Michael Bartalos | Viking 1995 | 36 pages

Some authors write stories then figure out how to draw them. My suspicion is that Michael Bartalos created Shadowville in the opposite fashion. This book is chalk full of bold, flat, graphic silhouettes of wacked people, animals and objects—just like his illustration portfolio! This book pays homage to a graphic illustrator’s two best friends—light and shadow. Michael tells us up front that for about 12 hours a day we are going to see shadows—big black stretched renditions of our full color world. Written in rhyme, his tale reminds us to look at shapes in their purist form and then answers the question we might have pondered—where do shadows go the other 12 hours of the day? Why, they go to Shadowville where they appear to have more fun than they do during their day job. Michael draws with tremendous simplicity but skews the scale and shape of everyday objects to become new and delightful depictions. Passengers in a whale’s mouth, elastic athletes, cat chefs, elephant bathtubs and shaving cacti tickle the eye and the mind. Printed on off white uncoated paper and punctuated with muted and sparing color— though it was created in 1995, this book is timeless. I want to go to shadowville!

Antoinette Portis | Harper Collins Publishers 2006

There are two things I’m attracted to in a kid’s book. The first is simplicity and the second is illustrations that tell me that things aren’t always as they appear. Not a Box has both in a big way. Antoinette Portis made a book that does so much with so little. An adorable little rabbit—drawn in a single line—challenges us to think and see outside the box. Absent a storyline, it presents us with a series of challenges to see what the simple box really becomes. Every page has surprise and delight as the black and white drawing becomes a 3-color demo on how to see beyond the box.
Deceptively simple, this is the kind of book that plays to a kid’s strength and helps parents ‘get back’ to that wonderful kid’s place where anything is possible. This book reminds us that big ideas often come in small boxes.

Laetitia Devernay | Chronicle books 2011 | 64 pages

Illustrator and author Laetitia Devernay has created a story worth a thousand words without a peep. The Conductor is a beautiful and beautifully unconventional book. A very tall format signals that this is no ordinary kid’s book—at least by American standards. After all, it was first published in France and picked up by Chronicle as it fits nicely in their aesthetic. Devernay illustrates what can become several stories depending on how it is interpreted, which makes the book quite a bargain! Starting with a conductor scaling a lollipop-shaped tree, this book is all about disconnections that connect and things that become other things with the wave of the baton. I’m a fan of wordless books as it makes the illustrations work harder and leaves the exact story entirely to the reader. The Conductor has obvious connections of birds to music and flight to song—but it also makes subtle inferences to leaders and followers, cooperation and conflict, order and chaos, disturbance and renewal. This is a rich little, tall book.

It is illustrated in delicate pen and ink drawings that are colored sparingly in black, shades of green and custard yellow. The pages are composed elegantly to express scale, pattern and movement. The drawings are both confident and innocent—a marriage not easily maintained for 64 pages.

Shel Silverstein | HarperCollins 2011 |208 pages

Twelve years after Shel Silverstein’s passing, a book of more than one hundred and thirty never-before-seen poems and drawings is published to remind of his genius. We do know that Every Thing On It was compiled by the family and the folks at Harper Collins, but we don’t know exactly how. I can only speculate that if they found this many works that hold together so well, the pool must be big and deep. Both his words and his lines take your mind into absurd and magical places with aplomb. Though his line appears so effortless and loose, his control captures the human condition with the slightest of downturn in a lip or placement of his beady eyes. His characters are every bit as surprised and dismayed at the situations in which they find themselves as we are to see them. Imagine the mistake of daring to swallow a snake or the scene about to unfold when Mustache Mo gets his mustache caught in his train’s wheels. Silverstein walks the fine line of disturbing and just a little devilish. Once you get the fever, you can’t wait to turn the page to see what he has dared you to look at and read—and you do for 200 pages. It’s inspiring, humorous, poignant, cynical, snotty and sweet. It’s just like the title—every thing on it.

Jon Klassen | Candlewick Press 2011

I Want My Hat Back is a breath of fresh air—understated and exquisite in its illustration, story, typography, and design. This is Jon Klassen’s first book that he has penned and a charming tale he has told. It is a deceptively formulaic search the bear takes on to find his hat. So used to the answer ‘no’, he misses the solution when it’s under his nose. Several tiny exchanges between shifty-eyed creatures lend additional warmth to the storyline. The illustrations are graphic with the subtlest rendering and coloration. Large silhouettes are contrasted with delicate foliage beneath softening each page and creating the environs. The illustrations are just masterful in all ways. Uncoated paper, big Century Schoolbook font, muted palette, command of scale and surprise—all remind me of a classic Leo Lionni book. The end sheets are sublime. Oh, the moral of the story—thievery is punishable!