Children will test
you, challenge you, bring you to tears, crack you up, and make you forget what
you urgently had to do. They'll shatter the life you knew into a million
pieces. Then they'll put it back together, like a stained-glass window, into
something infinitely more complicated and beautiful.
Looking after a two
year old, and an infant is pretty much a full time affair. I don’t get much
time to sit here and type, or to paint beautiful pictures or even pretty
horrible ones. My dog gets walked much less
and when I look outside through my front window it is through a film of dog
slobber, toddler drool and wee sticky fingerprints. Everything is slightly tacky with the
curiosity of being two, and smells a bit like the sweet-sour milky vomit of an
infant.
Having children does
however give one an excuse to buy hundreds of lovely books, to listen joyfully
to the crack of paper when you first open the pages, and to forever-after try
patiently to teach your children to be gentle as the books slowly become worn,
dog-eared and loved from repeated storytelling and readings. Sometimes the
words are poetic and stay with you and other times you have memorized the
entire story and it runs around in your head when you are not sleeping at night
and you wonder when it will finally be replaced by a new favourite so you can
stop reading it over and over and over and over and over again. But for me the marvel has been a new
appreciation for the glorious illustrators and the images they create.
 |
| Illustration by Don Wood |
A standard
children’s book at 32 pages long is a whole collection of works of art, and I
can tell you from the depths of my book shelves (oh yes I just bought another
one to house all those books!) that some
of those illustrations represent the most marvellously wonderful and
breathtaking works of art ever created.
This might be lost on my 3 month old Peanut, but as I read “The
Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear” for the
bagillionth time I started to really LOOK at the illustrations, the details,
the brushstrokes, the pencil lines the art of it all. (This is a book that
one should always have on hand just in
case there is a storytime emergency and one needs to read aloud).
 |
| Illustration by Don Wood |
With my own project slowly slumping along in the background
with another year passing me by I have come to regard these illustrators as
something like heroes of the art world.
May I recommend some for your viewing pleasure?
The
Quiltmaker's Journey by Jeff Brumbeau and illustrated by Gail de
Marcken
Twinkle,
Twinkle, Little Star illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
Tell
Me a Dragon written and illustrated by Jackie Morris
Everywhere
Babies by Susan Meyers and illustrated Marla Frazee
The
Wild Swans written by Hans Christian Andersen, adapted by Naomi
Lewis and illustrated by Yvonne Gilbert
Saint
George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges and illustrated by Trina
Schart Hyman
Sleeping
Beauty illustrated by K. Y. Craft
Dinotopia:
A Land Apart from Time written and illustrated by James Gurney
We're
Riding on a Caravan by Laurie Krebs and illustrated by Helen
Cann
Ashanti
to Zulu: African Traditions by Margaret Musgrove and illustrated
by Diane Dillon
Home
for Christmas written and illustrated by Jan Brett
Arthur
Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You by
Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
Flotsam written
and illustrated by David Wiesner
 |
| The Wild Swans by Anne Yvonne Gilbert |
These are not just children’s stories they are collections
of art – worthy of the libraries of all people young and old. Since I can
only draw from my own personal knowledge and tastes, and I know there are
scores upon scores of gorgeous children’s books out there (thank goodness), be
sure to add any other favorites of yours to my list in the comments!
I would be most
content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating
consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna
Quindlen
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