Taking flight with unique picture books
Colette’s Lost Pet
Isabelle Arsenault Tundra Books Ages 4 to 8
The Fog
Kyo Maclear Illustrated by Kenard Pak Tundra Books Ages 4 to 8
Picture book illustrations come in a wide variety of styles — everything from the broadly cartoonish to painterly oils, boldly graphic arts to delicate pencil or pen-and-ink drawings. Montreal artist Isabelle Arsenault falls into the latter category, having produced some singularly memorable children’s books that have won numerous prizes, including the Governor General’s Literary Award.
Colette’s Lost Pet, her latest publication, is bound to be another winner. Published by Tundra Books, it is both written and illustrated by Arsenault and set in the Mile End neighbourhood where she makes her home. Printed in subdued greys and sepia tones, with lemon yellow and sky blue providing occasional bits of accent colour, it adopts a multi-panel-per-page approach to depicting the story of Colette, a little girl who is told by an unseen parent that she can’t have a pet and should, instead, amuse herself by going out to explore her new neighbourhood. Angrily kicking one of the empty boxes in her backyard, she accidentally causes a bird to take flight. When she ventures out into the lane to find the bird, she encounters several other kids who ask what she’s doing. Thinking fast, Colette tells them she’s lost her pet — a parakeet — and they offer to help her look for it. As the story progresses, the parakeet acquires more detailed characteristics (“it’s blue / with a bit of yellow on its neck” and it speaks a bit “but only in French”) as well as a growing number of young searchers. By the time Colette is called home to dinner, it has become clear to all her new friends that she has totally embellished the story about the bird — but they can’t wait to hear more, and make plans to get together again the next day. Proof positive that imagination and a good story can go a long way toward making friends.
Another recent Tundra publication, The Fog, by Toronto’s Kyo Maclear and illustrated by San Francisco’s Kenard Pak, features an equally distinctive, subdued illustration style, executed in pencil and watercolour plus digital media, and also focuses on an avian character. This one, however, is not imaginary. It’s a small yellow warbler that spends its time watching the tourists who flock to his home island, covered with ice. In a reversal of the more traditional human habit of birdwatching, our little feathered friend takes note of such creatures as the “behatted bibliophilic female” and “baldheaded glitzy male” by peering through his telescope and binoculars — until the day a fog sets in over the island.
Alarmed at his inability to make out colours and humans, Warble approaches other birds to see if they, too, are worried, but they are largely apathetic and soon forget there was ever a time before the fog.
No one shares his concern, until he encounters a little girl who helps him get an answer to his question — and to revel in the beauty of the island and its surroundings when the fog finally lifts.