BUNNY and TREE- Reflections on HOME

 This year's holiday gatherings have felt especially sweet. My recent move back to my home town (after MANY years away) find me taking part in big and small occasions with family and friends, most I  had rarely seen at this time of year. During the Fall, I enjoyed aa short visit to my longtime home to deal with multiple business matters. When my plane landed, a thought filled me- "I'm HOME!" Not many days later, as my return flight approached landing back in my hometown/new home, another thought overtook me, unsolicited: "You'll be HOME soon." Then, in a conscious, intentional thought, I compared those two reactions and I realized, to my deep joy, that I have TWO homes. Two places where I know my way around, where caring people who have been part of my life for a long time are near, and where I find joy and feel safe. We all require safe shelter and sustenance to survive, and will fail to thrive without relationships of love and trust.But HOME is immeasurably more than that.

Enchanted Lio0n Books, 2023

That's what brought me back to share this very special wordless picture book. BUNNY & TREE is a loving and moving debut endeavor by BALINT ZSAKO, A visual artist/photographer/filmaker, he was born into an artistic family in Budapest, Hungary but now is a resident of Canada.

This is an exceptionally impressive wordless book for many reasons, not the least of which is the quality of the art and the final product. Colorful, full-spread illustrations are expensive to produce for publishers, especially with the large page size, excellent paper, and surprising length of this offering.With a range of tones and colors, from glowing pastels to shadowed subtlety, each sprawling spread incorporates the gentleness or intensity needed to share a glorious field off flowers or a seethingly fierce wolf. The cover image here gives you a sense of the story, as does the title. The length of this book (184 pages) is beyond rare for such a publisher's financial commitment to storytelling and to art. This is a visual storytelling of escape, assistance, need, challenge, travel, hope, and the power of such emotional connections between friends. 

I receive picture books from authors and publishers (but with no promise of a review). I seek out most books I reveiw at my public library collaborative. (Cheers for those fabulous folks and facilities, at my prior home and now here!) I buy books as gifts and often reveiw those, since I curate actual purchases very cautiously. In this case, though, I learned about this July, 2023 release long before it became available, and I preordered. From my first "reading", through countless others since then, I have deferred writing a review because I felt inadequate to praise it. With SIX starred reviews (so far) and being named on "Best of Year" lists, I'll admit to a shift in my thinking. This is one of those phenomenal books that is getting outstanding support and will certainly be named among many medal and honor winners in the coming month. (All well-deserved.) I decided I would lend my small voice and limited blog posts to some other books that were still a step away from such glowing spotlights. Yet, these many months later, I have not shelved this book out of my line of sight. I keep it "at hand", because each time I examine it from front to back, retold its visual stories, I find more to love. New details or insights expand previous readings, and I continue to love it deeply. 

After my experiences reflecting on HOME and what it means, I picked this up again and found an even closer connection.

Throughout each reading, the short version of what happens is an epic journey, a nine-act story with prologue and epilogue. It seems both fanciful and familiar. RABBIT (with different-colored ears to foreshadow attention to color in images and impact) and its mates seek escape from a marauding wolf. Just as death is imminent, TREE reveals itself as having both empathy and unique abilities. Reshaping its trunks, branches, and limbs into the shape of a massive wolf head, TREE forces the predator to retreat. This is all in the the prologue. Each chapter reveals grateful RABBIT and caring TREE moving through helpful roles, balancing each other. All the while they discover places and experiences in a wider world that only bond them further in trust and awareness of the potential each offers. Their journey involves dangers and sacrifices, but this story provides the polar opposite of the Tree's sacrifice in THE GIVING TREE, a picture book both despised and cherished by readers of different opinions. 

I considered sharing an interior spread, or a short passage of my (latest) interpretation of the visual narrative in words, and choose not to do so. Whether you check it out of a library, gift it to someone you love, screen first by reading other reviews, or ask your local independent bookstore to show it to you, please "read" it. Many times, if you can. Over time. The meaning of HOME and FRIEND and COMMUNITY changes throughout each of our lives, as it does within the pages of this book. The magical accomplishment in this wordless marvel is the epilogue indicator that when we share journeys and emotions and understanding with others, nature itself may join the pro9cess in the most surprising ways.

Personal Stories of Escape: Bringing History and Current events to Life: THE PAPER BOAT

 As Afghanistan scrolls across our screens and into our lives during these troubled days of exit and ending a two-decade war, we've been reminded that half the population of that troubled country is under twenty-five, with little-to-no personal experience with or memory of the ruthless Taliban control that existed from the late nineties until the battles began following 9/11/2001. Even so, their oppressive legacy makes the resulting panic and desperation to escape understandable, to say the least. (Link is to a short video clip from THE GUARDIAN).

Another wartime comparison that is being referenced across most media involves the final days of the Viet Nam War (one that was never actually declared a war) and the subsequent frantic escape by those who were well aware of potential consequences for anyone who was left behind. (Link is to a short documentary from WBUR/NPR). In that case, the vast proportion of Americans and global audiences are too young to have clear (if any) memories of those events as they actually occurred, even if they've gained s bit of information through subsequent movies, books, etc. Sadly, these are not lived experiences that might trigger intense empathy and urge actions to support Afghan refugees. 

A recent post featured three picture books created by individuals who lived those refugee experiences, books that allow readers to immerse themselves in a virtual experience and connect more fully than through most other media. As this current situation plays out in Afghanistan, I have no doubt that books of all kinds, including picture books. will emerge. Even in the accelerated publishing world, these will take time to reach us. Begin now to achieve that empathy with a look back at the titles I recommended HERE, and also at this remarkable picture book, created in wordless graphic-story format, with a single page author note at the end that is a must-read. 

Owl Kids, 2020

THE PAPER BOAT: A REFUGEE STORY is the work of THAO LAM. Thao resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where she arrived with her family when she was only three. They escaped Viet Nam through a death-defying and lengthy process that is summarized in that concluding note. 

Her success as an author and artist has produced several picture books that are worth exploring, utilizing an art style that is appealing and powerful. In the case of her most recent work, THAO (Owlkids, 2021), she addresses the impact of having a name that elicits mispronunciation and other identity-denying patterns that undermine self-acceptance and community connection. I hope you will check it out HERE, especially if you are a teacher, coach, or other adult leader of children of any age. In it, she incorporates  childhood photo images into her characteristic collage-and-more illustrations. 

So, finally, I have reached the part of this post that discusses the featured title, THE PAPER BOAT: A REFUGEE STORY. Trust me, it is worth the wait. Other than the text on newspaper front pages that she illustrated in opening and final endpapers, this is a wordless story that tells readers all they thought that would want to know, and more. Those headlines, dates, and simplified photo images deserve as much careful attention and reflection as the body of the visual narrative panels and illustrations. They set the stage for readers, even those without the slightest sense of how the Viet Nam War unfolded and ended. When an ant appears on the title spread, a sheet of newspaper is rolled and used to swat it. There are symbolic and literal elements to that opening, even though the surface story is easily "read" as literal. In fact, I took that approach once I had my hands on the book. One mindful read-through produced a powerful and emotional journey of escape, a reading filled with high-stakes tension, characters I cared for, and complexity of circumstances that required sustained attention and interpretation.

After reading the graphic visual narrative, I read the author note and related content at the back, with a first response of diving right back into the full storytelling visual content. That led me to an entirely enriched experience, which made me wonder why the note had not been at the start. 

That thought led me back into the book yet again, this time to wonder at that question. This, to me, was a learning experience about the remarkable talent of Thao Lam, not only as an artist or storyteller. My appreciation of her creation in this work focused on the extent to which her intent and design produced a picture book for many ages: one that informs, sparks curiosity and empathy, and could also be studied in adult history and literature classes. As mentor text, her control of symbolism, sequence, and emotional connection can inspire and inform teachers, readers and writers across time. At the same time, this books serves as a passport to join Lam's personal journey, to learn by becoming a virtual traveler at her side, and to marvel at the discreet memories and experiences that remain significant in her life. 

That's a lot, right? 

For me, it also drew me into an intense consideration of current news though imagined individual lenses, wondering how each will fare, how those who survived would register the experiences, and how their stories might, eventually, be shared. They must be. And we, as well as readers to come, must read them thoughtfully and eagerly, seeking deeper awareness that  everyone in the human family, each and every one, is our closest relative. To never forget, we could be them.

 

What Makes a Book a Book?

I've featured quite a few books by a specialty publisher, PHAIDON. Their offerings in children's books emphasize the quality of the book as a physical object, designing and producing board books, interactive books, and 3-D assembly books that are appealing in size and shape, with  eye-catching qualities of color, shape and contrast. Th subject matter and execution of content are equally distinct and attractive. The durability and paper quality and attention to detail of books in this category carry over to their picture books, too. 

Check out some of the Phaidon books I've reviewed HERE, HERE,  HERE, and HERE. 

PHAIDON, 2021

A brand new board book arrived for my examination (without a promise of review). It is a product of the witty and wonderful mind and talent of Jean Jullien. An earlier production, THIS IS NOT A BOOK, (2016)  set the stage for a sequel, THIS IS STILL NOT A BOOK. This latest effort continues to challenge the assumption that page-turning produces a simple left-right, beginning-middle-end interior. In fact, the challenge to our assumptions from the question that titles this post are embedded at every turn of concept, premise, subtle detail, and  cleverly complex gatefold. In each case little hands will be turning, twisting, and flipping perspectives and presumptions about what it is they are seeing... and thinking. And the durable construction will allow little ones to repeat and explore over and over again.

My teacher-instincts brought just a whisper of worry that this does nothing to support pre-reading concepts of left-to-right progression and story/concept awareness. Then my kid-loving-instincts took over and cheered that this is an ideal meta-book exploration of what actually IS A BOOK!

This wordless but thought-filled production invites a big-hearted embrace of the most important things about books: joy, surprise, engagement, meaning-making, exploration, and partnership with the creator. Without those, this is just a lovely stack of fun pictures on cardboard. With those essential book activities, we can safely grin at the author's teasing titles and confidently share his delightful books, filled with big ideas, meaningful glances, wry humor, and a successful counterattack to ever-present digital devices. This is truly a handheld delight from any and every angle.

If this whets your appetite for more young books that challenge and entice, take a look back at this post including several BOOK books that are as adored by adults as they are by kids.