get stuck in a (picture) book

A couple of thoughts, charged by the annoucement today of Anthony Browne as the new Children's Laureate. A good choice; Browne's Gorilla book in particular is one I remember myself from my early years, and judging by the number of awards his works appear to have won, familiar to many of you good people as well.

Browne comments, in the BBC clip I've linked to above, about the idea that illustrated childrens literature is disappearing from the lives of many little 'uns, as parents move them on to reading denser texts at a younger age. It's a horrific thought; can you imagine growing up with The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Maybe you can - maybe you did! I certainly didn't. We had a good stack of picture books when I was wee, bolstered by myself and my younger sister being close enough in age to be tossing them around at the same time. It is a love that stayed with me - see my excitement regarding the upcoming Jonze-fest that is the filmic Where The Wild Things Are (published April 13th, 2009). I continue to often give grown-up people quality picture books as gifts - as my better half can attest to, as she has quite the stack (including a couple of hand-drawn efforts) at this point.

Picture books are magical. The immense talent it takes to fuse understandable but exciting narrative with great artwork is more or less beyond me. But more fundamentally, they introduce young and old to a world they will not access, creative thinking they will not be used to, if they stick with purely written word. Observing, processing, and visually testing material are conscious and unconscious processes that educators and workers strive to instill in the young - but picture books can do this. If you ever spend any time with little people, or have enough good fortune to have grown some of your own, just think of how many times kids return to their favourite picture books. It's not just familiarity and comfort that kept me agog at everything from Peter Rabbit to TEN YEARS worth of subscribed-to Beanos. (Still have them all! How sad of me.) It is the fact that every time, and at every stage in my early development, I was challenged to find something new in the pages of these awesome works.

Of course there are some that are terrible - usually ones tied in with TV (unless it's Pocoyo! Best. Show. EVER. Or certainly the best narrated by Stephen Fry, anyway.) But some are amazing. Significantly, there have been some great new ones over the past few years.

Fan favourite for me and her (as a qualified filmmaker/teacher and doctor respectively!) is the glorious canon one of Northern Ireland's finest, Oliver Jeffers. If you haven't read one of his titles, do so. Soon. Or maybe you caught the animated version of his most famous work, Lost and Found on the TV at Christmas - don't worry, it's the new Snowman and will no doubt be repeated every year for the next decade anyway. Jeffers, a professional artist and photographer (and graduate of University of Ulster! You didn't see that coming, I'll wager...) has already won a truckload of awards and captured the hearts and minds of kids and parents alike. Absorbing pictures and the simplest, most random of storylines combine for a highly provocative experience. Go on - have a gander next time you're in Waterstones.

But, as Anthony Browne has shared with us, none of this may matter much as less and less children are coming into context with these little glories. And as a result, they're drawing less, they're struggling more with creativity, and they're becoming generations of mind-washing, boring (and ironically) Media students - I know, i studied with many of them and have taught a few more. It's part of a larger endemic problem, that as a society we're all too aware of, but still do little to react to.

And with that in mind, I fancy a round or two of this 'shape game'...

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