One Poem in a Picture Book IBBY Video sneak peek

Poetry can bring delight and insights to children from a very young age. 

But some adults lack confidence in introducing poems at home or in the classroom. 

Today we’ll show you some picture books based on one complete poem. 

We hope they’ll inspire you to seek out more.  Dr Robin Morrow

Over the last few months Dr Robin Morrow and I have been preparing a presentation on the topic One Poem in a Picture book. This post is a sneak peek of our newest IBBY presentation. Members will be sent the video link over the coming weeks. Our video has a wealth of book titles for you to explore. The book above - Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost with spectacular illustrations by PJ Lynch - was one of the titles that inspired this talk. Many years ago, I also started a Pinterest on this topic (80+ titles) after a question was posed in a Facebook group. If you join IBBY Australia (only AUS$45) you will be able to access our full video over the coming weeks. 

In our presentation we talk about Australian bush ballads, famous poems from people such as Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, lyrical poems, funny and nonsense poems and we share books by many famous illustrators such as Charles Keeping, Andrew McLean, Freya Blackwood, Tom Hopgood, Helen Oxenbury, Jan Brett, Charlotte Voake, Susan Jeffers and Julie Morstad.

Senior Primary (Elementary school) and High School teachers and Teacher-Librarians could use these resources as for lessons in visual literacy and also in an art class to talk about the way illustrations have interpreted these famous poems. You are sure to be able to find examples of one poem in a picture book in your school or local library. 

Here are a few of the books we feature in our presentation and script excerpts by Dr Robin Morrow:

Hist! is an Australian poem that is not a bush ballad, but it is a narrative poem, written by the popular poet C J Dennis. It is a simple tale of a group of children making their way home in darkness, with a build-up of tension. Peter Gouldthorpe’s skillful design and technique result in an elegant book. 

There is a rich array of nonsense poems from the major Anglophone countries. The master of nonsense, Edward Lear, was an artist and added witty drawings to his poems. The Quangle Wangle’s Hat cries out to be read aloud and also offers scope for a variety of visual interpretations. It is interesting to note that Helen Oxenbury’s earliest picture books included this nonsense rhyme. The original cover shows the small Olympian bear. Of course, she never reveals the face of the Quangle Wangle himself, a special challenge of this poem, because the verse states his face you could not see because of his huge hat.

Another great favourite Edward Lear poem is The Owl and the Pussycat. A number of illustrators have worked on this rollicking but poignant verse. The US illustrator Jan Brett sets her many picture books in exotic locations. I think Edward Lear would be surprised to find his fantasy couple in the seascape and landscape of the island of Martinique, with its radiant colours.

Another English writer, Walter de la Mare, created many poems that have become beloved by children. ... perhaps the best-known, Silver, in which on a spring evening, two sleepy children join a parade to a wonderful, dream-like fairy party in the woods.

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

This way, and that, she peers, and sees

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

Canadian illustrator Julie Morstad uses bright colours, strong brush strokes, and simple but skillful composition in this book. And the appeal of swinging is such a universal joy of childhood that it is good to see this, another favourite Robert Louis Stevenson poem, presented for a very young readership.

Langston Hughes, a most influential African-American poet, wrote An Earth Song, a simple, exuberant poem about welcoming spring. The illustrator Tequitia Andrews has made clear, strong illustrations of children enjoying the seasonal change, reminiscent of the work of Ezra Jack Keats. 

An Earth Song is from a series called Petite Poems (Abrams Appleseed). 

Edward Lear born in 1812

2012 has been the National Year of Reading here is Australia but until last week I did not know it was also the anniversary of the birth of Edward Lear.  He is best known for The Owl and the Pussycat but he wrote so many other nonsense verses and famous limericks. Something I did not know, he was also a very skilled illustrator of birds and mammals.

You can listen to a fabulous broadcast about his work here. I was interested to learn Lear painted some Australian fauna sent back to England by John Gould including budgerigars.  He also found inspiration for some of his character names from the local names given to specimens in the Royal Society collection.

Here is a quote from the radio program

A lot of the animals when they came in had really strange local names, like there was an eland that was called the Ging-e-Jonga, and other animals with really quite strange and exotic names; Whiskered Yarke, which I think was a monkey, the Aequitoon, I think they were deer. A lot of them were Indian actually but they were names given to them in their original countries, so when they arrived back they arrived with names like the Jungli-bukra. I think it's an antelope, again it's an Indian one.

Charles Darwin also used the drawings of Edward Lear.

 In my collection I have a copy of The new Vestments with illustrations by Arnold Lobel - marvelous black and white line drawings.

"By way of a hat he'd a loaf of Brown Bread
In the middle of which he inserted his head.
His shirt was made up of no end of dead Mice,
The warmth of whose skins was quite fluffy and nice."

I first encountered a picture book of this one with an altered title The old man and the edible suit. This is not in our library but I have included a picture of the cover below.

We have over ten editions of The Owl and the Pussycat in our library including audio versions and big books.  It is fun to read this famous poem and see the variety of ways illustrators have interpreted things like the pea green boat and the wonderful runcible spoo not to mention the owl and the pussycat themselves. I am sorry to have missed this, but May 12th was The Owl and the Pussycat day - Edward Lear's birthday.  By the way runcible is a word that if found in some dictionaries thanks to Edward Lear.