Cumulative Christmas picture books, by Pippa Goodhart

On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me 

A partridge in a pear tree.

…

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me

Twelve drummers drumming

Eleven pipers piping

Ten lords a-leaping

Nine ladies dancing

Eight maids a-milking

Seven swans a-swimming

Six geese a-laying

Five gold rings

Four calling birds

Three French hens

Two turtle doves

And a partridge in a pear tree! 

                      This image by George Buchanan

That English Christmas folk carol dating from at least the C18th is a fun game of a rhyme, testing our memories as we go through the ever-lengthening list of ever-dafter items. It’s been made into numerous picture book versions over the years, nicely fitting the standard twelve spreads. There’s a lovely Alex T Smith version in which Grandma has got carried away giving her granddaughter almost, but not quite, the traditional list of presents. ‘Seven snorkling squirrels’, or ten rhinos racing, for example, fit the bonkers nature of the original, and makes for a glorious images! 

 

I also love this Britta Teckentrup version with cut away windows in the pages that reveal more and more.

 

            But there was (its sadly now out of print) a cumulative Christmas picture book story that played brilliantly with the verbal and illustrative rhythm and build-up to play the Nativity story to best story effect.  

 

Joyce Dunbar’s This is the Star has a text based on the format of traditional rhyme story, This is the House that Jack Built.

 

This is the star in the sky.

…

These are the wise men come from afar

Who also saw and followed the star,

Bearing the gold, and fragrant myrrh

And frankincense, the gifts that were

Placed by the manger warm with hay

Wherein a new-born baby lay.

This is the ox and this the ass

Who saw these wonders come to pass

At the darkened inn where the only room

Was a stable out in the lamplit gloom

For the donkey and his precious load

Who trudged the long and weary road,

Looked on by the angel shining bright,

Who came to the shepherds watching by night

That saw the star in the sky.

 

But then, with shock and focus and clarity, the next spread gives us starkly and clearly …

This is the child that was born.

 

… before the book gives us another spread even more full of text, and then, again, going for the minimal …

 

Still shines the star in the sky.

 

That’s such a thought-provoking truth! Gary Blythe’s stunningly realistic illustrations, giving us a newborn baby who actually looks newborn, and wise men properly pondering the sight of this child, are as powerful and moving as the text.

 

 

I hope that your Christmas cumulates loveliness of all sorts around you. Would your own twelve days of Christmas make a picture book?! Happy Christmas!  

 

From Nursery Rhyme to Picture Book, by Pippa Goodhart

Nursery rhymes are often nonsensical, at least to modern child understanding, and yet they persist, generation to generation, often having lasted hundreds of years.  Why?  It’s the rhythm and the rhyme and the repetition that makes them memorable and easy to join in with, as well as nice to rock a baby to.  Those three ‘r’s, rhythm, rhyme and repetition, are often found in picture book stories for young children for those same reasons.  So it makes good, clever, sense to use an established old rhyme as the basis for a new picture book story.  Here are three such books which work wonderfully well –

Brand new, bright and fun, full of vehicles and sounds, with a proper mix of people driving the many vehicles, is Car, Car, Truck, Jeep, written by Katrina Charman and illustrated by Nick Sharratt.  This whizz along with busy vehicles comes to a nicely sleepy end, and matches the pattern of rhythm and rhyme laid out in Baa Baa Black Sheep … ‘Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?  Yes, sir.  Yes, sir, three bags full.  One for the master.  One for the dame.  One for the little boy who lives down the lane.’

Quieter, and more sophisticated, but wonderfully powerful, is This Is The Star, written by Joyce Dunbar and illustrated by Gary Blythe.  This tells the Christmas story, mirroring the cumulative rhyme that is This Is The House That Jack Built … ‘ This is the house that Jack built.  This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.  This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.  This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt … and so on for many more verses.’  The big problem with a cumulative story is that the text gets bulkier and the pictures more crowded, meaning that the finale can all look at bit small.  But Joyce Dunbar punctures that with a spread that breaks that pattern startlingly to give us, ‘This is the child that was born.’ 

Each Peach, Pear, Plum by Janet and Alan Ahlberg is, of course an old favourite. The original playground rhyme seems to go something like, ‘Each, peach, pear, plum, out goes Tom Thumb.  Tom Thumb won’t do so out goes Betty Blue. Betty Blue won’t go, so out goes you!’ It’s one of those rhymes for eliminating a child at a time in order to choose who will be 'It' for a game.  The Ahlbergs took the structure, and the idea of playing with familiar nursery rhyme or fairytale characters, from that rhyme, and made a classic of it.  

 

Do you know of any other picture books based on well-known children’s rhymes?  Can you suggest a rhyme ripe for such picture book treatment?