I got three picture books that came already encased in plastic, so here they are in today’s roundup: Lady in the Water: A bedtime story by M. Night Shyamalan (illustrated by Crash McCreery), Lucy Dove by Janice Del Negro (illustrated by Leonid Gore), and Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by Lloyd Moss (illustrated by Marjorie Priceman), books 73-75 for 2009.
Lady in the Water is based on the film of the same title. Having watched that documentary about M. Night Shyamalan on cable that turned out to be a hoax (a guerilla tactic for the pre-publicity of The Village), I still get the creeps reading this book, which, in a cautionary tone, tells the reader about the narf, the “lady in the water,” a rare type of sea nymph that could be living right in your backyard.
The narrator enumerates the signs that point to a narf: sprinklers going off by mistake, slime in the swimming pool, pinpricks in the chest, and the narf looks for a person that can be used as a vessel so that she can return to the ocean.
But there is something else that could be in your backyard, the hyena-like scrunt that hunts for the narf as prey. The scrunt is also afraid of Tartutic, three monkey-like creatures that lie in wait for the scrunt to make a wrong move.
While I don’t particularly care for the story, or Shyamalan’s writing style, I like the muted, almost monochromatic illustrations of Crash McCreery, because they amplify the eerie quality of the words.
Second on the list is a book based on an old Celtic tale. Lucy Dove is a seamstress recently sacked from the laird’s premises, because she was growing old and her sewing was slowing down. Wanting to retire comfortably, Lucy Dove takes on the laird’s challenge: to sew a pair of trousers by the light of the moon in the haunted St. Andrew’s graveyard. The laird needs the trousers for good luck (according to his soothsayer), and would give a bag of gold to anyone who could present him with the trousers.
As Lucy Dove sews the trousers in the graveyard, a monster rears its head from the ground and attempts to give her the same fate as the many men who did not live to tell the tale of what lurks in the graveyard, but Lucy Dove’s feistiness is the monster’s undoing.
On the dust jacket, it says that the author, Janice Del Negro, is a children’s librarian who likes stories with active heroines that offset the passive female protagonists of many popular fairy tales. I like this about the book, because it doesn’t showcase a girl pining for a prince charming, waiting to be saved.
Leonid Gore’s hazy, textured illustrations have a dream-like, otherworldly feel to them that is also very interesting, and it leaves a lot for the imagination to work with.
Finally, the last book in the roundup is the 1996 Caldecott honor book Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin, a one of a kind counting book about the orchestra, identifying various musical instruments in rhythmic verses. The book goes from a solo to a duo, a trio, a quartet, a quintet, a sextet, a septet, an octet, and a nonet, until the musicians form a chamber group of ten.
I like this picture book because even though I cannot read a note to save my life, I love classical music. I love how the verses in the book sound so musical as you read them:
With mournful moan and silken tone,
Itself alone comes ONE TROMBONE.
Gliding, sliding, high notes go low;
ONE TROMBONE is playing solo.
Gleeful, bleating, sobbing, pleading,
Through its throbbing double-reeding;
OBOE, please don’t hesitate:
Come, make it an OCTET – that’s EIGHT.
Marjorie Priceman’s elegant fluid illustrations are perfect for the poetry, and I like the touch of whimsy added by the four animals – a mouse, two cats (a gray shorthair and an orange tabby) and a yellow spotted dog – chasing one another on the stage.
That’s it for now, and until the next roundup!
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My copies: Lady in the Water, from FFP bookswap (from seez Ajie), hardcover with dust jacket; Lucy Dove and Zin! Zin! Zin!, both library discards mooched from the US, both hardcover with dust jacket.
My rating: Lady in the Water, 2/5 stars; Lucy Dove 3/5 stars, Zin! Zin! Zin! 5/5 stars
Those were some pretty picture books :)
Yup, I think I need a new set of shelves for picture books alone, my collection is growing!