Picture Books

Human beings have a strong need to belong, whether it be to a family, a community or humanity at large. In Belonging, Jeannie Baker explores this need. She takes the reader on a visual journey through twenty-four years in the life of Tracy Smith, her family, her community and her city. Baker also explores the importance not just of living on, but of belonging to and caring for the land that supports us and on which we build our cities.

We read for pleasure; perhaps this way we find out more about ourselves. Pleasure comes first, a fact that is often lost when a book is overanalysed, always a danger when questions follow a pattern of interpretation designed to trace a line around a response. Picture books are particularly vulnerable, as their words are few and they are becoming more sophisticated, drawing on traditional, modern and symbolic art. Whether a child will find delight would be my first criterion for the purchase of a picture book. It doesn’t have to be all sweetness and light: a shiver of fear may be just as engrossing as laughter.

Tackling a ‘worthy’ theme and making a poem or story readable and entertaining is a challenge. There is a fine line between subtlety and didacticism. My Gran’s Different manages, just barely, to stay on the right side. The narrator’s grandmother is different: she has Alzheimer’s, though this is never spelt out. Instead, there is a dual story: one part is the journey of a boy on his way to see Gran; the other is his friends’ grandmothers, who each have their own speciality – footy fan, florist, art gallery owner and so on. At last we discover why Gran is different and understand the special relationship the boy has with her. Children will inevitably ask why Gran ‘can’t remember who she is’. There is an expectation that the adult reading the book will be able to answer this question, because no information is given. Anyone intending to use this as a way to explain an elderly relative’s condition will probably find that it’s only the first step.

If you’re a kid, finding a tap at school that doesn’t spurt can be what life is all about. Perhaps Glen Tomasetti’s story ‘Ella makes a Friend’, highlights the tone of The Kids’ Own Book – gentle stories to help children lean evenly into life.