pictures by erin e. stead.
roaring brook press 2013
a very old school picture book
poetic in word and image
now this is what i’m talking about.
the title is the premise
a set of instructions for what you need to do
in order to see a whale
it starts with a window
and quickly moves to a landscape
of the mind
the text and instructions
more of a tone poem
told legato
you must look closely
and rule out those things that aren’t a whale
avoid the distractions
stay alert to the possibilities
and then
when you have done all that
as if by magic
you will see a whale
the text
all lower-case and sans punctuation
reinforces the poetic quality
he illustrations of
a boy
and his dog
and the world of his imagination
are often set against sparse
monochromatic backgrounds
that allow for the focus
on unspoken elements in the text
and there are whales throughout
if you look for them
which is what the picture book
is all about~
seeing and making connections
with what is and isn’t there
i hate to use the word
perfect
but even the size of the book
a manageable seven-by-nine inches
not only fits the hands of smaller explorers
but echoes the picture books of old
like the original sendak-krauss collaborations
it reminds us
that small readers
don’t require larger pages
to get lost in
and
that bigger
doesn’t always mean
better
even if it’s a book about
spotting a whale
