6 Birthday Books
It's our birthday, you see.
Deep dives on great picture books are here.
We recommend picture books here.
The Looking at Picture Books Shop is here.
Here are some photos from our first Looking at Picture Books live event, last week at Sullaluna Bookshop in New York City (in the round).
Looking at Picture Books turns one year old today, so we’re recommending six books about birthdays, including an object lesson in making perfect picture book covers, Mac’s candidate for funniest picture book of all time, and the book that defined the ideal birthday party for Jon as a child.
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, by Charlotte Zolotow, pictures by Maurice Sendak
Sometimes I think this is my favorite Sendak book. At least of the ones he only illustrated. If we read what is written, from the very first page, and look to what is presented visually, it’s like a small explosion goes off. We don’t know what Zolotow gave by way of instruction to Sendak. But readers have only these words, and the pictures make an amazing jump.
Just right into the deep end. There is no written description or formal introduction of anything. Not the little girl, where she lives, and certainly no description of Mr. Rabbit or how she knows him. We have to look over at the picture to discover a beautiful day, a dreamy hillside village, a little girl, dressed quite well, talking to a man-sized rabbit whom it seems like she knows pretty well already, and who was quite comfortable when she came up to him with her question.
The text does not offer natural breaks for page turns. These beats are instead sectioned off much more organically. It gives the reading a lazy, languid pace and the effect is wonderful. You feel like you, as the reader, are also kind of walking distractedly in the countryside, trying to get to the bottom of a problem that has nothing to do with your surroundings at all. Neither the poses of the characters nor the angles we are seeing them from are furthering anything. There’s nothing for them to further. Sendak is almost a photographer, following these two around and selecting the prettiest shots he gets that day.
Even when the text offers something of a foothold for an illustrator — some color being mentioned for the birthday present in question, or an object they are thinking of, Sendak only sometimes uses it in his picture, and just as often he doesn’t. There’s no reason to, really. He is interested, instead, in what looks to be a very old and quiet relationship between these two characters, and what an afternoon with them in the countryside would feel like. It’s an amazing lesson for an illustrator (and a writer), and the result is a beautiful, pastoral kick in the pants of what the picture book can do.
—JON