I will starve this week.
Jun. 9th, 2005 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
I bought two books for Ana, because I fell madly in love with them.
The first is an alphabet book, titled "ABC A Child's First Alphabet Book". I went through it once, wasn't too impressed. It's a very simple text. A is for apple. B is for balloon. C is for cow. X "marks the spot", if you're curious, which was a nice twist. I didn't get interested at all until I came to Z is for Zoo, and realized that I'd seen those animals before. Not just on the preceding page (Y is for yacht, of all things), but throughout the book.
So I went through it again, more slowly. A is for apple - and in the distance, we see the hot air balloon. The man from that balloon has landed in E is for elephant.
I went through it again, more slowly still. The envelope we see in D is for dog is the same envelope the man is showing the elephant. When the artist-woman paints a picture of a panda, we see the man talking to the panda a page later. Wait - are the man and the woman writing to each other? THEY ARE. I think. It's hard to tell.
But I've now gone through this book five times, and I'm still not sure I've seen the end of it. It's insanely complex - B isn't for balloon. It's also for ball, and bee, and beehive, and butterfly. All these things are in the picture, hiding away to be noticed. M is for moon, sure, but it's also for the man's map, for moose, for mountain.
I love it. Ana will love it, both now, and when she gets old enough to understand it.
I've now put a similar book by the same illustrator on my wishlist. When I find it in real life, I'm buying it, stat.
The other book is "Cinder-Eyed Cats". Words cannot describe this book. Let me just say it tops "In the Night Kitchen" for depiction of a bizarre dream. (Which reminds me, I saw a Sendak book "Bears" which featured the boy from Wild Things.) But as dreams go, this is a dream I'd like to live in. It's... it defies description.
All in all, a good day.
The first is an alphabet book, titled "ABC A Child's First Alphabet Book". I went through it once, wasn't too impressed. It's a very simple text. A is for apple. B is for balloon. C is for cow. X "marks the spot", if you're curious, which was a nice twist. I didn't get interested at all until I came to Z is for Zoo, and realized that I'd seen those animals before. Not just on the preceding page (Y is for yacht, of all things), but throughout the book.
So I went through it again, more slowly. A is for apple - and in the distance, we see the hot air balloon. The man from that balloon has landed in E is for elephant.
I went through it again, more slowly still. The envelope we see in D is for dog is the same envelope the man is showing the elephant. When the artist-woman paints a picture of a panda, we see the man talking to the panda a page later. Wait - are the man and the woman writing to each other? THEY ARE. I think. It's hard to tell.
But I've now gone through this book five times, and I'm still not sure I've seen the end of it. It's insanely complex - B isn't for balloon. It's also for ball, and bee, and beehive, and butterfly. All these things are in the picture, hiding away to be noticed. M is for moon, sure, but it's also for the man's map, for moose, for mountain.
I love it. Ana will love it, both now, and when she gets old enough to understand it.
I've now put a similar book by the same illustrator on my wishlist. When I find it in real life, I'm buying it, stat.
The other book is "Cinder-Eyed Cats". Words cannot describe this book. Let me just say it tops "In the Night Kitchen" for depiction of a bizarre dream. (Which reminds me, I saw a Sendak book "Bears" which featured the boy from Wild Things.) But as dreams go, this is a dream I'd like to live in. It's... it defies description.
All in all, a good day.
