[Monday Reading] The Lost Beauty Of Simple, Perfect Days Running Wild Captured in PictureBooks

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. 

For digital natives, the beauty of running free and wild in the outdoors, with no agenda, no camera phones to track one’s movements – just enjoying the feel of the wind in one’s face – seems like a lost and forgotten art now. These picturebooks provide that sense of comfort that perhaps there are still moments like this. It is simply a matter of making a conscious effort to have more of this in our lives.

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Perfect

Written by Danny Parker Art by Freya Blackwood
Published by Little Hare Books (2017, first published 2015)
ISBN: 1921894849 (ISBN13: 9781921894848). Borrowed from the Jurong West Public Library. Book photos taken by me.

While I am not usually a fan of rhyming text, there is something comforting and lilting in the way that Danny Parker has created this simple tale – and matched with Blackwood’s pastel-coloured art – it made me starry-eyed.

This book is a testament to the simple fact that a child needs only an apron or some glue or fresh air for a child to breathe in perfection.

There is no proselytizing here – no comparison to gadget-filled days – just the simplicity of siblings telling secrets, flying a kite, and looking out the window, as rain pours outside.

Admittedly, the image above is my absolute favourite, with the youngest sucking his or her thumb, evidently exhausted from the day’s hijinks. Perfect, indeed.

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Run Wild

Written and Illustrated by David Covell
Published by Viking Books for Young Readers (2018)
ISBN: 0670014117 (ISBN13: 9780670014118). Borrowed from the Jurong West Public Library. Book photos taken by me.

Similar to Perfect, this one is also told in rhyming text – although, not as starkly evident. Unlike the softness and comforting rhythm of Perfect, this book as the title indicates, runs amok, with an unapologetic earthiness in both text and visual narrative that the pages almost smell like freshly-mown grass.

Covell has managed to capture the sun in all its glory, the forest in all its mustiness, the lake in all its blue saltiness – in this book that I find to be a gift to the wild spirit possibly lying dormant within any child.

There is a boldness to the imagery that seems too huge – no make that too infinite – to be contained within the pages, it spills out of the book entirely.

These are good books to pair with the following titles that celebrate the beauty of the outdoors (see my review here):

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#LitWorld2018GB Update: Australia (Danny Paker and Freya Blackwood) | United States of America (David Covell)