Picasso and the Greatest Show on Earth by Anna Fienberg

There is so much going on in the life of young Frances right now. She has moved to an outer suburb away from the busy city, to a home with a garden and lower rent. One special thing about this new place is the nearby bush.  But only a week after they arrive and begin unpacking that dad announces he has to travel overseas for his work as a journalist so now it is just Frances and her mum and the memory of her toddler brother Henry. Clearly something truly dreadful has happened to Henry but Frances is riddled with guilt and just does not want to revisit these terrible events.

Talking about this book I don't want to give too much away. You will work out some of the content from the labels I've assigned this post. Another way to introduce this book might be to look at the title. Moving to the new house means mum and dad decide to buy Frances a puppy. Picasso is her favourite artist and she has his painting Le Chien on her bedroom wall so the new pup is named Picasso. 

Visiting the beautiful Australian bush near her home Frances surveys the scene as the sun is setting and declares that moment - The Greatest Show on Earth. Here are some quotes from the text that will show you the highly evocative way Anna Fienberg describes the natural environment - trees, colours, light and shadow:

"The track turned into a spindly trail that zigzagged round rocks splotched with lichen. It was the palest olive green, thin as dried paint. ... On our right the creek trundled on, gathering into shallow pools, vanishing into mud. Trees towered above, filtering light that ended up as glitter on the water."

"After the rain the angophoras turned tangerine, their juicy pieces of bark smashed around their roots. I pressed my cheek against a massive trunk and the cold was startling."

Anna Fienberg has added some wonderful art insights into her book too - no doubt inspired by the late Kim Gamble. They met at the School Magazine where she was the editor. Kim Gamble illustrated The Magnificent Nose and Other Marvels by Anna Fienberg, which is a favourite book of mine, the Tashi series the Minton series and Joseph which was shortlisted for the 2002 CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award. 

All the art Kit and Frances create surely must link with the special relationship between Anna Fienberg and Kim Gamble. It is described with so much care:

"Crosshatching ... you create a hollow with shading by doing lots of parallel strokes one way, crossed with parallel strokes the other way."

"Kit let me share his chalk pastels and showed me how to make a twilight sky. I made notes of his instructions in my sketchbook ... At home I practised sky after sky. And I learned how to make a star sparkle.With white chalk you do the blue at the top, then take one dot and make it into a cross, smearing out the points into long white lines. When you stand back it sparkles."

I finished this book this morning having started it a couple of days ago and yes I did cry but that's okay because the happy, but not saccharine, ending restored me.  Anna Fienberg adds a wonderful layer of tension to the story. I just kept reading and reading even though I knew something dreadful was going to happen. This is a five star book. It is Australian in so many ways but it is also such a heartfelt human story.

Thinking about this story one word that came to my mind was consequences. Frances is obsessed with germs and diseases because she see this as a consequence of her action or inaction with her brother Henryre. Kit worries about consequences too. He cannot reveal anything about his house or mother because in the past the consequences were dreadful. Then there is the consequence of a tiny decision Frances makes when she makes a sketch of her friend. (When you are reading this book take your time over page 140-141). 

This story is also about personal growth. We watch the trust between Kit and Frances grow and both find a way to trust each other with their deepest secrets and sadness. Kit also has such emotional maturity and his gentle advice to Frances is uplifting

Someone asked about the themes in this book on a Facebook forum and whether it was too confronting for an eleven year old reader. I’d be happy to have this book in my primary school library but I’d be recommending it to mature Grade 6 readers. Yes it’s sad and yes grief and the death of a sibling and mental health are BIG topics but that’s okay. The writing is wonderful. You just feel as though you are right in the bush with all the sounds and smells and light and shade. This is a long book so really only kids with good reading stamina and the right level of maturity will persevere. I’m sure this book will go on to win many awards and be on short lists.

This book is like a warm, comforting hug when you need a friend, and I found myself wanting to read on to find out what had happened yet at the same time, it felt like one to savour and sit with so my reading pace could match France’s pace as she slowly revealed what had happened to her brother. The Book Muse

The different ways grief is expressed is a significant theme throughout this novel but there are other important ideas upon which to reflect such as family, bullying, courage, the healing provided by nature, dogs and art therapy and loneliness. Just So Stories

After reading Picasso and the Greatest Show on Earth you might like to revisit these classic Australian stories:

I do wish we could see the mural created by Kit and Frances but keen artists might like to look a little further into the art of Wang Wei.

It would be interesting to compare Picasso and the Greatest Show on Earth with a 2001 novel by Anna Fienberg - Witch in the Lake. I did read that one many years ago but sadly I cannot recall much of the plot. Other companion books:

This is not an egg by Philip Bunting

Image source: Philip Bunting

There is a joyful and playful energy in this book. The narrative arc is perfect. We hum along to the beat of “this is not an egg” with more and more hilarious suggestions culminating in the decorated egg from Mexico and then boom! we turn the page and our bilby hero meets another bilby who wants to join in with this fabulous game of imagination and now the two can play with their Bilbot. 

Readers then enjoy two pages of night time robotic fun and until the authors wack in another boom! moment. The egg belongs to an emu. Of course, the reader sighs. That makes perfect sense. Or does it. I can hear the youngest children squealing with delight over the twist of the baby emu-dragon.  

This book has perfect end papers, a very engaging text, expressive digital illustrations and full-page spreads interspersed with four frame pages all created with a consistent and pleasing colour palette.

Here are the end papers:

This book will be a favourite with young children and it will be loved by schools at Easter who look for books about bilbies and eggs. The intertextual references are perfect but the Buntings have been restrained and not overloaded the text with too many of these. I was also interested to see the full stop used with the title - I wonder why they included this?

I love the way the colloquial dialogue is presented using different colours of text. I can imagine reading this book aloud with a group of readers taking different parts. (Readers theatre). I also appreciate the way the background changes in each illustration. 

The Philip Bunting book Wombat was our IBBY Australia 2022 honour book:

The IBBY Honour List is a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books, honouring writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY member countries. The IBBY Honour List is one of the most widespread and effective ways of furthering IBBY's objective of encouraging international understanding through children's literature.

The titles are selected by the National Sections which can nominate one book for each of the three categories. For a country with a substantial and continuing production of children's books in more than one language, one book may be submitted for writing and translation in each official language.

Important considerations in selecting the Honour List titles are that the books are representative of the best in children's literature from the country and that the books are suitable for publication throughout the world. The selection provides insight into the diverse cultural, political and social settings in which children live and grow and it can be used by all those involved with developing educational and literacy programmes and publishing initiatives to develop exemplary “international” collections.

Here is an interview with Philip Bunting about his work - with Joy Lawn. 

Meet the Illustrator David Wisniewski

Publisher blurb: Parents are always spouting these rules. Do they really care about nutrients and mattresses, or are they hiding something? Luckily, one fearless grown-up will risk his neck and his dignity to find out. Disguised as everything from a chocolate milk scuba diver to a giant nose, this counterspy uncovers the disturbing truth. And what he learns will shock you like nothing before. ... Dangerous digit gangs! Powerful sumo cells! Those are just some of the secrets revealed in this book by Caldecott medalist David Wisniewski. But don′t let anyone catch you reading it-especially grown-ups. Who knows what could happen if they knew that you knew?

Until this week I had no idea there was a second book from this series. I loved sharing the first book The Secret Knowledge of Grown-ups with teachers and students in my school library. This book is also perfect when classes are talking about persuasive language. Now I have seen David Wisniewski wrote a second book and that makes me smile.

The library I visit each week also has three other very different books illustrated using paper cutting by this US author/illustrator. Even though I had seen the first book above David Wisniewski is a new discovery. His sixth book Golem won the Caldecott Medal in 1997.

His first children's book was The Warrior and the Wise Man written in 1989 which I talk about in detail below. Sadly David Wisniewski died in 2002 aged only 49. He originally worked in a circus and then he and his wife formed a puppet theatre which toured schools. "Shadow puppetry was our speciality, wherein flat, jointed figures move against a screen illuminated with rear-projected scenery. Although I didn't know it at the time, shadow puppetry trained me to do picture books."

The wonderful thing about the library I visit is that clearly the Teacher-Librarian has had the time and the interest/passion to explore amazing illustrators such as David Wisniewski. As I said, my library had a copy of The Secret Knowledge of Grown-ups but it never occurred to me to investigate the illustrator. Perhaps this was because back in 1998 I was not "Googling" every new book in the way I can now.

Here is a partial list of books by David Wisniewski:

• Elfwyn's Saga New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1990.
• Golem. New York: Clarion Books, 1996.
• Rain Player New York: Clarion Books, 1991.
• The Secret Knowledge of Grown-ups New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1998.
• Sumo Mouse San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002.
• Sundiata: Lion King of Mali New York: Clarion Books, 1992.
• Tough Cookie New York: Clarion Books, 1999.
• The Warrior and the Wise Man New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1989.
• The Wave of the Sea Wolf New York: Clarion Books, 1994.

Blurb: Sam Spade, move over! In his years on the force, Tough Cookie Busted the Ginger Snaps and broke up the Macaroons. Now living as a private eye at the bottom of the cookie jar, he learns that Fingers has gotten his old partner, Chips. With his best girl, Pecan Sandy, at his side, Tough Cookie sets out to put Fingers away, for keeps! This hilarious spoof will have readers rolling in the aisles.

From the library I borrowed The Warrior and the Wise man; Rain Player; and Sea Wolf. 

The Warrior and the Wise man is a Japanese folktale-style story. "When I had the idea for a story that would dramatise the contrast between two approaches to solving a problem, one relying on blind force and the other on reasoned action, I chose to set it in ancient Japan, a society that had clearly defined classes of warriors and wise men."

In this book we meet Tozaemon who is brave and fierce while his twin brother Toemon is thoughtful and gentle - the greatest wise man in the land. The emperor sets his sons a challenge to bring him the five eternal elements - fire, water, wind, earth and cloud. Tozaemon is like a bulldozer. He rampages through the land upsetting the demons while Toemon follows behind apologising and repairing. Each time he has to give away each of the elements  and so he arrives home almost empty handed but his brother Tozaemon has angered the demons and so they arrive with a huge army. Luckily the wisdom of Toemon saves the day and the Emperor learns an important lesson:

"Today I have learned a great truth ... Strength, though vital, must always be in the service of wisdom. For that reason, Toemon will become the next emperor of this land."

See inside this book here and also here.

Rain Player is a story from the Mayan civilisation. Fans of games like soccer and even quidditch.

"The favourite game of the Maya was pok-a-tok, a fast moving combination of present-day soccer and basketball, played with a sold rubber ball on a walled court. Opposing teams tried to send the ball through the stone rings above their heads. Hands and feet were not allowed to touch the ball; it had to bounce off padded hips, shoulders and forearms. The winning team was allowed to collect the jewellery and clothing of the spectators, who quickly ran away once the match was won. Losers received nothing, and sometimes lost their heads as well as the game." 

Chac, the Sun God hears Pik boasting and so he challenges him to a game of pok-a-tok. If Pik loses he will be turned into a frog. As a baby, Pik was given some special gifts - a planting stick, a ball, a jaguar tooth, a quetzal feather and water from a sacred cenote or well. Pik needs a team for the game so he visits the animals and places associated with his baby gifts. the story feels like a legend to explain drought and rain because when Pik wins the game he is taken up into the heavens by Chac and given an enormous gourd filled with water which he then pours over a thirsty world. 

This is the illustration of the quetzal. You can see inside this book and others on this Russian blog site.

Clancy of the Overflow by Banjo Paterson illustrated by Andrew Mclean

Clancy of the Overflow is a very famous Australian poem and this new edition illustrated by the wonderful Andrew McLean will give you (here in Australia) the perfect book to share with grades 4-6. This book should be added to every school library. 

You are sure to notice and appreciate the wonderful book design. The front cover stretches across to the back and you can see Clancy himself with his Blue Heeler* dog rounding up a mob of cattle. The land is dry and you can almost hear the grasses crunching under the feet of the lumbering beasts. There is a low mountain range on the horizon and the colour blue suggests this is near the end of the day. Notice how the cattle are running towards the reader inviting you to join in this rollicking tale. 

On the front end paper, Clancy races across the red dirt on his horse with two of his faithful dogs in front racing possibly to their camp site. On the half title page we see Clancy's kit - hat, tin mug, swag and billy. On the imprint page the two dogs face the reader resting but ready for action. By the time we reach the title page Clancy has packed up and he has his dog in his arms while he rides his horse off to another day of droving.

"He was shearing when I knew him ..." but now we learn "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving .. "

The final end paper is set at the end of the day with the drovers gathered around a camp fire as their dogs watch on. 

This wonderful poem lives again. With a salute to Andrew McLean for his stunning visual narrative ... Kids' Book Review

McLean’s artwork is beautifully woven throughout the text and provides for poignant pauses in the read aloud of the story. The endpapers are equally beautiful and depict all the shades of the sunburnt Australian landscape and end with a star-speckled bush campsite. Reading Time

The illustrations by Andrew McLean give a brilliant visual for the contrasts, with soft, sunset and bush colours for the scenes set in the bush and darker greys and browns for the city scapes. This reiterates the feelings of the narrator as he ponders Clancy’s journey and reflects on how he feels trapped in the city. The book Muse

I was surprised the Andrew McLean version of Clancy published in 2021, was not entered in our CBCA 2022 awards. This is not the first picture book version of the famous poem - here are some others:

Illustrated by Kilmeny Niland

Illustrated by Robert Ingpen

You should also look for Drover by Neridah McMullin illustrated by Sarah Anthony as a comparison text. 

Here is the full poem from 1889 by Banjo Paterson.

Clancy of the Overflow

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better

   Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,

He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,

   Just "on spec", addressed as follows: "Clancy, of The Overflow".

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,

   (And I think the same was written in a thumbnail dipped in tar)

'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:

   "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy

   Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the western drovers go;

As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,

   For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him

   In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,

  And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy

    Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,

And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city

   Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle

   Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,

And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,

   Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

  As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

   For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,

   Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,

While he faced the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal -

   But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".

I am a huge fan of Andrew McLean's work - I even own a small piece of his art from the book Hazel Green by Odo Hirsch. If you share this book with a group of students you could also explore the way Andrew McLean illustrates another famous Australian poem My Country by Dorothea Mackellar and his version of On the Road to Gundagai. 

* yes people reading this in another country the Blue Heeler is that little tv star Bluey!

I'd also like to mention this poem - The Shearer's Wife by Louis Esson -  which I once recited in a theatre production:

Before the glare o’ dawn I rise

To milk the sleepy cows, an’ shake

The droving dust from tired eyes,

Look round the rabbit traps, then bake

The children’s bread.

There’s hay to stook, an’ beans to hoe,

An’ ferns to cut in the scrub below,

Women must work, when men must go

Shearing from shed to shed.

I patch an’ darn, now evening comes,

An’ tired I am with labour sore,

Tired o’ the bush, the cows, the gums,

Tired, but we must dree for long months more

What no tongue tells.

The moon is lonely in the sky,

Lonely the bush, an’ lonely I

Stare down the track no horse draws nigh,

An’ start . . . at the cattle bells.

View from the 32nd Floor by Emma Cameron

Blurb: Something special has been gifted to you. Join your neighbours, Saturday, 6.00 pm, on the roof. Living on the thirty-second floor of an apartment block, William has a clear view of the building opposite. He sees his neighbours eating ice-cream, watering potted palms, painting pictures ... or as shadows behind closed curtains. Shadows worry William. With his new friend Rebecca, and helped by lots of cake, a dictionary of names, tai chi, and banana-shaped sticky notes, he plans to tempt his lonely neighbours back into the world. Can they succeed? Always always.

Today I had to wait around 3 hours at an appointment so I picked up View from the 32nd Floor before I left home this morning. Today is the THIRD time I have read this book and I still adore it - but I so desperately wish Walker Books Australia had given this book a better cover - apologies to Liz Anelli. I need to beg, shout, cajole this publisher to reprint this little book - it is such a GEM. 

I have talked about View from the 32nd Floor twice previously in 2013 and 2019 so please take a minute or two to read my comments and then IF you have any way of influencing the publisher please beg, plead, implore them to republish this book NOW. Perhaps we should all tell the author Emma Cameron too.

Teachers - you could use this book for so many things but most off all this book would be a splendid read aloud to a Grade 4 class. In my previous posts I talked about the music William's dad share each day and all the wonderful names William adopts to match his daily hopes and purpose.  Here are some character descriptions:

Mrs Stravros - "She had hair streaked with more silver threads than black, and her pale face was as wrinkled as crepe paper."

Paula - "Paula was as skinny as Jess but only came up to her armpits. Her boots were nothing like Jess's either. They were covered in sequins of every colour and a tiny bell jiggled at the end of each pointy toe when she walked."

Jess - "her skinny legs covered in stretchy black tights and her fine frame wrapped in a pale blue terry towelling bathrobe. Thick brown hair flopped over her eyes when she juggled a key in the lock."

Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson

15th Anniversary edition

This will just be a brief post because I have already talked about Journey to the River Sea back in January, 2012. I first read this book in about 2001 so reading it today means I have read this book three times - that is very unusual for me but in this case I do have a purpose.

Eva Ibbotson died in 2010. In June 2022, Emma Carroll published Escape to the River Sea - a book inspired by Journey to the River Sea. I am really keen to read this new book because I enjoyed many other books by Emma Carroll but it also seemed important to reacquaint myself with the original Amazon adventure first. Very luckily I spied Journey to the River Sea at a charity book sale for just $2. 

Blurb: In 1946, Rosa Sweetman, a young Kindertransport girl, is longing for her family to claim her. The war in Europe is over and she is the only child left at Westwood, a rambling country estate in the north of England, where she'd taken refuge seven years earlier. The arrival of a friend of the family, Yara Fielding, starts an adventure that will take Rosa deep into the lush beauty of the Amazon rainforest in search of jaguars, ancient giant sloths and somewhere to belong. What she finds is Yara’s lively, welcoming family on the banks of the river and, together, they face a danger greater than she could ever have imagined. Featuring places and characters known and loved by fans of Journey to the River Sea (including, among others, Maia, Finn, Miss Minton and Clovis) this spectacular story tells of the next generation and the growing threats to the Amazon rainforest that continue to this day.

Other Emma Carroll books I have read;

Letters from the Lighthouse

The week at World's End

In Darkling Wood

The Girl who Walked on Air

The Little Match Girl Strikes Back

Sky Chasers

The Ghost Garden

The idea of continuing or building on a classic book is an interesting one. Emma Carroll did her version of The Little Match girl.  Here are some other books that do this:

The Princess and the Suffragette

Return to the Secret Garden

The Magic Faraway Tree a new adventure

I am a huge fan of Eva Ibbotson. I loved One Dog and his Boy.

Meet the Illustrator Anita Jeram

Anita was born in 1965 and brought up in Portsmouth. Anita has written and illustrated her own books as well as worked with other children’s authors (see list books).  Anita’s most famous illustrations are the ones she has done for the best selling classic Guess How Much I Love You written by Sam McBratney (Walker Books 1994) which has sold 28 million copies and been translated into 53 different languages. She lives in Northern Ireland. her first book from 1991 was Bill's Belly Button.

Take a look here to see some dogs drawn my Anita Jeram.

Here is a list of all her books:

• Bill’s Belly Button (1991)
• It Was Jake (1991)
• The Most Obedient Dog in the World (1993)
• All Pigs are Beautiful (by Dick King-Smith 1993)
• My Hen is Dancing (by Karen Wallace 1993)
• I Love Guinea Pigs (by Dick King-Smith 1994)
• Guess How Much I Love You (by Sam McBratney 1994)
• Contrary Mary (1995)
• Daisy Dare (1995)
• Puppy Love (by Dick King-Smith 1997)
• Animal Friends ( by Dick King-Smith 1997)
• Birthday Happy Contrary Mary (1998)
• Bunny, My Honey (1999)
• All Together Now (1999)
• In Every Tiny Grain of Sand (contributed illustrations 2000)
• Kiss Goodnight, Sam (by Amy Hest 2001)
• Don’t You Feel Well, Sam ( by Amy Hest 2001)
• I Love My Little Storybook (2002)
• You Can Do It, Sam (by Amy Hest 2003)
• You’re All My Favourites (by Sam McBratney 2004)
• The Little Nutbrown Hare stories (by Sam McBratney 2007)
• Little Chick (2009 by Amy Hest)
• ‘Skip to the Loo, My Darling’ (by Sally Lloyd-Jones, 2016)

And here is a Pinterest collection of art by Anita Jeram. She also makes greeting cards and other items which you can view here at Two Bad Mice.