Children’s Books : PICTURE AND STORY BOOKS : Talking With Pictures

The creation of a picture book is like a magic act: it is all mis-direction and flourishes disguising many months of hard work. Surprisingly often the author and the illustrator--if they are not one and the same--never meet. For example, I met John Schoenherr, who did the wonderful pictures for our Caldecott-winning “Owl Moon,” some four months after the book had won its award. In fact I have yet to greet in person at least a dozen illustrators who have worked on my books.

So it is always amazing when text and pictures are so firmly wedded that one cannot be conceived without the other. The best picture books are seamless in this way; the mediocre ones are those in which either story or art overshadows the other.

In Rainbow Crow, illustrated by Beatriz Vidal (Knopf: $12.95), a retelling of an Indian tale in which the Rainbow Crow is the fire-bringer, the voice of storyteller Nancy Van Laan rings clearly. Van Laan’s telling, based on oral accounts from Indians, has the powerful rhythms of the native storyteller. As the rainbow-colored bird brings down fire from the Great Sky Spirit, burning his feathers to coals, Vidal’s stylized watercolor paintings detail the transformation. A strong and evocative book.

Nora’s Stars, written and illustrated by Satomi Ichikawa (Philomel: $13.95) is pastel compared to Vidal’s vibrant “Rainbow Crow,” but just right for a bedtime story about a little girl visiting her grandmother overnight who has a small adventure with talking dolls and a bedcover-cape that is decorated with stars from the sky. Ichikawa’s paintings have a comfortable, old-fashioned feel to them, with homey details like a lamp made out of a wine bottle and a steamer trunk stuffed with toys. There is a quiet hush in this book, in both the simple text and the nighttime pictures. Even when the young heroine Nora is adventuring outside with her toys or dancing about her bedroom with the stars, it is a pantomime: dreamlike and hazy. This is a charming, cozy book.

Paul Goble’s work is always concerned with Native Americana. Beyond the Ridge (Bradbury Press: $13.95) is no exception, though in this book he is exploring the Plains Indian’s idea of death, where the Spirit World or afterlife can be perceived “beyond the ridge.” As an old woman lies dying, we watch her make the long and frightening trip to the spirit world and then see her family prepare her dead body in the customary manner. Goble’s distinctly stylized pen-and-ink and watercolor drawings, seen in all his picture books have never been so effective, creating a feeling of transcendence. Realistic drawings of the dying woman would make the reader uncomfortable, but these lift the straight-forward text.

In Heron Street (Harper & Row: $12.95), Ann Turner, known for her historical fiction and picture books, turns her hand to a tone poem about a marsh that

becomes--over the years--the great city of Boston. Sprinkled with onomatopoeic phrases like “Ca-thunk” and “Rang-a-clang” and “Whip-bop-de-be-bop,” “Heron Street” is a song-poem about what we gain and lose from progress. The heron itself becomes the symbol of innocence and beauty that finally flies off “like a long, thin good-bye.” New illustrator Lisa Desimini’s gem-like pictures, as stylized and luminescent as sophisticated tribal paintings, shine out from every page. This is sure to be a prize winner.