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A Few Blocks

by Cybèle Young

Anyone who has provided “landing helicopter” sounds for a hovering spoonful of food knows that, when it comes to a child’s stubborn refusal to eat, walk, quiet down, or whatever, transforming the request into an imaginative game (and thus disguising it) is often the best strategy.

In Toronto visual artist Cybèle Young’s second picture book (following the enjoyably clever Ten Birds, published earlier this year by Kids Can Press), Viola is trying to get her little brother Ferdie to school. Mop-headed and strong-willed Ferdie, however, has “eleven cars to wash, the highest tower ever to build and a snake drawing that wasn’t done yet.” So he isn’t going anywhere. Viola reminds her brother that his coat is, in fact, a cape, and his boots, rocket blasters. And they shoot off into the sky to battle evil.

Pretty soon, this game wears thin, and Viola must come up with a new one. So off they go again, searching for pirate treasure and saving princesses from dragons, until Viola gets fed up and refuses to take another step, forcing Ferdie to come up with a scenario that gets them both to school.

Young’s story is dead-simple – perhaps the most extravagant thing about it is the names of the children. The real point of the book is the visuals: when they are stuck, the children inhabit a mostly empty, grey-and-white landscape with just the odd tree or patch of sidewalk to mark it. When the fantasies get going, however, they climb or fly through a paper cut-out world filled with overlapping images and impossible angles. (The paper cut-outs are real – made by Young, drawn on with ink and tinted with pale watercolours, then photographed and peopled with her delicately featured children.)

The images, which are vaguely reminiscent of the work of Vancouver artist and illustrator Julie Morstad, are a treat, but the text doesn’t always keep up its end of the bargain. Repetition is a tricky thing to get right in a picture book; there must be some sense of tension or build, however subtle. Young’s stop-start tale sometimes feels as reluctant to keep moving as its protagonists, the pauses between imaginary adventures often two or three panels too long. Luckily, concerns about pacing go out the window when we return to the world of horses and castles and repurposed city scenes.

 

Reviewer: Nathan Whitlock

Publisher: Groundwood Books

DETAILS

Price: $18.95

Page Count: 48 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-0-88899-995-5

Released: Aug.

Issue Date: 2011-7

Categories: Picture Books

Age Range: 4-7

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