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Jillian Jiggs and the Great Big Snow

by Phoebe Gilman

Whenever I read a book to my children and they enjoy it more than I do, I send them straight to bed and assume they’re just tired and exhibiting poor aesthetic judgment. But when, despite my curmudgeonliness, they ask for that same book repeatedly, I sit up and take notice. What am I missing here?

It was my children’s consistent enthusiasm for the late Phoebe Gilman’s books that prompted me to reconsider my own initially tepid opinion of them. I thought the storylines were fun but never wildly original; her writing was always competent but rarely pyrotechnic; and though she occasionally adopted a more textured painterly style for books like The Gypsy Princess, the majority of her work was essentially cartoon, which I found rather flat. The elaborate borders she sometimes drew around her pictures lent them a stolid quality, while at the same time recalling old-fashioned fairy tale illustration.

Gilman’s books are very conservative, and I think this conservatism has a great deal to do with their success: they offer us the comfort of the familiar, whether it’s the medieval fairy tale world (albeit visually sanitized) of The Balloon Tree, the folktale landscapes of Something from Nothing, or the idealized domestic chaos of the Jillian Jiggs stories. Many picture books now have become showcases for hip, stylized art that has little or no resonance with children; others have become platforms for excessively long texts suited only for much older readers. But Gilman always knew her audience.

Both her stories and her artwork show an awareness of what intrigues and delights children: balloons, pirates, dress-up games, bright cartoon colours, and plenty to look at. Gilman was extremely generous with visual details, whether the contents of a pirate’s sack or the insides of a girl’s catastrophically messy bedroom. Children are likely to linger on each page long after the words have been read aloud. Her books are not simply visually diverting; they’re also joyful and exuberant. She was unusually successful at conveying a sense of happiness through her books, with heroes who are always cheerful and undaunted.

Gilman was expert at creating nostalgic, harmonious worlds, so it’s worth taking a quick look at Little Blue Ben, an intriguingly iconoclastic book – and a personal favourite of mine. Admittedly, it was inspired by a Mother Goose rhyme, but Gilman has morphed it into a portrait of what must surely be one of the most bizarre and dysfunctional families in children’s literature. A mother hen lays eggs “by the dozens and more” and then manically feeds them to her offspring, one a blue cat, and the other a grotesque bearded homunculus known as Blue Ben. Nobody but me seems at all disturbed by this Cronenbergian tale of transgenic children and nascent cannibalism. Both my children adore it. They like the hide-and-go-seek game that ensues, and how they get to find Blue Ben on every page.

Gilman was at her best with fewer words. Her prose sometimes lacked the clarity of her pictures. Pirate Pearl was a bit of a muddle, and the overwrought The Gypsy Princess stalled at midpoint. She was more successful with poetry, which moved her stories energetically along, and focused attention on the illustration.

Of all her books, I think the Jillian Jiggs series is her greatest achievement. Though the rhythm of her rhyming couplets gives the occasional hiccup, her poetry matches the exuberance of her pictures. It is impossible not to like the operatic élan of Gilman’s cast of characters. With their arms thrown wide, mouths belting out infectious refrains, they embody the highly dramatic quality of children at play. There is a wonderful camaraderie amongst Jillian and her friends, and a warm and genuinely touching relationship between Jillian and her little sister Rebecca. Gilman has also filled her illustrations with subtle and well-observed character details. In Jillian Jiggs, when Jillian and her friends are dressing up in various costumes, little Rebecca is always a page behind, wearing the cast-offs from the older kids; and Peter indignantly sits out the dressup games he considers too girly.

Gilman’s last completed book was the fifth in the series. Like the others, Jillian Jiggs and the Great Big Snow has a slight plot, but plenty of rambunctious action and visual interest. Here, Jillian goes out into the snow with her friends and builds an alien landscape, losing her mittens, scarf, and hat in the process; fruitless search ensues. Once again Gilman dramatizes something familiar and beloved: kids playing in the snow, and using their imaginations to create new worlds. My children enjoyed looking at all the different snow sculptures Jillian and her friends built. They also liked turning back the pages to find the exact moment that Jillian loses a particular item of clothing.

Throughout, Gilman’s poetry dances along, sometimes with the headlong gallopof Dr. Seuss on a roll: “One kind of creature had eyes on his snout,/And all that you saw was that snout sticking out/Of the door to his house, which was really a cave./ No one explored there unless they were brave.”

At the end of Jillian Jiggs and the Great Big Snow, my six-year-old daughter pointed out the objects Gilman had hidden in the final illustration: Jillian’s lost scarf, mittens, and hat were all there. I’d completely missed them.

 

Reviewer: Kenneth Oppel

Publisher: North Winds Press/Scholastic Canada

DETAILS

Price: $15.99

Page Count: 40 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 0-439-989381-0

Issue Date: 2003-1

Categories: Picture Books