After skimming through each book (looking to see how the text infused with the art and the overall story) the only book that “clicked” for me was The Last Tree by Ingid Chabbert and Guridi. So I returned the two others and went to my local library to select two more titles: It Starts with a Seed by Laura Knowles (author) and Jennie Webber (illustrator) and A Mango in the Hand by Antonio Sacre and Sebastia Serra.
The Last Tree
The Last Tree is an English translation of the original French title Le dernier arbre which tells the story of a young boy and his friend who find what they believe to be “the last tree”.
The story is a beautiful and doleful tale set in a city/landscape where greenery is scarce; where lush fields and trees are merely memories of a time long past. In the tale a pair of boys while out one day discover a sapling—what they believe to be the last tree—and begin to imagine what the tree might look like when it’s a fully-grown tree. The next day the boys become aware that the area in which they found the sapling is due to be demolished, and set about trying to rescue the sapling. At the end of the tale the boys ride far out of the city to plant the tree in an area where it can grow safely and freely. Years later the boys return to find that their sapling has grown into a mighty tree—just as they have.
According to the book notes the artwork was rendered in charcoal, gravure ink, gouche, pencil and digitally. As such, the illustrations in this book are very grey—with little to no color aside from the blue, red, yellow, brown, and green that make up the boys, their bikes, and the sapling/tree. Each page of the book is a double-page spread with full bleed—beautifully creating the doleful tone of the book. The front end pages mimic the grey doleful tone we encounter at the beginning of the story, and the back end pages mimic the more optimistic tone we are left with at the end of the tale by depicting the lush green crown of a tree.
It Starts with a Seed
With its embossed gold title and nature themed illustrations It Starts with a Seed by Laura Knowles is a simple picture storybook about the life cycle of a sycamore tree which reads very much like a Dr. Seuss book. According to the illustrator’s web page, “each illustration in the book is a hand-painted etching print, photographed and painstakingly colour matched”. The color palette used throughout the book has a very “earthy” type feel—with the illustrator utilizing soft and muted browns, greens, oranges, and reds.
Each illustration is bordered and is single paged—until we get to the last two pages which folds out into a four page illustration on one side, and a double-page illustration on the other. The front and back end pages utilize the same theme—a brown backsplash and sketched sycamore seeds floating in the wind.
A Mango in the Hand: A Story Told Through Proverbs
A Mango in the Hand: A Story Told Through Proverbs by Antonio Sacre is a bilingual book with text in Spanish and English about a boy named Francisco who seeks to bring home ripe mangos to his family but ends up giving them out to his various friends and estranged family members along the way.
According to the book notes the illustrations were created using pencil and ink on parchment paper and then digitally colored. Each illustration of the book is double-paged and a full bleed; the color palette is very vibrant and typical of this type of ethnic literature. The end pages for the front and back are styled in the same manner with each featuring a white flower pattern on a greenish-blue pastel background.
All three are wonderful examples of picture storybooks in that each infuses the text with the illustrations to create a whole complete world/story.
Books Mentioned in This Post:
The Last Tree by Ingrid Chabbert and Guridi
Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts
Separate Is Never Equal by Duncan Tonatiuh
It Starts with a Seed by Laura Knowles and Jennie Webber
A Mango in the Hand by Antonio Sacre and Sebastia Serra
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