Joelle Jolivet

There was a time in my life when I did not know that I greatly enjoyed oversize books with woodcut illustrations of animal species. That time is gone, since we are now the proud owners of both Zoo-ology and Almost Everything, both illustrated by Jolivet and originally published in France. They both are indubitably French, but the former is greatly preferable to the latter since Zoo-ology's Frenchness comes out mainly in the way that the animal illustrations are classed in odd categories ("Hot," "With Horns," "Black and White"). Almost Everything has both a frankness about the naked human body uncommon to U.S. picture books, which is okay, and a strange fascination with the exoticism of ethnic costume, which kind of is not. Not to mention that the book certainly does not cover almost everything; where are books? computers? washing machines? disposable diapers? Trader Joe's frozen meatballs? the other fundamental pieces of my daily existence?

Now we have borrowed from the library 365 Penguins, illustrated by Jolivet with a slightly less folkloric and more mid-century modern style than the encyclopedia books. The text, by Jean-Luc Fromenthal, is...odd; it's half math lesson (how many penguins can fit in 12 drawers that hold 12 penguins each?) and half environmental harangue. Unfortunately, (or fortunately), the oddest part of the book, in which the eccentric uncle shows up to explain that he has sent this hapless family the titular penguins for the purpose of illegally smuggling them from the North Pole to the South Pole, is totally uninteresting to Older Kid and Younger Kid. They greatly delight, however, in the penguin induced chaos--fish bones in the piano, etc.--which is to me the scariest part of the book.

Pie-making, Meet Intertextuality

Back in May, there was a hard freeze hereabouts way later than there should have been. Many, many peach blossoms never got to turn into peaches. Which means that now, in August, the few peaches that survived are being fought over at the farmer's market with a passion inflamed by the 100 degree heat. I of course succumbed to this passion and bought many more peaches than I should have, though many fewer than I really wanted. (Who wouldn't lust after a bushel box of Missouri peaches?) Which means that now, this week, I have some extremely ripe peaches which, despite everyone's best efforts, are not going to get eaten out of hand. Which means that I have to make many, many pies.

Which means, of course, that we are reading Each Peach Pear Plum, a Janet and Allan Ahlberg classic that centers around a large pie of mysterious origins left in the middle of an orchard for all to enjoy. This book is to me the best example of the signature Ahlbergian nursery rhyme/fairy tale mash-up universe, mainly because of its simplicity--it's especially good for the 0-2 age span. Sure, The Jolly Postman has gimmicks, namely, actual letters from, say, the Three Little Pigs's lawyer to the Wolf that you can take out of actual envelopes and read and then put back (or rip up and put in your mouth, depending on your age.) And Jeremiah in the Dark Woods, concerning a boy's hunt for the thief who stole his grandmother's tarts (the robber turns out to be that exemplar of white privilege, Goldilocks), has the virtue of being long enough to keep a four-year-old occupied during almost all of an afternoon's monsoon. (I know this for an actual fact.)

But Each Peach Pear Plum is better than these. It is partly an "I Spy" book, which is particularly enjoyable when the illustrations are good, as these are, and partly a fantasy about what would happen if all your favorite characters--Tom Thumb, Mother Hubbard, Cinderella, The Three Bears, Jack and Jill, The Wicked Witch, Baby Bunting, Bo-Peep and Robin Hood--got together and shared some plum pie. I also like that though Baby Bear is ill-advisedly allowed to carry a gun throughout the entire book, which he repeatedly fires accidentally at people and things, no one holds it against him; likewise, no one minds that the Wicked Witch joins in the picnic too even though she's spent the whole book skulking around in the bushes and scaring poor Jack and Jill.

I am in general a big fan of Allan Ahlberg's dark and surrealist humor (see The Man Who Wore All his Clothes and The Runaway Dinner) though it's often very hard to explain when 4 year olds ask follow-up questions. Each Peach Pear Plum has just the teeniest taste of this sensibility, and it is all the better for it. Especially when you follow it up with a nice big slice of last of the season peach pie.

It Begins

Hello, and welcome to The Read-Aloud Project. This blog will chronicle the connections between our family and our many thousands of children's books (plus the many thousands more at our local library). I'll try to post as frequently as I can about what books we read, what books we want to read, and what books we can't stop reading, all from the perspective of 2 boys, ages 4 and 2, and 2 working parents, ages unmentionable, who all like to read and are also all kind of bossy about their tastes. Especially the 2-year-old.

In the meantime, if you yourself would like to try reading aloud, follow this handy eHow site on "How to Read Aloud to Your Children." Don't worry, the difficulty level is "easy"!