Picture Book Tuesday: Anthony Browne

STARTED & FINISHED:

Browne, Anthony. (1983/2002 reprint). Gorilla. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

[Well, this one seems to be the one that caused the furor over Anthony Browne's work - and I can see why in some respects. Without a doubt, his attention to detail in characters and objects is outstanding. The gorillas are unbelievably realized - just so amazing. And the chimpanzee - wow! The story itself is a sad one: a girl is shunned by her father (where is Mom? Dead? Is Dad still grieving?) so she retreats into a world where her favorite animal, a gorilla, takes her around to do the things she's always wanted to do. Thankfully, in the end the father (who, if you'll notice, has a banana in his back pocket) wises up and begins to pay attention to his daughter.]





Browne, Anthony. (2004). Into the forest. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

[This one I didn't appreciate as much as the one above. While, again, the illustrations are stunningly detailed, the story itself is a bit bizarre to me, and not in an easily understood way like, say, Chris Van Allsburg. This one is a play on Little Red Riding Hood with a small boy venturing into the forest to bring a cake to his sick Grandmother. Along the way he encounters odd folks who want the cake, including a horribly maudlin boy and his sister who have lost their parents. Ok, well, reading it again I can see that the kids he comes across in the woods are likely Jack (& the Beanstalk), Goldilocks, and Hansel and Gretel, but they're still weird and I'm not sure that the average kid would understand. And it ends strangely, with his family being unnaturally happy to see him...]






Browne, Anthony. (1998). Voices in the park. New York: DK Publishing.

[Again, the illustrations go without saying here. The story, while I find intriguing - with it being told from four different perspectives - is still lacking something for me. While I CERTAINLY don't need a nice, pat, cut-and-dry narrative, it would help here if there were some definitive "point". I can see a child reading through this, getting to the end, and saying, "Um, ok. What was up with that?" A great tool for a discussion on points of view and differing perceptions of the same situation, but it might just need that adult perspective to bring a child into the loop. In all, I'm super intrigued by Anthony Browne, but he just hasn't 100% won me over yet...]

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