefore, the illustration style. 

Rachel Ip’s Forgettery, “a place where you can find anything you have ever forgotten”, is a cheerful place. 

 Laura Hughes takes this comforting idea and draws a nostalgic world that is part The Magic Faraway Tree (Enid Blyton) and part Swiss family Robinson. The illustrations are lively and stuffed with witty details: a drawerful of footwear from the 60s, a reel to reel tape deck; I chuckled, seeing all the stuff a woman of certain age would know. Great research, Laura.
The world is logically conceived, i.e. the child’s memory store is much smaller than Granny’s, naturally, and it contains “an entire box of forgotten ‘please and thank yous.’” There is a way to enter the Forgettery and a way to exit. (That spiral slide had our child reader longing for a go; her Grand too.)

Ip’s language is lyrical in places: “Moments of delight… fluttering … like butterflies. Paper thin and delicate.”  (I love it when a writer gifts a child-reader poetry.)  And she uses the List method to write Memory Making Advice. Like Martin Waddell's in Rosie's Babies, Ip's words convey honest sentiment (optimism, fun, hope) rather than sentimentality.
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The Forgettery by Rachel Ip
Illustrated by Laura Hughes
Published by Egmont, UK, 2021
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World-building with words inspires illustration
Hughes’ touch is tender too. We see Granny sitting in a bed wearing an NHS hospital gown under her old green cardie.  Amelia, the child protagonist, is there, comforting her grandmother via a memory book she’s made. So, the main character has learned something and applied it; a prescript in some Writing for Children texts. 

So, what did I learn about picture book writing from The Forgettery? 
  • Even a whimsical world needs the scaffold of a well-thought out concept. 
  • A credible setting (physical and emotional) built with the right words and tone, enables the illustrator’s imagination to take off.

Dementia is a subject I wrote about here, back in 2018.  I’m addressing it in my picture book writing too, inspired by this remark from my dearly demented, now departed mother.  If my NYP* pb, working title “Finding Nan’s Treasures”, should ever appear in print, please note it was in no way influenced by the above.  Writers explore what's bothering them and discover there are a limited number of ways to  develop a theme. 
*Not yet published. Has a nice optimistic tone, don't you think?
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'The Forgettery' by Rachel Ip, illustrated by Laura Hughes. Images used with permission.
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Pic. book for Teens

2/5/2022

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turning text into teen theatre

I know I said I’d be reviewing mostly picture books (for 2-5 years you'd think) but I found one for 12+ with lots of full colour ​illustrations. And it's stunning!
 
“Medusa” is written by Jessie Burton of “The Miniaturist” fame and is illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill. It’s a theatrical experience, from the spellbinding double-page spreads that sometimes look like stage sets, to the sensuous language used by this acclaimed writer. 
Give it to your daughters and sons; they’ll hand it on to theirs.
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Medusa by Jesse Burton
Illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill
Published by Bloomsbury. London, 2021 
Here is an on-trend feminist retelling of a Greek classic, the Medusa myth which I’ve always found particularly misogynistic. You’ll recall that Medusa is a beauty, vain about her hair, who is raped by the god Poseidon in Athena’s temple. Instead of being sympathetic, the goddess turns Medusa’s crowning glory into a nest of vipers and gives her a gaze that turns men to stone. Naturally, a ‘hero’, (Perseus,) comes along and cuts off her head ...with the help of Athena! 
  
Burton employs the Alternative Perspective approach to imagine the tale from teen Medusa’s point of view for a young adult audience. The rape content is not explicitly stated nor shown, but Poseidon, conceived as a giant but anatomically vague male  lurking in the sea depths, gets the point across and avoids problems the book might have encountered in the American market. ​

​
Even if the reader didn’t know the myth, the story works for the intended age group; it’s a doomed romance with an intriguing sprinkle of fantasy – flying sisters – the Gorgons, humanised here and turned into the kind of big sisters every troubled girl would love to have. But essentially, it’s a story about the liberation to be found in accepting oneself as one is, warts (or in this case, snakes) and all. 
 
For me, the most interesting part of this reimagination is the relationship between Medusa and her snakes. With admirable economy Burton shows them as manifestation of the girl’s emotions, therefore an intrinsic part of her, while also individualising the snakes. It’s a lesson in micro pen portraits for walk-on (slither on) characters. 
 
I can’t gush enough about Lomenech Gill’s artwork. You can read about her process here. Gill's style is monotone graphic in some plates, Old Master-rich in others. (Burton states in the afterword that the famous Caravaggio painting of Medusa with a realistic face was the catalyst for her reimagination of this tale.) 

As is supposed to be the case in picture books, the collaboration of writer, artist and art director adds to the story. So, the border of drying octopuses, their sorry tentacles bleeding into the text, is a powerful addition to the dramatic atmosphere of this book.  Well done to the team concerned.
 
This is a book to have and to pass on, as much for its production values as for its feminist sensibilities. 
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Images used by permission of Bloomsbury plc.
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A Quiet classic

1/12/2022

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how to do heartwarming

As soon as Granddaughter no. 1, call her SP (Sensible Princess...  another story; now a pic.book text in progress) acquired a sibling, I pulled out my lovingly preserved copy of "Rosie's Babies".  First published by Walker books in 1990, it was written by Martin Waddell and illustrated by Penny Dale. The tenderness (not sentimentality, note) of this little gem  still moves me. It’s now a favourite with the SP and her little sister.  

What are Quiet books?   Well, you won't know them by their illustration style, in my opinion, though this one is delicately drawn in pastel shades... realistically drawn too.  Just how realistic becomes obvious when one sees the photograph of the eponymous Rosie in the dedication.    
   
The distinguishing feature, I think, is that it deals with a commonplace situation (new baby in the house, older sibling has to share Mum) in a calm, unsentimental way. The story respects Rosie's feelings and validates  her coping mechanism, by quietly showing them.

​We see her feeling insecure (a thumb in her mouth, a fistful of tightly-held skirt),  acting out her competitiveness, then warming to her rival.   Might the child reader learn something from  this gentle story?  Trust, I think. Trust that your mum is still there for you though there's a new baby in your house.

The only  drama in this quiet book is of the imaginary kind, the melodrama children of that age like to role-play in: going fast, falling down and getting a hurty and a bandage, facing down a foe. (I love how embarrassed Dale has made the dog look in this scene.) Mum  tends to the practical needs of her new born, as well as the emotional ones of her first born, with apparent serenity.  (Well, it was the 90s when women thought they could do it all.)
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Rosie's Babies by Martin Waddell
​and Penny Dale,  Walker Books, 1990.
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Tender, but never twee.
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​Here is the creative writing teaching maxim:  show, don’t tell, in action.   Waddell shows (in dialogue and action) the particulars of how Rosie and Mum manage this potentially tense situation. The effect?  The reader,  aged 4, 34 or 64, feels enormous empathy for the individual characters, as well as that cosy feeling of… ‘Ah- yes, I know how that is!’ So, the reader is fully engaged by the universal and the particular. 

​This being a quiet book, there is no obvious conflict, no real excitement. However, the reader doesn't loose interest. When Rosie’s goal is achieved on the last page, one can't help thinking  “Aww!” Sentimental?  No, because the well-judged words and pictures have fully earned our emotional response. That's good storytelling. 

​For me, this quiet book is a classic example of how to do heart-warming:
  • make it real
  • make it relatable
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    Relishing children’s books, as writer, grandma and retired writing teacher. 

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  • Home
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    • Grandi >
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  • Writing
    • My Novels
    • Reading group guide
    • Teaching Writing
    • Reading as a Writer
  • Contact