The two books that brought this to mind are
Not a Stick
Antoinette Portis
and
Don't Worry Bear
Greg Foley
But, as my coworker pointed out, this might be a trend we saw started by the overwhelming popularity of Mo Willem's Pigeon Books. Here we are seeing a movement towards children's books that are a little less glossy, a little less assault on the senses. They make for good storytime fodder -- combining simple illustrations with good writing. The children can focus on the reader and the words without quite so much distraction. And our circulation numbers suggest the kids enjoy taking the books home too.
This trend demonstrates to me that we as adults and we with our children can and do still enjoy simple. And perhaps that is why many of us still read. Reading books usually comes down to black, white, words, text, pages, and simple paper. Certainly my trashy romance novel has a glossy cover of a barely dressed wench and a hunky and almost always topless male--but within the pages there is just me and the characters and usually, in my mind, the characters look nothing like the cover models. (Any resemblance to movie stars or gorgeous people I know or might have a crush on is purely coincidental.)
But I did find it encouraging that amongst the glut of shiny, bright, sparkly, moving, frantic and NOW--to see simple, beautiful, and screaming pigeons making the bestsellers lists.
3 comments:
Ah the joys of the page. It's funny when the cover art looks like neither of the described characters. "Work with me people."
Okay...picture yourself on a hillside, in Scotland, and supposedly it's warm enough that you don't mind that you're not wearing anything...EMOTE EMOTE!!
You really have to wonder about some of those shoots.
I've been in Scotland in Winter and Summer -- and both times I slept wiht a sweater on! outdoors nekkid? not ruddy likely :-)
I <3 Scotland (slante vohr) the land of Single malt and Shortbread -- HEAVEN on earth
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