Title: John the Skeleton (Luukere Juhani juhtumised)
Author: Triinu Laan
Illustrator: Marja-Liisa Plats
Published: Yonder, 2024
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 540,855
Text Number: 1999
Read Because: more spooky picture books, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A classroom skeleton retires to live with Gran and Gramps in the country. This is unlike any picture book I've read; maybe that's the author, maybe they write different in Estonia, but I appreciate it and hope to see more picture books in translation. Episodically structured, this cleaves to its premise: the small adventures of an inert anatomical skeleton, scaring off ne'er-do-wells and hanging out at a sauna; it has a candid respect for the eccentricities of private life, and trusts children to inhabit new perspectives and experiences, like aging and death. The black and white sketches with blinding red accents aren't aesthetically pleasing, but the human forms are diverse and realistic, drooping and bulbous and beautifully normal.
All of that makes for a grounded, dense picture book with little momentum; this is one I put in the "more interesting than enjoyable" category, but one of the joys of picture books is that they're a prime medium for experimentation. Constrained by their format, alleviated by illustration, they can get as weird as they want to without overstaying their welcome.
Title: Bog Myrtle
Author: Sid Sharp
Published: Annick Press, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 541,000
Text Number: 2000
Read Because: more! but this one is a graphic novel, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: In an effort to make a nice gift for her miserable sister, our protagonist accidentally offends and then befriends the local swamp witch. I liked that half of the book, which has an offbeat, blasé humor, generous illustrations and dynamic text, a blandly spooky forest and a cynical whimsy. But the anti-capitalist screed in the second half doesn't work for me. Exploitation at the scale isn't inter-familial, isn't a power differential determined by a few years and a bad attitude, so the message feels incoherent, and I'm not sure how well jokes about unions land for the target audience. I'd love to read more by the author, because when this is good I adore it, but it needs refinement.
Title: Millie Fleur's Poison Garden
Author: Christy Mandin
Published: Orchard Books, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 541,040
Text Number: 2001
Read Because: more!, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A girl's strange garden is unwelcome in her neat and uniform town. Fascinating that two nearly identical picture books came out in the same year (the other being
Ferry's Prunella); the premise could be a coincidence, but the remarkable similarity of the plot feels telling: strangeness is first isolating and then a site of social bonding, although in this case the protagonist initiates, creating rather than finding like-minded fellows. Neither approach is superior, although I prefer the more realistic plants in
Prunella. It's an optimistic, pointed, reassuring message about being different—so much so that it grows trite. Picture books are allowed that kind of wholesomeness, but I find it almost alienating: this isn't why I read about weird little girls, or the kinds of reassurances I wanted or trusted when I was one.
(Identical right down to the diverse group of kids visiting the garden including a wheelchair-user who struggles not at all with the unfeatured grass? paving? you don't know, don't worry about it, there is a by-the-book-ness of modern picture books which is embarrassing when quite this obvious. While I'm being petty, the title and obviously premise of this one is inspired by the Alnwick poison garden, so the cartoony, anthropomorphized, distinctly not poisonous plants are such a let-down.)