We are coming to end of Picture Book Month - November - but of course I have so many more books I could share but remember I am have limited this to books from my own shelves. Imagine if I could choose from a library! My book today comes from a post I did in 2013 of my 450th book. I now have 2350 posts and am on the way to my goal of 4000 by the end of 2024.
I enjoy Picture Books of all kinds but I especially enjoy Picture Books which explore:
- relationships
- emotions
- community
Herman and Rosie by Gus Gordon contains all three of these. Herman is lonely. Rosie is lonely. The whole story could be they meet, perhaps fall in love, the end - but that's NOT a story. We need tension, we need a setting, we need reasons, we need to know more about Herman and more about Rosie, we need to care and these are the things Gus Gordon provided in his beautifully crafted book.
There are some lovely design features you will see in Herman and Rosie - the way the cover looks like an LP record, the New York map end papers, the collage touches in the illustrations, and the tiny touches of humour that come from close study of each page.
I saw a recent discussion about gifts to teachers on an internet forum. Teachers are sometimes given gifts at Christmas. In the school library I was given fewer gifts but the ones that I treasure were the gifts given from the heart - a jar of honey from bees in their own backyard; a cookie jar decorated with my library motto 'Read only on the days you eat'; and a limited edition print from Herman and Rosie!
I read a quote in Children's Picturebooks: The art of visual storytelling by Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles this week which comes from Maurice Sendak. I cannot find the original source but the quote says:
The relationship between word and image in a picture book is described by Sendak as
"like a composer thinking in music when reading poetry."
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