[Monday Reading] Finding Life’s Meaning, Traveling the World, and Coming Home in Existential Picturebooks for Children (and the young at heart)

Myra here.

It’s Monday, What are You Reading is a meme hosted by Jen from Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki from Unleashing Readers (new host of Monday reading: Kathryn T at Book Date). Since two of our friends, Linda from Teacher Dance and Tara from A Teaching Life have been joining this meme for quite awhile now, we thought of joining this warm and inviting community.

There is simply something about big-themed, philosophical books for children that appeal to me in a visceral fashion – add anthropomorphized animals and I’m sold.

April The Red Goldfish

Written and Illustrated by: Marjolaine Leray
Published by: Phoenix Yard Books, 2014 Translated by: Sarah Ardizzone ISBN: 1907912401 (ISBN13: 9781907912405). Book borrowed from the Jurong West Public Library. Book photos taken by me. 

It is quite rare that one comes across a picturebook with a Shakespeare-spouting, semi-suicidal, angst-ridden goldfish whose very essence simply cannot be contained in a box – or in a bowl, for that matter. And yes, its self-definition is red, not gold.

April is constantly in search of meaning, in spite of (and maybe even because of) her difficult punk-like teenage years, her aquaholic parents, and the very fact that she is trapped in a bowl with only her dreams of escape:

There is a desire to know the world more and “explore new horizons” – whether or not April manages to do this, and what the role of the black cat is in her relatively short, profoundly-lived life, I shall leave for you to discover:

April’s spirit coupled with the visual puns and witticisms of Leray, not to mention the strange hand-written typography (that is almost like a suicidal scrawl) make this a delightfully bizarre picturebook that would resonate with the occasional odd reader who is looking for something refreshing and different.

The Bear and the Piano

Written and Illustrated by: David Litchfield
Published by: Frances Lincoln 2015 ISBN: 1847807178 (ISBN13: 9781847807175). Book Awards: Winner of Waterstones Children’s Book Prize:Best Illustrated Book 2016 (The Bear & The Piano); Nominated for ‘Read It Again’ Cambridgeshire Libraries Children’s Picture Book Award 2016- Announced July 16; Nominated for Independent Bookshop Week (IBW) Award  2016- Announced June 16; Nominated for Sheffield Children’s Book Award  2016- Announced November 16. Book borrowed from the Jurong West Public Library. Book photos taken by me. 

Unlike April, the red goldfish, whose existence seems destined for confinement, this Bear’s life was tamed and changed radically by a piano left in the woods.

Stories like these are not new. There is Jennifer Uman and Valerio Vidali’s Jemmy Button who traveled from the Tierra del Fuego islands to England (see Fats’ review here), then there is Emily Hughes’ Wild (see my review here). But there is something simple and poignant about this bear and his rise to considerable fame after being discovered serendipitously by a young girl who was holding quite tightly onto a Broadway programme booklet – and her backpacking, binocular-wielding father:

This Bear saw the world – and went beyond everything that he has even dared perhaps to imagine in his existence. Amidst the fame, the Grammy trophies, the recognition from people around the world, the Bear missed his home, his friends, the forest:

I am not unfamiliar with bear books – in fact I like them and I have featured quite a few here and here. But this one caught me off-guard – perhaps it was the simplicity of the text matched by the luminous artwork that sings and leaps off the page, or because it tells the story of someone uprooted to find his place in the world, with a sensitive portrayal of what homecoming would be like for this world-weary Bear. I also like how it was left open-ended whether the Bear came home permanently – I prefer to think that he found his home in himself, and that the actual physical place is irrelevant to this most important journey of all.