ROSLYN RUTABAGA AND THE BIGGEST HOLE ON EARTH!
Written and illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay, Groundwood, 32 pages, $18.95, ages 2 to 5
It is difficult to tell whether Rosalyn, Marie-Louise Gay’s new heroine, is a rabbit or a rutabaga, but, animal, vegetable or mineral, she’s good enough to eat. She is as appealing in every way as Stella, the sprite who rules the roost in Gay’s Stella series. Are we in store for a spate of 21st-century Rutabaga Tales? We can only hope so, if RR and the Biggest Hole on Earth! is anything to go on.
Once again, Gay’s characters cavort captivatingly across landscapes and through rooms created from watercolours, pastels, pencil and collage, on Kraft paper and handmade Japanese paper. It’s breakfast time as this tale begins, and Roslyn has announced to her father that she intends to dig the Biggest Hole on Earth. She might dig all the way to China or, “even to the South Pole. I’d really like to meet a penguin.”
During a strenuous morning of digging, Roslyn interrupts a worm, annoys a mole and finds a triceratops’s big-toe bone. The dog dashes her hopes, saying he got it at the butcher’s and “he doesn’t sell dinosaur bones,” but father Rutabaga raises them, as all good fathers should, by producing an enticing picnic to eat beside what will be undoubtedly be the Biggest Hole on Earth.
THIS IS SILLY!
Written and illustrated by Gary Taxali, Scholastic, 32 pages, $19.99, ages 3 to 5
What is silly? Silly is when Silly Sol pops down a hole and pops into a bubble-gum-pink room filled with strange but not unfriendly creatures of various sizes and shapes. It’s a room in which, “Lilly romps and Dilly stomps, and Billy FLIPS and FLOPS. Willy-nilly, THIS IS SILLY!”
More silliness, visual and virtual unfolds: “MANIC MONKEY … drives too far, All around and off the ground,” and a “tramping troupe marches by, BUMBLING BUFFOONERY! Loony, laughy, dizzy, daffy, Tumbling tomfoolery!” Loony, laughy, daffy, this book is all these things; it’s a book that will have terrific appeal for small people at an age and stage when there’s nothing better than playing with words, the sillier the better.
IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE
Written and illustrated by Marianne Dubuc, Kids Can, 120 pages, $19.95, ages 3 to 7
Marianne Dubuc’s picture book begins with a double-page spread, on the left-hand page of which in various font sizes, the words, “On a little hill,/ behind a brown fence,/ under a big oak tree …” appear. On the opposite page, drawn in coloured pencil, is a large swath of green leading up to a small hill on top of which sits a small house under a big tree, surrounded by a fence. Turn the page and there is a close-up of “my house” and the words, “In front of my house …”
And then we’re off in a whirl of associations that unfold singly page after page. Thus, in the front of the house is a rosebush, on the rosebush is a bird, and above the bird is a window, behind the window … is someone small’s bedroom. As one thing leads to another in this tour de force of lateral thinking, disarmingly simple, childlike illustrations of monsters, dinosaurs, a book of fairy tales, wolves of varying provenance (Peter’s, Little Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs etc.), extraterrestrials, ghosts, planetary systems and an orangutan, among others, move across our consciousness until we arrive back where we started, “in front of my house.”
STANLEY’S LITTLE SISTER
By Linda Bailey, illustrated by Bill Slavin, Kids Can, 32 pages, $17.95, ages 3 to 7, ISBN: 978-1554534876
Stanley’s back. Stanley is the impetuous, big-hearted canine with all-too-human emotions, who with his mixed-breed (to put it kindly) pals, Alice, Nutsy and Gassy Jack, constitute a motley crew. In this, the latest in the series, Stanley’s people have introduced a cat to the household. To say our friend’s nose is out of joint would be to understate the situation, and his pals’ advice about how to cope can be counted on not to improve matters. Penance in the laundry room is just one of Stanley’s punishments for his bad behaviour. Funny, the adjective, doesn’t quite do justice to the rollicking good humour of this book and its predecessors. Bill Slavin’s illustrations, lush page-covering acrylics, present a dog’s eye view of the world, and of this particular dog as he navigates the emotional minefields of so-called sibling rivalry.
