Picture Book Horror! By Pippa Goodhart

I recently bought a very beautiful new picture book by Kate Read. It’s called One Fox, and it also has a strapline under that title; A Counting Book Thriller. That’s exactly what it is. 

We count up from the ‘One famished fox’ to ‘Two sly eyes’, ‘Three plump hens’, ‘Four padding paws’, and on as the tension mounts between predator and prey; simple, exciting, and thrilling. 

 

Then comes the moment of crisis. Really dark menace!

 

But of course all is not lost. 

A great colourful rush of ‘one hundred angry hens’ turn the tables on the now ‘one frightened fox’ who is seen running away. A wonderful book! 

 

Other picture books also deal with characters in mortal danger. There’s even a ‘best seller’ board book that does this for very young children. 

In Ellen Stoll Walsh’s Mouse Count a hungry snake goes looking for dinner, taking mouse after mouse, and popping them into a jar until, ‘Ten mice are enough. Now I am going to eat you up, little, warm, and tasty,’ said the snake. But of course the mice are clever, and trick their way to freedom. Phew!

 

            In both those stories, the intended victims get away, and the predator is left hungry. 

            But another way to play horror to be fun rather than harrowing is to put the child reader in control. In Ed Emberley’s Go Away, Big Green Monster!, the text, and the child turning the pages, create a monster, brilliantly using layering of die-cut pages.

 

It builds and builds until we have the whole scary monster facing us. But the child who created the monster can then reverse that process, telling the monster to ‘Go away’, and reducing its features one by one as we continue the page turning. By the end the monster is gone, and the text shouts, ‘GO AWAY, Big Green Monster!’ turn the page ‘and DON’T COME BACK! Until I say so.’ So it leaves with a new little thrill of possibility, but still under our command!

But what about Jon Klassen’s powerfully simple picture books, This Is Not My Hat and I Want My Hat Back, which give us the evidence and let us come to the conclusion that murder has actually been committed, albeit with strong reason? It is left to the child audience to join the dots and decide what has really happened, and then talk and think and talk some more about exactly what has occurred off-stage, and whether or not it was justified. When I first say I Want My Hat Back I thought it too worryingly scary to offer to a young child. But I was wrong. Most young children LOVE the thrill of it! 

 

            So, is there a line over which picture books should not step when serving up thriller stories? I think that all these examples show that the thrill is fun for children, just so long as we are in very clearly story territory, with characters who aren’t human. Such books are safe and fun places to play with the scary. Even for the very youngest children.  

Now We Are One! Picture books for one-year-olds by Lucy Rowland

Last year, when my son was still teeny-tiny, I asked the mums in our NCT group which books their babies were particularly enjoying. I wrote about their answers for Picture Book Den.

Recently, our children celebrated their first birthdays- a big milestone, which perhaps felt even bigger given the very strange year we've had- and I thought it would be nice to catch up with the mums and babies once again.  This time I wanted to find out which picture books they are enjoying NOW WE ARE ONE! 

Of course, most of the babies still like board books with their sturdier pages (for enthusiastic hands), and novelty books with their flaps, textures, buttons and sounds, but some of the babies are starting to branch out into more traditional picture books too.

Answers included the classics: 'Guess How Much I love You' by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram, the rhythmic 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, 'Goodnight Moon' by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, 'The Tiger who Came to Tea' by Judith Kerr, 'Not Now Bernard' by David McKee and the ever-popular 'Peepo' and 'Each Peach Pear Plum' by Janet and Alan Ahlberg.

But there were also some picture books which were either less familiar to me or which took me by surprise but are, never-the-less firm favourites with these one-year olds.  

My own son, Benji, enjoys:

'The Flying Bath' by Julia Donaldson and David Roberts.

My sister gave us this one, as her own son had enjoyed it so much. It was not a book I'd come across before but, with its minimal text and simple bouncy rhyme, Benji loves following the journey of the flying bath as it travels around the world helping animals with their water-related problems.  I think he enjoys the repetitive refrain- 'Wings out and off we fly, the flying bath is in the sky!' I like the soft colours and patterns used in the illustrations.

Grayson's mum said: Grayson loves Oi Dog! by Kes Gray and Jim Field I think it's the bright, bold colours and the funny voices that I do!

 Poppy's mum said: Poppy likes 'So Much' by Trish Cooke and Helen Oxenbury.

Flora's mum said: Flo really likes 'I want my hat back' by Jon Klassen.  

Teddy's mum said: Teddy's favourite is 'Chu's Day' by Neil Gaiman and Adam Rex

Joseph's mum said:  Because I read it almost every day over lockdown, Joseph likes 'What the ladybird heard on holiday' by Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks. It's also my favourite of the trilogy! 

 Ralph's mum said:  Ralph really likes non fiction picture books. He also has some lovely non-fiction 'Hello World' board books by Jill McDonald. He likes Solar System, Weather and Backyard Bugs. He really loves the bright and colourful illustrations and frequently after we've finished reading it, he will pick it straight up so we can read it again! There is a central text to read and then extra little facts for when he is older.

Holly's mum said: Holly likes 'Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes' by Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury. She will give us kisses at the end of the book so that makes it my favourite to read to her! 

Archie's mum said: Archie loves 'Handa's Surprise' by Eileen Browne.  It's a definite favourite! We have a story sack version of it and he loves playing with all the different fruits and the animal masks!

So there we have it- top picture book picks as chosen by our one year olds! Which picture books do you recommend for this age group? 

Who Chooses The Books? By Pippa Goodhart

I buy lots of picture books.  My children are now in their twenties, and I don't yet have grandchildren, so I buy picture books for me.  I buy ones I just want to enjoy for myself, but I also buy books with thoughts of using them as examples when I teach classes of adults about writing children's books.

I love the clever, super-charged, thrill and danger of picture books such as Jon Klassen's This Is Not My Hat.  I'm moved to sadness and joy by books such as Jo Empson's Rabbityness.  I love the gentle beauty and humour of wordless book Wave by Suzy Lee.


But, looking at my books, I wondered which of them the young child me would have chosen.  We're all individual as children just as we're individual as adults.  But I know that child me was also different from adult me.  So I went through the books, thinking about what would have appealed or not when I was of core picture book audience age.  I picked out two books.

I would have hugely enjoyed Oi Frog by Kes Gray and Jim Field for its wonderfully logical silliness and humour, and the way it plays with language.

But I know that the book I would have gone back to again and again on my own after a parent had first read it to me would have been Mr Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown.  Why?  Because it is beautiful.  But, more than that, because Mr Tiger goes through emotions that I would have recognised as he copes with feeling an odd one out, testing freedoms, then coming to a happy compromise that lets him both be himself and fit into society.  It's a story I would have thought about a lot, and probably made up extension stories of my own in my head about.  I care about Mr Tiger, and would have done so then.

I would also have enjoyed having a go at copying those wonderful blocky pictures.

So what modern picture book would the child you have particularly enjoyed, and why?

Unhappily Ever After? By Pippa Goodhart

Does horror have a place in picture books?

There’s been a lot of recent discussion as to whether or not there are too many unhappy and hopeless endings in books for teenagers. But what about unhappy endings in picture books?




Jon Klassen’s ‘This Is Not My Hat’ won the Kate Greenaway prize at the same time that Kevin Brooks’ controversial book 'The Bunker Diary' won the Carnegie. Both deal in horror. Both could be said to end unhappily.

‘This Is Not My Hat’ is a very beautiful book. It's a very simple book. It's a very powerful book. It’s truly dramatic and exciting. (Spoiler alert!) We are told the story in a few sentences narrated by a little fish who is boasting that he’s stolen a hat from a big fish, but the big fish is asleep and probably won’t notice. But we can see in the pictures that the big submarine shaped fish isn’t asleep: he’s awake! And he’s angry! And he’s going after the little fish into a mass of green weeds … before coming back out with his hat. And that little fish voice has stopped.




Why is that so powerful? Its power is in what is not said or explained. It is in that space left to be filled with the reader’s own imagination.  What most of us imagine is a horrible massacre of the little fish by the big one. So it is us, rather than Jon Klassen, making the story end with horror. Is finding horror in ourselves more powerful than being given it from the outside?

A lot of the reviews on Amazon say that this is a book for adults and older children rather than children of the usual picture book age. When I think of my daughters at, say, two to five years old, they would have made that grisly imaginative leap and been upset by it. But would they actually, at some level, enjoyed the thrill of that horror, or just been upset? I don’t know.

One Amazon reviewer took from that book a message of: find out the perpetrator, kill him and eat him. But it's more complex than that. The supposition that the fish has been eaten (and it’s only happened in the reviewer’s mind, remember, not explicitly on the page in any way!) raises the big and important question of fairness. Did the little fish deserve to die for stealing something that wasn’t his, and then cockily boasting that he’d got away with it? Small children have strong opinions about fairness. Where does fairness lie in this case? And is capital punishment fair? It’s all so interesting! I think it’s the interesting moral dilemma in this story that stays with us more than the horror, whereas it was definitely the horrors in Struwwlpeter that have haunted me and has stayed with me long after ‘nice’ books have faded from memory.



There is the view that childhood is a golden time of innocence, where the nasty side of life doesn’t yet have a place. For some children their early years truly are like that, and I think I’d hesitate to upset things for those children with too early a dose of unhappily ever after. There are plenty of picture book stories that deal in horrors (think of The Owl Babies raising the possibility that Mum has been eaten by a fox!) but in which things are brought to clearly happy endings. The difference here is that we are left still mid-horror, albeit in a way that many would take as black humour more than straight horror.



There are ‘unhappy’ books that are aimed squarely at addressing some real life horrors, of course. Rebecca Cobb’s beautiful ‘Missing Mummy’ shares the misery and misunderstanding and anger of a small girl whose mother has died. I wouldn’t offer that to a child who had no notion yet that a mother could die, but it makes a wonderful discussion point for children who have experienced the death of their mother, or for those who know another child going through that real horror. 

Different books are going to suit different children in different situations and at different times, and we adults have a role in guiding the right books to the right children at the right moment. We have the luxury of a huge choice, even within picture books. I think that’s wonderful. But it trips some people up.


Look at the reviews for Jean Willis and Tony Ross’s ‘Tadpole’s Promise’, and you’ll find much greater outrage than for ‘It’s Not My Hat’. I suppose that is because people have picked up what looks like a nice little love story about a tadpole and a caterpillar who promise to love each other for ever and never to change …. And they haven’t thought through the inevitable problems implicit in that set-up! Clearly people have bought the book, and not read it themselves before reading it aloud to a small child audience who are sometimes horrified when the frog eats the butterfly! An outraged adult reader is going to produce an upset child. Maybe some children will be upset even if the reader has warned that this is a story that isn’t going to end happily. But for some the kind of bright child who delights in following an idea through to a logical conclusion, that book is an absolute delight! Besides, the frog isn’t unhappy because it’s oblivious of quiet who it has just eaten. And the butterfly isn’t unhappy because it’s, well, dead. This is a great book to read out loud to students of writing. They tend to gasp and say, ‘but I didn’t think that children’s books could end like that!’


Should they? What do you think?

Challenging Content in Picture Books by Emma O'Donovan

This month's guest blogger, Emma O'Donovan, discusses the potential for challenging, sometimes controversial picture books. Emma has spent the past ten years in the world of children's books, first as a children's bookseller and now as a publishing marketing manager. She may be found at The Book Sniffer.

As we bound head long into a new and magnificent golden age of illustrated picture books, I feel it’s time to take a moment to reflect on the role of challenging and controversial picture books in a world in which children are increasingly exposed to sensitive information. From the dark depths of Grimm’s fairy tales to an egg-laying mummy, dogs' bottoms, ‘boobs’, and the grim reaper, it seems there are few restrictions in terms of what is deemed acceptable content for the very youngest of readers

Duck, Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch 

Historically the picture books available to young readers were thoroughly smattered with terrifying bone chilling characters (the mere mention of Struwwelpeter strikes fear into the hearts of many adults I know). Back then they were actively used by parents as a tool  to instill good manners, etiquette and a good moral standing in the young. Although perhaps some of the methods depicted in Struwwelpeter were slightly harsh.

Image from Struwweelpeter

It is probably fair to say that as a general rule, in anticipation of the impact on international sales, publishers tend to avoid content which may be considered controversial. It is well documented that tolerance for challenging picture books appears to be extremely risky, particularly so in the US markets.

With the picture book market beginning to flourish again perhaps now is the perfect time for publishers to create interesting and challenging picture books; for parents to trust with complete confidence the decisions made by the books creators; and for authors and illustrators to be given new freedom to experiment with new themes. It is certainly evident that picture books are becoming increasingly experimental in terms of design and the complexity of the stories within them. 

The Heart and the Bottle by Oliver Jeffers

During a recent acceptance speech at the Greenaway Awards, Winner Jon Klassen reminisced about how his initial concept for This is Not My Hat was much darker than the one which was eventually published, dipping its toe into the dark and murky underworld of underwater gang culture, only to be rebuffed by his US publisher for being too dark. It turns out they created an award-winner so in this case perhaps it was a good call and after all it is a marvellous book and *spoiler alert* the hero still in fact dies at the end so it's not entirely sanitised and sugar coated.

This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

It seems to me that nowadays one of the best things about using picture books as an educational and emotional support mechanism is the propensity for readers to absorb information at their own pace whilst promoting further discussion. So often children are bombarded with information from all angles with no capacity for information filtration, but at least with a picture book they can relate an imagined scenario with their own and re-read to reinforce understanding.

It’s hard to believe that one of the most recent pioneers, legendary Babette Cole, created her magnificent picture books over 30 years ago! Babette illustrated books with confidence, engaging storytelling and side splitting comedy incorporating gender equality, sex education, puberty, death and same sex marriage in the most charming of ways, with a great majority of readers not even realising they were what are referred to as ‘issue driven’. Surely that magical picture book recipe can be replicated and re-invented.

Mummy Never Told Me by Babette Cole

I wonder if exploring challenging subjects that are enveloped in a safe and familiar picture book (probably shared with a grown-up you are very fond of) is actually the best place to do so.; and there we have yet another reason why pictures books are an invaluable and essential first step in the development of the next generation of marvellous book loving adults.

I’d love to hear what you think

Should picture books remain a sacred space for the pure innocent enjoyment of story and escapism and imagination?

Who holds responsibility for what our children are exposed to?

Which books have tackled challenging issues unsuccessfully?

Should books tackling ‘issues’ proactively advertise their content on the cover for added parental reassurance?

Does humour play an important role in broaching certain subjects with young readers?

It'll be great to discuss this further in the comments section below or on ‘The Twitter’ (please tweet me @maybeswabey with your thoughts #challengingpicturebooks).

Finally, some recommendations

In my previous incarnation as a children’s bookseller, I regularly recommended trusted classics to broach difficult subjects. There really is a wealth of brilliant picture books, covering all manner of subjects from dementia to late breast feeding and divorce. Here are some which I would confidently recommend (and a few suggestions from my dear knowledgeable friends on Twitter).  

Divorce

Mum and Dad Glue by Kes Grey & Lee Wildish

Death

Duck Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch  

Grandpa by John Burningham

The Heart and the Bottle by Oliver Jeffers

Maia and What Matters by Tine Mortier & Kaatje Vermeire

Sad Book by Michael Rosen & Quentin Blake

Dementia

Grandma by Jessica Sheperd

Really and Truly by Emilie Rivard & Anne-Claire Delisle

Other / Bottoms 

The Great Dog Bottom Swap by Peter Bently & May Matsuoka

Philosophy

The Yes by Sarah Bee & Satoshi Kitamura

Elmer and the Big Bird by David McKee

Bullying

Leave me Alone by Kes Gray & Lee Wildish

Is it Because? by Tony Ross  

Marmaduke the Very Different Dragon by Rachel Valentine & Ed Eaves

Ant and the Big Bad Bully Goat by Andrew Fusek Peters & Anna Wadham

Don’t Laugh At Me by Steve Seskin

Trouble at the Dinosaur Cafe by Brian Moses & Garry Parsons

____________________________________________________________________

Thank you to this month's guest blogger,
Emma O'Donovan,
who may be found at
The Book Sniffer

Chicken or Egg? by Polly Dunbar

'Where do you get your ideas ?' is the first question I am asked, as an author and illustrator. The second is the eternal 'chicken or egg' question: which comes first, the words or the pictures?  I'll try to answer here. 

I am fascinated by the third element in the making of a picture book - the special space between the words and pictures into which a child is invited to fill the gap with their own imagination. If allowed, the reader plays an active part in the story, breathing  their own life into it;  when this happens successfully it's like a tiny explosion in the mind.

These little explosions can trigger all sorts of responses: they can be shocking; they can make you laugh; they can be intriguing. The important part is reaching a conclusion all by yourself rather than have it spoon-fed by the author.

Jon Klassen is a master of balancing words and pictures and leaving us a gap. Here is a picture from his new book THIS IS NOT MY HAT, with a fish that looks very much AWAKE - brilliant!

Because the ending isn't spelled out, the reader has to work out what happens to the narrator fish without being told. The ending you come to in your own mind might be hilarious or horrifying or perhaps it's a completely different ending to the one the author intended; it doesn't matter, what matters is the huge pleasure in getting there with your own imagination.

My first published book was a series of cartoons about being a teenager. I was interested in the work of Gary Larson - I loved the way he combines a picture that tells you one thing and a line of text that tells you another: bingo...something absurd...an explosion...usually of laughter! 

So I started writing/drawing my own cartoons - which turned out to be very good training for writing picture books. It's an exercise in paring down what you are trying to say to its absolute essence, allowing the words and pictures to come together creating a friction or a vibration, like forcing two magnets together that don't want to meet. Synergy.

An example of the connection between words and pictures is cleverly done in a series of HCBC adverts, putting different words with the same picture. It is startlingly effective - to have one's mind prompted into making so many different associations to the same picture, making it look or 'feel' different each time.

This power between words and pictures is for me what makes picture books so special, why they have a magic that is hard to capture in animation or apps. I'm all for telling stories in different ways using different formats - pictures that move and dance and sing, with buttons to press and things that squeak. Although I love all this, there is infinitely more pleasure in making those pictures dance and sing in one's own mind, to feel those synapses snapping to make it come to life in a way that is unique to you, giving power to the reader.

With my very first picture book 'FLY AWAY KATIE' I had decided I wanted to be an 'author' as well as an illustrator.  I set about writing a story that was about 4000 words too long, getting myself into a terrible muddle describing everything that was happening, how the character was feeling on each page. One day I sat down, threw out all the words and just drew the story in a series of pictures...and there I had it. I added a few words to help the story along and left it up to the reader to decide how Katie was feeling.

So back to the 'which comes first' question, writing or drawing? Capturing ideas and turning them into stories is an elusive business; the essential elements, of words, picture, idea, never seem to be in the same place twice.  I doodle in my sketch books, images, phrases anything that has caught my attention. Sometimes if I'm very lucky a drawing cross-fertilizes with another image or a phrase, and the juxtaposition of two things will create a spark and lead to a story. My book PENGUIN started with this sketch of a toothy penguin and the words 'bit hard very hard on the nose.'

The beauty of being an author/illustrator is that you can prune your own words and let the pictures do the work. Very young children are visually literate and can read body language far earlier than they can read words.  On this page in Penguin, I could have described the tantrum that Ben was having, but I didn't need to - , the pictures are enough.

At the end of the book Penguin says 'everything'  in pictures alone. At first my editor and I were a bit worried that readers might flounder on this page, with no words to guide them through the story. But rather than leaving the reader stumped, it gives the child a chance to be the storyteller, to bring it to life in their own words. 

Children's authors don't have to illustrate their own work, they just have to invite the illustrator to dance with them, being careful not to tread on their toes. I'm doing this dance at the moment with my Mum, Joyce Dunbar. She has written a text called PAT-A-CAKE BABY. Mum wrote some words, I did some doodles. Mum wrote more words and we danced chaotically, not sure who was leading until we learnt the steps, and now we're nearly ready to invite people to dance with us.

It doesn't matter which comes first, the pictures or the words, so long as when they come together you can hear an unexpected and wonderful fizzing in the mind of the reader.

To find out more about guest blogger, Polly Dunbar,

please visit http://www.pollydunbar.com/