An Ode to Lauren Child

(Lauren Child's kitchen, with white piano and specially built shelves to display her crockery - after all, she says, noone really needs 20 mugs do they, so they may as well be on display.)

An Ode to Lauren Child
I have this little daughter Imogen

She is small and very funny.

She is a philosopher like you, Lauren Child

She wants to know why, why, why and how come?

She thinks grown up rules,
especially hypocritical ones about spelling and going to bed, are silly.

She can mark a green vegetable never tasted at twenty paces

and not ever never eat it.

She has an imaginary bestest friend called Wormy

who has a birthday most every day and

is almost always responsible for breaking her little brother's toys.

She has sticky outy hair like Lola

and a don't mess with me hands on hips stance when feeling brave.

Like Clarice Bean she wants to save the Planet of Earth

But she still worries about things which cannot be changed,

such as whether the size of her feet are acceptable in the scheme of things. 

(an amazing home made Charlie and Lola house, go to Sweet Sweet Life to see it all)

But for me, I love Lauren Child for different reasons.  I love her use of pattern and colour and wallpaper in her illustrations:

(Hubert Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trent)

(from Who Wants to be a Poodle)

(Princess and the Pea)

(Pippi Longstocking)

(Pesky Rat)

And I love her ability to articulate life's chief worries. Including this one (from Clarice Bean):

"Worry no 8: What to do when someone is boring you to nearly utter death. Give them the slip and run like crazy".

Oh to be a Running Away From Boring People child again.

(Images: (1) guardian.co.uk (2) -(4) Sweet Sweet Life, all others copyright Lauren Child)

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A Mad Tea Party (in my head)

Everywhere seems to be awash with images from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.   Indeed, tomorrow my daughter is due to see the film at an 8 year old Film'n'Pancake Parlour combination party which is certainly a popular theme this year.   

I, alas, will be having my hair done and will wait to see it on DVD.  Which has been pretty much the case with all films for the last 8 years.

But am I complaining?  No, not a jittery jot.   Alice has been such a wonderful inspiration for artists and illustrators for more than a century.  And it is not hard to see why - a pretty girl and lots of wonderful and crazy animals and characters to portray. 

And everyone brings their own imagination to bear.

(Marjorie Torrey, 1946) 

(AE Jackson, 1914)

(Mabel Lucie Atwell 1910)

(Angel Dominguez, 1996) 

(Gwynned Hudson, 1922)

(Maria Kirk, 1904)

(Nicole Claveloux, 1940)

(Peter Newell, 1901)

(Arthur Rackham, 1907)

(Sir John Tenniel 1865)

I can tell you that this picture used to scare the living daylights out of me when I was younger. Much scarier than even Stephen Fry. 

So, this weekend, I will be tea-partying with the Mad Hatter in this hat:

(from Harvash.com)

And drinking my tea from one of these, because I think a tea party calls for flowery porcelain:

Taitu - tea for one

Gien

Taitu - L'Erba del Vicino

Bernadaud - Frivole

Gien 

(all porcelain from tableideas.com) 

And the Mad Hatter can use this teapot, if he dares:

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Feeling Sad

Feeling Sad is a book my daughter chose herself last year from our local book shop, Berkelouw. Usually she prevaricates so I don't know if the cover grabbed her or if she was indeed feeling sad.

We read it again this week and it seemed apt, given the sad times we live in.

The book, by Sarah Verroken, a graphic designer, plays on the theme of the need we all have for colour in our lives.

This book tells the story of a duck who is sad because his world is black and white. The soft little red friend (who looks like a cross between a jelly bean baby and a gingerbread man) he holds is called Dudley.

For some reason this image of black rain and a tiny pointless leaf shelter really made me think of the terrible situation the Haitians are facing today.

Duck is not prepared to put up with an entirely unsatisfactory black and white world. Would you? He goes exploring and eventually page by page the sun comes out and colour comes to his world.

The illustrations in this book are so textural and interesting. I assume some kind of woodblock or lino cut technique has been used.

I don't know what it is about ducks and children's books. I have a number of duck based children's books which are pretty glum. It's true they generally come good at the end, but they so often have a sad overtone. And yet you never see a depressing book about a sad pig who lives in a black and white world or can't walk or has no family do you?

To demonstrate the point, I present Exhibit 1:

This famous story is about Ping the Duck who lives happily on the Yangtse River until one day he is captured by fisherman. Not just any fisherman. The ones who put metal rings around the birds (cormorants, I think) they keep on the river and force them to dive for fish (the rings stop them swallowing the fish). When I was little this was my first introduction to boats called junks, and cruelty to animals.

Exhibit 2 is a book about a wooden duck with a pole through his back who lives on a merry-go-round. All this duck wants is to fly and that wooden pole is an obvious impediment.

He then meets a real baby duck whom he raises himself. One day the baby duck grows up and leaves the wooden duck. The wooden duck is sad, and things only get better when the real duck returns to give wooden duck a real ride in the sky. Then the baby duck leaves again for good. But merry-go-round duck is happy, as his one dream (to fly) has been fulfilled.

Exhibit 3 - the Sissy Duckling is about a duck who would rather do so called girly things like baking, puppet shows and playing quietly. He is mercilessly teased for this. I know that many people would agree that this is the book to buy if your son is remotely 'different'.

And finally, for just plain out weirdness, you cannot go past Dr Suess' I wish that I had Duck Feet.

For me, if I could have any animal bit attached to me it certainly would not be duck feet. It would be feathery wings. Or even sharp talons. .....

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Bona Vista - Melbourne life in 1885

This is Bona Vista, built in 1885 and located in South Yarra.

It is now for sale. It is very unusual for a property in inner Melbourne to have this much land, let alone a lavender field:

and a lake:



and a turret and a ballroom (used by the owners as a kind of panelled games and trophy room, which made me feel a bit despondent).

So, I realise I can't afford this house (and trust me, it requires Quite a Lot of Redecoration Inside) but it did make me wonder what was happening in 1885 in Melbourne.

Elsewhere of course it was a stellar year for war torn boys own literature. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Germinal by Emile Zola, Arabian Nights by Sir Richard Burton, A Tangled Tale by Lewis Carroll and H Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines were all published.

And in Melbourne, were you to be invited to a wedding in West Melbourne you might just receive this invitation for dancing at 8 o'clock:

And the divinely seraphic Ruby Lindsay was born, sister to, and overshadowed greatly by her brothers Norman (who wrote The Magic Pudding), Sir Daryl (married to Joan Lindsay, see my post on these two here), Sir Lionel (influential art critic, illustrator, etchings artists) and Percy, all literary and artistic lions of the age.

I must say Percy, whom I had not previously heard of, sounds like the pick of the bunch. He is described in the Australian Dictionary of Biography thus:

"A charming Bohemian who enjoyed the company of convivial friends, Percy was the least ambitious of the Lindsays and the most competent painter in the family."

Ruby had some artistic talent too, and illustrated a number of books and theatre notices (like the one below) and also produced charcoal drawings.





(very rare and for sale for $6,500)

Tragically she did not live to receive either the acclaim or the equivalent to the nubile ladies and knighthoods which rained down on her brothers. She died in Ireland in 1919, one of the many victims of the Spanish influenza epidemic.

On a brighter note, 1885 saw the birth in Sydney of Frank Hurley, intrepid explorer and photographer with a clean modern eye:

and Dorothea MacKellar, author of the poem 'I love a sunburnt country', which is, I think Australia's national poem and makes me feel like crying when I hear it. You can read it here.



(Images etc (1)-(3) Bona Vista (4) National Library of Victoria (5) catalogue.nla.gov.au (6) Picture Victoria (7) bsbgallery.com (for sale) (8) Shackleton-Endurance.com (9) Artnet.com (10) DorotheaMackellar.com)

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Spot It! Beautiful patterns with hidden objects

I wrote about Mouk the French bear here. The second French children's book I love at the moment is Spot it! by Delphine Chedru.

This simple book contains a wonderful repetitive pattern on each page which hides a little animal of some sort.




There are two sea urchins hiding here.








This one hides a snail.







This one hides a peacock.





This one hides a fox.

This one a stick insect (current favourite insect in our household. We also get them occasionally in the garden).

This one is - actually I don't know - I can't remember and I can't see by looking at it. Maybe a butterfly.








This one hides an owl who is looking for his glasses.





Aren't the patterns exquisite? They could be used for fabric curtains or cushion covers. I especially like the red and white peacock one.

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