Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Horsing around with ink

A Celebration: The Year of the Boar begins Feb. 18th

The Magic Horse of Han Gan
by Chen Jian Hong

Okay, Chinese traditionalists, here is your book.

Chen trained at Beijing's Academy of Fine Arts and has dedicated his career to relating the history and traditions of his ancestral home. He even painted the illustrations directly onto silk to emulate the story's subject, a painter who lived 1,200 years ago but whose lifelike renderings of horses are still celebrated today.

Han Gan's family was too poor to indulge his love of drawing, until a wealthy artist discovered his talent and bought him paper, inks and brushes. He excelled at horses; the only humans in his art are riding or tending the magnificent steeds he creates. They may've been a little too lifelike: one day, a warrior comes to him with an unusual request.

From there, the story takes a fabulist turn, with a subtle message infused with Chinese wisdom. Chen's prose is lean and understated, giving us just enough to fuel the imagination, while the illustrations really stoke the fire.

The plain silk backgrounds and flattened perspective help us keep our focus on the important figures, with white-clad Han Gan seeming small next to the busy aristocrats hobnobbing over tea or those fine, muscular equines who prance and chomp at the bit. He's the only one in white, however, which immediately draws our eye to him.

The way inks bleed into the silk affects the way robes seem to drape and adds texture to a nighttime sky. Chen's palette is muted, with subtle grays, greens and beige, except for great streaks of angry crimson used on walls to create a sense of enclosure, or on war gear to add excitement, and even in a red sunset as the din of battle loses its allure.

As your eye follows those reds, you'll notice crimson serves a practical purpose: the compositions are off-center, with figures spreading unevenly across the picture plane. The spot use of crimson ties everything together, creating symmetry and harmony out of chaos.

Gorgeous stuff, and a great introduction to the Chinese aesthetic from a purist.

Rating: *\*\*\

Those dirty rats!

A Celebration: The Year of the Boar starts Feb. 18th.

The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac
Written by Dawn Casey; illustrated by Anne Wilson

I knew the Chinese had a thing about cats. Hey, cat lovers, don't blame me, okay? I'm just telling you how it is. The Chinese and cats? No way!

So I knew Cat was in trouble from the moment this story opened.  The Jade Emperor, who rules the sky, sets all the animals against each other in a great race. Finish first, and he'll name the first year of his new calendar after you.

I won't tell you what wiles Cat and his best buddy Rat use to sneak ahead of the others. Let's just say there's a reason they're no longer on speaking terms.

The story is surprisingly suspenseful (though not scary) and Casey has fun with animals' personalities. Don't miss the end notes; lots of great stuff on other Chinese holidays and a full spread about all the animals, their traits and which years they fall on.

I'm noticing some similarities between the illustrations in Barefoot Books; most use the same warm, enticing colors and childlike renderings, even across different media. Wilson uses paper collage with acrylic and printed backgrounds, but I found myself wishing for more of an overtly Eastern feel to it.

Rating: *\*\*\

Is beauty carved in stone?

The Trouble With Wishes
by Diane Stanley

This must be Greek mythology week. Today's it's a retelling of Pygmalion, with a twist that's just right for kids saturated in media images of models. Better train them now to rethink what exactly is the perfect girl?

Pyg's a sculptor who lets plain Jane hang out in his studio and carve animals when not helping out. She can lug stone and sharpen tools, but can she turn his head?

Nope, he only has eyes for the statue he's carved of the perfect maiden.

Jane waits patiently for Pyg to come to his senses, but he's off trailing the blonde, self-absorbed Queen Bee the statue becomes. Her story's a fun bit of whimsy, with good ol' Jane anchoring us down in common sense. This is a classical world where the statue-come-to-life can wear a toga but get her hair blow-dried.

Was it Descartes who remonstrated that perfection entails existence? Something to remember when looking at airbrushed pics in Vogue--those girls don't really exist; their flaws have been Photoshopped away, their drug habits and neuroses banished from the camera's shuttering eye.

Stanley deals with none of that, of course, but it's impossible to get it out of my mind as I enjoy her warm, down-to-earth take on the ageless battle between the sexes, in which the good ones are often mistaken.

Rating: *\*\*\

Odysseus returns

The Adventures of Odysseus
by Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden; illustrated by Christina Balit

I've had a tough time with this new version of the Odyssey, truth to tell, and even now I'm only halfway through. I blame it on my high school English teacher who fed us abridged snippets, all plot points and travelogue. Adventure on the high seas! Travel to exotic lands! Meet sea creatures and monsters! 'Cuz y'know them crazy kids, you gotta keep 'em innerested, right?

So I was wholly and mutely unprepared for the abject pathos in this retelling that hit me square between the eyes. You'd think after writing so many essays on quest stories and journeys-as-metaphors and blah blah blah that I'd know this was the granddaddy of them all, no?

Add this to the list of teachers I've wanted to go back in time and throttle. 

Odysseus' long and fraught return from Troy is sorrowful in a profound and relentless way, with each new misstep, each foreseeable and preventable error, inspiring an ache that wells up in your throat until you want at every turn to comfort him, to find him a shortcut  to the fragrant shores of his beloved Ithaca.

Lupton and Morden are oral storytellers, which shows in this pared-down version of the Greek classic that moves at a brisk clip without losing its epic sweep. Their Odysseus is a broken, haggard figure, deeply conscious of what his quarrel with Poseidon has cost him in human lives, wasted years and lost glory.

Their prose doesn't merely soar, it glides, it arcs up and around anything I've read since I started this blog. This is their description of the Sirens' song:

In the song I heard so many sounds: the beating of a swan's wing, the hiss and drag of the sea on sand, the moan of the wind as it blows across the broad face of the world, the rhythm of the passage of the seasons, my wife singing--and all the sounds I heard were in harmony. For those few moments I heard the Song of the Spheres. Ever since then, all music has been clatter to me; the sound of a shield as it falls on a cobblestone floor.

Balit's illustrations echo the Greek's own portrayals of themselves, often in sideview or with the picture plain fragmented like a mosaic, and borrows heavily from the bright, aqua- and marine-hued palette we know the Greeks favored, tinged with gold.

Her Circe smolders, her Odysseus bursts with vigor at the peak of manliness, her seas threaten and storm, pummel then recede, each wave or fish or sea monster as clearly articulated as any character.

I rarely tell people to go out and buy a particular book. Until your child is old enough to read a fuller translation, this one is a must-have.

Rating: *\*\*\*\