Miffy's Birthday

Author and Illustrator: Dick Bruna
Publisher: original publication Mercis Publishing bv, 1970, featured edition Simon and Schuster UK, 2015
Original Translation: Patricia Crampton 1995, featured edition Tony Mitton 2014

Today we heard the sad news that Miffy creator Dick Bruna had died, promoting my daughter and I to revisit a book she used to love about a year ago, Miffy's Birthday. She still enjoyed Miffy ( at 3 and a half) but was a little more critical than before, 'why doesn't Miffy smile?' Yet this very point, the emotional void, was why Edie seemed to enjoy Miffy books aged two in the first place. They're very inclusive books at this age because there's no expectations or need to read faces and guess the emotion, and with Miffy, you'd draw a blank anyway, she always looks like this:

Now interestingly, Miffy's Birthday is all about emotion, namely how Miffy is feeling at  various points in the day. This disjuncture between the emotionless but iconic Miffy illustrations and the, at times sugary sounding, emotion-filled text does strangely work, and even make sense to very young children, whose emotions 'catch them up' in unexpected toddler outbursts. A good example of this disjuncture in the book is, 'She choose a pretty dress to wear, the prettiest she had. For it was Miffy's birthday and it showed that she was glad' - cut to Miffy with her characteristic non-expression 'x' mouth. Perhaps on the same principle then, Miffy might prove non threatening, so useful as a character, to introduce to children with a wide range of additional needs. (She wouldn't work for all - the flip side is that to others, her emotional vaguarity might be considered confusing).

Miffy works in a very similar vein to the Meg and Mog Series Jan Pienkowski, and it's no coincidence that they come from the same literary era. Both are simple to their core, slightly psychedelic in their colour scheme, thick bold colour background mattes with black outlines. Miffy has become her own trademark, a global image brand; she is safe, sellable, and translatable. She always looks the same, the rhyme is dependable (simple 4-line rhyme), she goes about doing simple things, like seeing her grandparents, receiving birthday presents, having a birthday tea. For a toddler this predictability is comforting, controlled, calming even. As an adult is gets very tiresome. Miffy books are reliable bedtime material for two year olds, and Dick Bruna deserves his place amongst children's literary legends, but I'm not so sure Miffy captures and keeps an adult audience as well, well at least not his one!

Freight Train

Author and Illustrator: Donald Crews
Publisher: Sandy Creek 1978, featured edition HarperCollins Greenwillow Books, 2010

This is the dream book of my 18 month old, George. It's a big, chunky-sized board book, tick; it's about trains, tick; a big long steam freight train, double tick; there are very few words, tick; and it really improves if the adult reading the book adds their own train noises, smiley-faced tick.

For me, this book isn't a patch on another preschooler train book I recommended,
Rattle and Rap, but it remains a staple of our weekly reads as it's so popular with George at present. From experience, my three older children had tended to have outgrown this book by 2-2.5 years, but they currently enjoy reading it to George, and do better train noises 'going through tunnels' than I could ever do. 

The 'story' (and I use that term loosely as there is no real story) is about a train's journey along a track. Elements of the written word rhyme, so for example: 'A train runs across this track. Red caboose at the back' , but mainly the written element of the book is very understated, single words on some pages, 'gone.' As such, the book is strangely eerie, it uses silence in an interesting capacity: there are long pauses as the eyes are drawn to the trails of monochromatic steam left behind by the 'Freight train. Moving.' 

Very young children love going through the colour wheel of carriages in this book: 'green cattle car, Blue gondola, car, Purple box car,' (it becomes so repetitious for adults - and what's a gondola and caboose' anyway?! ). The illustrations are sleek and stylised, they capture a sense of movement and speed nicely, and the black and primary colour palette obviously hugely appeal ( are visible to) even the youngest of babies and toddlers. 

The book needs to be read aloud (well) and sound effects added for maximum impact. The cut-through on the train-in-tunnel page is really effective if you make a whooshing noise and stop as the bank returns, whooshing again as the train reappears. Again, this is all an exercise in playing with noise and silence; quite interesting for a children's book, captivating for young children going through the 'permanence' stage. 

In all, this is a clever, stylish book, but the long silences, simplistic block pictures are just so unfamiliar, so unconventional against today's children's literature market, you can't help feeling a little undersold. My 18 month old overrules me though, he votes with his feet, and this is usually the first book turfed off the shelf and placed in my lap. Whoosh! 

Here's a link to some Frieght Train inspired activities to support reading: 
HomeGrownFriends Freight Train Activities

Meg's Castle

Author: Helen Nicoll
Illustrator: Jan Pienkowski
Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd 1975, Puffin Books 1979, edition featured 2009

I think this is a 'Marmite' series, you either love these bizarre, nonsensical, bold, bright books of the 1970s Nicoll and Pienkowski Partnership, or they furrow your brow in a bad way. I love watching adults who aren't familiar with the series, try to read these to children for the first time. The series  borders on the psychedelic, with dystopic plots and a strange sort of coherence. They leave you filling puzzled and yet fulfilled. 

Cartoon witch Meg lives (in a house) with Mog the black cat and Owl, the white bird.
Together they go on an adventure or celebrate an event, usually involving making spells that go slightly wrong, always ending peacefully with the characters waving their goodbyes. The books are made up of exuberant colourful illustrations, pop-art style, and incredibly short stanza, one- six words per page normally.  There's a a lot of onomatopoeia used, mixtures of font sizes and styles, and grabbing impact words such as ' victory!' ( huge font). In Meg's castle there are interesting cultural references to the Green knight legend and St George, with snippets of rhyme and proverb thrown in for good measure, 'I'm the king of the castle.' Meg, Mog and Owl books are action-filled as well as eye catching, and are great fun to read aloud. Here's my favourite high-drama page of this title: 

The Meg, Mog and Owl series are perfect share-with stories for the 18month- 3 year old old range because these books are loud, fun and the snippets of speech, rhyme, spell are very catchy and memorable, 'call me George'! This series also comes into its own again for 3-5 year olds, with such simple sentences, making them suitable 'first readers.' I'm also finding the series quite useful to inpart the principles of comic- book writing on my 7 year old, encouraging him to add speech bubbles and sound tags to his pictures, as those techniques are abundant and effective here. Now as this series is over forty years old, it is understandable that it's somewhat of an institution, and as such, the series has a huge array of resources to support reading available online. Here's a selection: Pinterest Meg and Mog resources, Meg and Mog WordSearch

Each Peach Pear Plum

Author:Allan Ahlberg
Illustrator: Janet Alhberg
Publisher: Puffin Books 1978, board book edition 1999

I'm surprised it's taken me until mid January to review an Ahlberg book, as their many books are staples of our book shelves and classics of British children's literature. 

Each Peach Pear Plum is a fantastic rhyming 'I-spy' book, inviting small children to spot well-known nursery rhyme and fairytale characters such as The Three Bears and Bo-Peep. 
The Ahlbergs use intertextuality again in the Postman and other People's Letters books; referencing characters that young children are likely to know, playing in their inherent familiarity and knowledge, helps them feel like empowered readers,  it's a technique I've  noticed used a great deal in British children's early readers fiction. 

Each Peach Pear Plum in board book edition is particularly engaging for the 18month-2 1/2 year old age range, tough and durable for all the poking and pointing of podgy little hands. The story / game itself, to spot the arm or legs or distant figure of the next character, is fun and invites action, and the scanning of the illustrations. The illustrations are very 'busy' and detailed, there's much to see, sometimes a little too much as on first read the clues are very hard to spot, but then the child gets a real sense of satisfaction from remembering the exact spot to point amongst all the busyness. 

In terms of the nursery rhymes inside the rhyme, again this is clever as it makes associations and so is easier for children to remember and recite. With rhyming couplets and use of alliteration the book is very catchy, 'Wicked Witch over the Wood' 
and I find myself repeating the verse over and over in my sleep. I also like the ending, bringing the rhyme to a happy conclusion, in that 'plum pie in the sun' unites so many disparate story characters together on one picnic blanket, from Tom Thumb to Robin Hood, Baby Bunting to The Wicked Witch. I never tire of reading this beautiful rhyme. It has iconic status in modern British children's literature, and rightfully so.