Mrs Noah's Garden by Jackie Morris illustrated by James Mayhew Reviewed by Adèle Geras

There has been much talk of gardens in the last couple of months. Lockdown has made everyone  aware of their importance. Those who are fortunate enough to have one thank their lucky stars and wonder how those with no garden are managing. To be without one seems a terrible deprivation. Delightfully,  just at the right time, this book appears and what it does is give everyone who reads it a small space where they get to enjoy the pleasures of growing things in a format that they can carry around in their hands and return to again and again. 

This book sees the return of the Morris/Mayhew team which brought us the wonderful Mrs Noah's Pockets.  The worry with sequels to beloved books is that they're not going to be as good as the first book. There are no such worries here, of course. Mrs  Noah's Garden is joyous and colourful and inspired  and we can enjoy the two books equally.

This story is an account  of how Noah and Mrs Noah and their children find an initially unpromising  spot to in which to settle. But undeterred, they clear the space, build and put together a dwelling place, and above all, plant a garden. Mrs Noah of course is the one who goes out at night when all are sleeping and plants it. And it grows and provides bounty and beauty and becomes a  perfectly glorious garden, 

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TWO PICTURE BOOKS reviewed by Adèle Geras

My usual  disclaimers: I have met Jackie Morris, Dianne Hofmeyer and Jane Ray and will be meeting James Mayhew in November. Again, you must believe me when I say I wouldn't review any book I didn't love. My life is too short for adverse criticism. If I don't like a book, I don't read it.

But as soon as I heard about Mrs Noah's Pockets, I was curious and asked for a copy to review. My interest sprang from the fact that this was a book by two people, each of whom is both a writer and an artist. Anyone who knows James Mayhew's work will see at once that this book is a new departure, using collage and great washes of colour. I was struck at once by the vigour and exuberance  of this art work. Morris's words are very spare and poetic without being  cutesy or over lyrical. The text begins : "IT RAINED."  Everything follows from that. The opening spread is so spectacular that I am not showing it. It makes you catch your breath. A washed- out landscape of hills and one tree is being thoroughly soaked. There's a figure in red standing at the top of a hill. That's Mrs Noah.  Mr Noah also sees the water rising and begins building an Ark. This is Bible Story Retelling territory, but appearances can be deceptive...

As her husband deals with the Ark, Mrs Noah has her own  agenda. She goes walking "in Mythico Woods, on errands of her own."

Mr Noah thinks she's making curtains for the Ark when she's busy at her sewing machine, but she says nothing, and when all the animals are safely gathered in, we learn that she has made herself a coat with very, very deep pockets.

By this time, readers are desperate to know WHAT is Mrs Noah up to? What is in those deep pockets?  At night, Mrs Noah tells stories of mythical creatures, such as unicorns, dragons, phoenixes and many others. When they come to land at last and the real animals are released, Mrs. Noah sets free the contents of her magical pockets: all the mythical creatures whose tales she's been telling the children during the Ark's long voyage. The illustrations in this  book are absolutely beautiful and appropriate for the story, which is a masterpiece of economy and imagination. It's also just the right length for anyone looking for a perfect bedtime story. Because it's a book full of marvels, I think MARVELLOUS is the right word to describe it. 

Pub in hardback by Otter-Barry Books at £12.99

THE GLASSMAKER'S DAUGHTER is another delightful story from the team that brought you the glorious ZERAFFA GIRAFFE. This time the setting is Venice. This is a city Jane Ray has often depicted before and it seems to be exactly in tune with her gift for decoration and ornamentation and sumptuous colour. 

The story concerns Daniela, who, in the tradition of many a storybook princess, is miserable, bored and sulky. Her glassmaker father creates a glass palace and promises it  to anyone who can make her smile.  Various people try various methods but nothing works until a young man called Angelo comes up with a brilliant idea...
In this book too, there's a dramatic spread which is a dazzling surprise and of course, by the end Daniela is laughing so happily that the entire city laughs with her.  It's a very satisfying conclusion and looking at the details on every spread will keep young readers satisfied for a long time. Many congratulations to this very engaging partnership!

Published in hardback by Frances Lincoln. £12.99



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Second time around, but worth it! ...by Adèle Geras

This review was posted a while ago on another website to which I contribute, together with Linda Newbery and Celia Rees. It's Writers Review and you can follow it on Twitter @writersreview1 

I felt that this book was so unusual that it deserved to be brought to everyone's attention more than once. It's a picture book for adults, and as such quite a rare beast. I am also putting up this review again because I reckon it's the perfect Christmas present for a FAMILY: the kind of family where generations come together to enjoy sharing a beautiful thing. I also think any classroom would benefit from having a copy on its shelves. There's so much to look at, pore over, enjoy again and again.

It might LOOK expensive at £25.00 but just consider  the other things you might buy at such a sum....and the answer is: not very much at all and nothing I can think of which will give such pleasure nor last as long.  Keats said it best: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. 

Here's the review! And hope it's not too early to wish everyone a very  Merry Christmas and lots of good things in 2017.

Adèle 

I came home one day from a trip to London to find a huge parcel waiting for me. It was this book: THE QUIET MUSIC OF GENTLY FALLING SNOW, written and illustrated by Jackie Morris,  the very well known artist and writer of many wondrous books for children. The volume  measures 37cms by 28cms. It's a   a picture book for adults and I believe it would be good if there were more of these published, because we don't stop appreciating beauty when we leave our childhood behind.  It's published by  Welsh publisher,  Graffeg, and they've done Morris proud. It costs £25 which seems to me to be excellent value. 

The book has an  usual genesis. Since the year 2000, a charity called HELP FOR MUSICIANS UK has commissioned Jackie Morris to create a Christmas card for them. All of the cards are reproduced at the back of the book. This book knits and crafts those cards together into a single volume made up of many stories, weaving their threads (a favourite word of Morris's) into a beautiful tale (or tales)  of loss and love and music. Because of the origin of the cards, the stories are about music; its creation, its destruction; its fragilities and strengths. Morris's love of music comes over in every story and there's a sort of counterpoint that runs through them.  

Morris has added pictures as well as stories. The creatures who inhabit these tales are ones we know she loves from her other books: bears, swans, hares and birds. The ingredients of fairy tales (towers, snow, forests, ships, trees) fill the narrative, skilfully woven into something singular and strange. Reading the book is very much like listening to different songs, different tunes drifting into your consciousness.They're described as lullabies for grown ups and that's very accurate. The narratives are loose and flowing. The characters appear and reappear and disappear and the animals change and become creatures different from the ones we first thought we'd met. The rhythm of the prose sets out to lull the reader and succeeds in doing exactly this. 

The instruments, depicted many times in the wonderful paintings on every page, are fiddles, flutes, lutes and drums. Anyone interested in identifying them can spend many happy hours looking at each double page spread and seeing what can be found in each one. 

The pear tree in the  'partridge in a pear tree' illustration is also the Singing Ringing Tree which goes on to create forests which it takes seven weeks to walk through. That seven is of course another link with the world of the fairy tales.

This book would make a most beautiful Christmas present for any adult who enjoys fairytales, music, and above all, rich and gloriously coloured illustrations which depict people, creatures and places which are buried in our imagination and which, thanks to Morris, we can pretend are real.  She has moved the fantastical from the realm of our dreams and into the light of our real world.

VISIT:  helpmusicians.org.uk 

Hardback published by GRAFFEG

£25

ISBN: 9781910862650

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THE WILD SWANS by Jackie Morris Reviewed by Adèle Geras

"It was a book so beautiful that she felt at any moment the painted characters would leap out of the pages and come to life."

So says Eliza, the brave and resourceful heroine of Jackie Morris's THE WILD SWANS. That sentence sums up my feelings about this retelling of one of my favourite fairytales. 

Anyone who reads my reviews regularly will know that I always say, right up front, that I know this or that writer; that I can't help it if some of my best friends write super books and so on. With Jackie, I can truthfully say that I've only met her once briefly in person. But she's a Twitter chum and anyone who takes part in that online cocktail party will know that such relationships can be a great deal of fun. I have followed Jackie and because I've been an admirer of her work for years,  I did actually ASK to review this book.

I had another reason for doing this. It's this: I myself wrote a version of this fairytale for David Fickling's collection of stories, which sold for £1 each back in 1998. My story was called THE SIX SWAN BROTHERS and it was beautifully illustrated in black and white by Ian Beck. 

There are twelve swans in Morris's version. The whole book is so beautifully produced and presented that it's worth pausing to pay tribute to those who made the decision to publish it in this format. It's a square-ish hardback, with full colour illustrations and turning every page is a pleasure.

Morris has written the text as well as providing the haunting illustrations. I am always deeply envious of anyone who can do that. It seems to be the most perfect way of creating a book and here the writer has managed to produce such a rich story,  so full of pleasurable language that actually, it would be possible to read it with no pictures whatsoever and still have the images in your head. Take, for example the painting below. It shows Eliza after she's been enchanted by the White Queen.

 The text reads thus: "...the queen now pulled and backcombed and filled her hair with things.  Eliza saw jewelled combs where there were only tangled twigs and thorns and ragged nests of birds."

And yes, the picture adds to the words but they are poetic and vivid in themselves, even without the help of an illustration.

The story is well known to many  in one version or another. What Morris adds to it is nature and detail. The story is told at much greater length, with many more layers of story for  readers to enjoy. It's told well, with good pacing and gorgeous choice of language. I've also tried reading the text aloud and that works very well, so I hope there will be an audio version. Morris is one of the best illustrators of  creatures: bears, cats, birds and hares. She shows us the world as a beautiful place but also one where cruelty is constantly present, always there waiting to catch us unawares.

In this book, the two creatures who matter are a dog and a hare. Shadow is Eliza's companion and friend. She is a big, grey, skinny animal, but also very gentle and loving.  The White Hare,  (the animal embodiment of the Queen who turned Eliza's brothers into swans) is both sinister and lovely. And the swans themselves are magnificent: white and powerful and crowned with gold.   

 This book will doubtless appear in paperback in the fullness of time but  the very competitively-priced  hardback  would make the most wonderful Christmas present for anyone who loves fairytales, and nature and the joys of holding in their hands something that will go on giving pleasure for years and years. John Keats said it and he's quite right: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

THE WILD SWANS is published by Frances Lincoln

Hbk: £10.99

ISBN: 9781847805362

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TWO BEAUTIFUL BOOKS BY JACKIE MORRIS. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

 I am going to review two books written and illustrated by an artist (and writer) who's very well-known but who somehow, in spite of her talents and productivity, seems to me to be not as much appreciated as she ought to be.

Jackie Morris is on Twitter, where she frequently posts lovely 'work in progress' which delights her many followers and I do urge any of my readers who tweets to follow her. She lives in Wales with many animals and it's perhaps as an artist who both loves and properly sees animals that she's at her best. The first book I'm going to talk about is called I AM CAT and it's not much bigger than an iPhone. While watching her ginger cat, Pixie, sleeping ("curled in warm places, ammonite-tight") Morris was inspired to think of what her pet might be dreaming about. The answer is: other cats. Every kind of feline appears in the unscrolling dreams: cheetah, puma, snow leopard and many others.

Morris paints each creature in delicate colours that sing to us from the page. Even though the scale of the book is small, she manages to convey the grandeur and beauty of every single cat she describes. And she accompanies each spread with her own words which are both simple and poetic. Here is an example, describing the tiger: "s...bright, flame cat of the forest, striped like the shadows, sun-scorched." I can't think of a better way to spend a fiver.  Frances Lincoln have published it most beautifully. This is a gem of a book.

The second book is SONG OF THE GOLDEN HARE, also published by the admirable Frances Lincoln. It's a much grander production, and it tells a mysterious, entrancing story of a boy and his sister. They come from a family who protect the Golden Hare, because there  are others who would hunt and kill it. The story unfolds with all the mystery and suspense you could wish for. The children find the Golden Hare and in the end, the creature is safe for who knows how long on a special magical island, to which it has been carried by an army of obliging seals. It's a lovely tale and again, told in Morris's poetic style, but the art is the real glory of this book. The Golden Hare itself is a wonderful creation, but greyhounds and people and birds and butterflies, not to mention the detailed landscapes, fill every corner of every spread. The colours are glorious and you can spend hours just admiring them and marvelling at the skill of the artist and wishing you could frame certain images and put them up on a wall.  As it is, you'll have to be content with turning the pages, preferably with someone young on your lap, listening as you read aloud the story of the mysterious Golden Hare and the lucky children who are called to care for it.

I AM CAT
Written and illustrated by Jackie Morris
pub Frances Lincoln hbk £4.99
ISBN: 9781847805072

SONG OF THE GOLDEN HARE
Written and illustrated by Jackie Morris
pub. Frances Lincoln hbk £12.99
ISBN: 9781847804501



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LITTLE EVIE IN THE WILD WOOD, by Jackie Morris and Catherine Hyde. Reviewed by Saviour Pirotta

• Author: Jackie Morris
• Illustrator: Catherine Hyde
• Hardcover: 40 pages
• Publisher: Frances Lincoln Children's Books (1 Aug 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847803717
• ISBN-13: 978-1847803719

A new Jackie Morris picture book is always something to look forward to.  Her texts, often lyrical and always evocative, have a haunting quality that stays with you for a long time. Her exquisite, detailed, jewel-like illustrations match the text completely, usually providing an extra layer of meaning to the story.

In Little Evie In The Dark Wood, she excels herself with a simple story that takes Little Red Riding
Hood as its starting point but moves in an unexpected and beguiling direction.  Little Evie, dressed in a red coat, skips over the stile at the end of the path and enters the unchartered territory of the wild wood.  She has with her a picnic basket.  The animals in the wood all sound a warning, but who is Evie likely to run into and what will happen when she does?

The beautiful text is a perfect foil for Catherine Hyde's illustrations, broad canvasses full of earthy tones that hum with life and colour.  A perfect little treat of a book.  Read it at bedtime or take with you on a picnic and share in the great outdoors.

Saviour Pirotta

www.spirotta.com
https://www.facebook.com/spirotta

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