A Rare Van Allsburg

The Widow’s Broom by Chris Van Allsburg. Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

A clever and harrowing tale with a surprise ending. Van Allsburg confronts ignorance in an Aesop’s Fables sort of way. Yet he has a non-traditional twist in that the witch’s broom, normally seen as evil, ends up being good. Illustrations are what one would expect from Van Allsburg, detailed pencil, pointillism, heavy with mood and filled with texture and detail.

His choice to shun color helps the reader notice detail and lends the book a timeless feel.

Bronzeville Boys and Girls: Poetry and Art

Bronzeville Boys and Girls by Gwendolyn Brooks. HarperCollins, 1984.

Poems that celebrate childhood.

Brooks’ highly regional poems have universal appeal, transcending race and place. Who hasn’t felt as Rudolph has in, “Rudolph is Tired of the City”? And nearly every child has had the short-lived goldfish as in “Skipper”.

The poems, however, felt uneven, straining for rhyme and rhythm at times with unnatural sentence structures. Other times maintaining a smooth flow. “Beulah at Church” for example faltered in the final line, and “Eppie” seems to fizzle. But “Eldora Who is Rich” works both in rhythm and surprise. Perhaps my ear is poorly tuned for poetry, although even I couldn’t help but note and love “DeKover” and the “dancy little thing” of a star.

Three Little Piggies, Take Two

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by Jon Scieska. Viking, 1989.

Twisting and turning a traditional story to make something new. Scieszka takes the well-known 3 Little Pigs story and tells it from the wolf’s point of view. Many of the details remain the same, yet the story has new depth and humor as the wolf’s supposedly “innocent” motivation comes to play. He’s not a big bad wolf! Merely misunderstood.

This favorite loses meaning if the original story isn't known. I can't imagine any child not knowing the story of the Three Little Pigs, but is it so unreasonable? With Dora and Disney overtaking our culture, I wonder at times if the classics will be lost.