Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
Hoppy Legs and Twitchy Noses

Two things:

1. There is something absolutely wonderful about E.R. Bird’s review of Emily Gravett’s picture book “Wolves.” Take, for instance, Bird’s description of the book’s alternative ending – provided kindly by Gavett, since the original ending, she notes in the book, might be a bit gruesome for “sensitive readers” (caution: spoilers afoot!):

But rather than draw an additional scene for the last part of the book, Gravett does something pretty clever. We see the rabbit and the wolf chowing down on a hitherto unmentioned jam sandwich together. The thing is, Gravett has taken a great deal of care to show a spread that squeamish parents will buy as a legitimate ending, and intelligent children will not.

I suppose to put it into context, though, you have to read the book. Which leads me to…

2. There’s something even more wonderful about Emily Gravett’s picture book “Wolves” itself.

Sporting a terrifically clever and funny story, “Wolves” is also matched with simply pitch-perfect mixed-media illustrations: ones that reveal a story-within-a-story, as an intellectually curious rabbit borrows a book from the “burrowing” library that is all about wolves. As the rabbit reads all about wolves, though (sharing rather matter-of-factly his newfound information with the reader), the illustrations show something vastly different: the wolf in question that the rabbit reads about, we see, has seemingly stepped out of his paged confines and is now following the rabbit – prepared to lunge at any moment. Toward the book’s end, things go delightfully wrong for the poor fluffy old rabbit, and the reader is left with an empty spread – filled only with the rabbit’s borrowed book (now tattered and shredded) but with no sign of the rabbit himself. It’s a positively morbid way to end a story, and hence Gravitt provides the aforementioned “alternative ending” – but one, as clever young readers will quickly see, is a bit less than legitimate in its earnestness.

“Wolves” is the kind of subversive book that well-meaning adults love to hate, because of it’s “morbidness” and out of some seeming moral indignation that “kids deserve happy endings” – and the flip of that, it’s a book that clever children love to love, because of its brilliant cleverness and how it recognises their sense of humour and intelligence.

Nov 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #