Children’s Books: Artful Spirits and Vivid Imaginations
Reviews of four books about creators: ‘When Rubin Plays,’ ‘Make Way,’ ‘Tomfoolery!’ and ‘Just Jerry.’ Illustration by Gracey Zhang from ‘When Rubin Plays’ Orchard Orchard By Meghan Cox Gurdon July 28, 2023 10:27 am ET Creative adults may produce different sorts of work, but most seem to have had in common, as children, a certain incorrigible enthusiasm. From their earliest years, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Jack Keats, Eugene Yelchin and countless others did a terrific amount of writing or drawing, which suggests that the child whom you catch today compulsively doodling or scribbling may have a future in the arts.
Creative adults may produce different sorts of work, but most seem to have had in common, as children, a certain incorrigible enthusiasm. From their earliest years, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Jack Keats, Eugene Yelchin and countless others did a terrific amount of writing or drawing, which suggests that the child whom you catch today compulsively doodling or scribbling may have a future in the arts.
The fictional young hero of Gracey Zhang’s picture book “When Rubin Plays” happens to be a musician, but in his passionate enthusiasm we see the same start of a creative arc. Rubin lives in a South American village—an author’s note reveals it to be Santa Ana de Velasco, in Bolivia—and loves the music of the local orchestra; it makes him “feel like flying.” Eager to join in the music making, Rubin takes up the violin. In the thick lines of Ms. Zhang’s warm, inviting artwork, we see the novice persevere, producing a caterwauling that makes people smile and wince. When the orchestra conductor urges the boy to practice, Rubin takes his instrument into the forest. There the screeching sounds he makes find appreciative ears, and soon Rubin has built himself an unorthodox following. So when he brings his cacophonous style to a village concert, the audience goes quite literally wild in this sweet, if improbable, story for 4- to 8-year-olds.
A Closer Look
Selections from ‘When Rubin Plays’ by Gracey Zhang
Children will read of the similar determination of a real-life artist and a real-life sculptor in “Make Way,” a picture book written by Angela Burke Kunkel and illustrated by Claire Keane. This beguiling account braids together the life stories of Robert McCloskey (1914-2003), who wrote and illustrated the classic picture book “Make Way for Ducklings,” and Nancy Schön (now 95), who some four decades ago created beloved bronze renditions of the book’s mallard heroine and her eight babies for the Boston Public Garden.
“Make Way” opens with simple statements that feel like both encouragement and elegy: “In the beginning, a duck is an egg. A drawing is a blank page. A sculpture is a lump of clay.” Through the ups and downs of the paired stories, readers ages 5-8 will participate in “the building up and the taking away” as ideas are turned into art. Ms. Keane’s retro pictures here have wonderful color and ebullience, bringing liveliness even to static scenes (of quiet thought, of patient studio work) and acting as a visual reminder of the exciting potentialities of invention.
A Closer look
Selections from ‘Make Way: The Story of Robert McCloskey, Nancy School, and Some Very Famous Ducklings’ by Angela Burke Kunkel, illustrated by Claire Keene
An even more rambunctious tale describes how the picture book as we know it today began with a 19th-century Englishman named Randolph Caldecott. “Tomfoolery!”, to be published later this year, is written by Michelle Markel and illustrated by Barbara McClintock, both of whom bring brio and high good humor to Caldecott’s influential personal story.
The book begins by presenting children’s illustration as it was in the staid pre-Caldecott era: “stiff, full of pretty poses and cluttered scenery.” The young Randolph when we meet him has no idea that he will become an illustrator; he simply loves to draw. “It is too much fun. It cannot be helped,” we read. “It can happen anytime he has something to draw on—even his schoolbooks.” From an early age, Caldecott infuses his pictures with movement and, as the years pass, begins placing them in newspapers and magazines.
This spirited and joyful account is strong on the excitement of Caldecott’s passion and style but vague on his career particulars; 5- to 8-year-olds (or more likely their parents) may want to check the back matter to find out where Caldecott lived, what books he illustrated and who helped him come to the world’s attention. A tableau near the end of “Tomfoolery!” includes contemporary illustrators who are carrying on the zestful tradition that Caldecott began. Dan Santat and Sophie Blackall are in their midst, as well as the late Jerry Pinkney (1939-2021), master of wobbly-lined watercolors for books such as “The Lion & the Mouse” and “The Little Red Hen.”
A Closer Look
Selections from ‘Tomfoolery! Randolph Caldecott and the Rambunctious Coming-of-Age of Children’s Books’ by Michelle Markel, illustrated by Barbara McClintock
Pinkney, it happens, was another youthful incorrigible. So taken with drawing was he that as a boy he covered the wall beside his bed with overlapping scenes. “It didn’t even matter that I was sketching over my old drawings. It only mattered that I was making pictures,” Pinkney confesses in “Just Jerry,” an illustrated coming-of-age autobiography published posthumously earlier this year.
In short chapters, Pinkney relates episodes from his boyhood in an all-black Philadelphia enclave, his struggles with dyslexia and his yearning to win his father’s approval. Pinkney’s story of his past includes moments of painful race-consciousness—he and his friends knew they were unwelcome in certain neighborhoods, and they dreaded contact with the police—but also pivotal moments of racial transcendence. In an editor’s note, we learn that Pinkney had worked on his memoir for more than a decade but died before he could complete the drawings for it. In truth, the kinetic roughness of what are, in most cases, preliminary sketches has the effect of increasing the book’s dynamism, because they bring readers ages 7-13 in on the process of creation rather than present them with work that is polished and, in a sense, over.
A Closer Look
Selections from ‘Just Jerry: How Drawing Shaped My Life’ by Jerry Pinkney
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