Lyndon explores his strong engagement with picture books
and some inspirational works that feed his love of this art form.
I can’t escape picture books at the
moment. I find that my life goes in cycles when it comes to writing—always a
novel ticking away, but also poetry, theatre, comics and other things,
depending on what mood has taken me or what supportive community of
collaborators has stepped forward in a given moment. Recently, I have been working
with Launceston artist Graeme Whittle on a picture book about a retired
greyhound called Becoming Ellie. The process has been a strange chaos of
words and images for the past few months, but it feels like the pieces are
falling into place. Picture books are on my mind.
Of course, a
great picture book is not simply an illustrated story: it is a story in two
parts, where visual representations add detail and expand the narrative and its
mystery. I love watching children looking intently at one of Martin Handford’s Where’s
Wally? books for this very reason, as they learn the
simple but essential message that art holds secrets. In terms of how long it
takes to write a picture book, the jury is out. My own journey with Graeme has
taken a few months of back-and-forth and continues, while Mem Fox states that
even a 190 word text like Where is the Green Sheep? can
take her eighteen months to a year to get right. Meanwhile, in a move that Fox
would no doubt find savagely ambitious, this week also brought me the discovery
of Matt Zurbo’s Cielo project, in
which the Tasmanian writer is composing 365 stories for his daughter in a year
(https://cielo365stories.com/), all while working his day job on an
oyster farm at Eaglehawk Neck. The stories are all available for free online,
and I’ve got to say that some of them are infuriatingly good.
In a couple
of weeks, on Sunday August 4th, I will be heading to Hobart to launch Lian
Tanner’s delightful new picture book, Ella and the
Ocean. A copy arrived at my house last week, neatly
wrapped in bubble wrap, gorgeously illustrated by Jonathan Bentley. It reminded
me again that a picture book is an artistic object as much as anything else: when
done right, beautiful and special (and doubly so when you get to read it before
other people). This is Tanner’s first picture book after a great career of
writing, and when I told her how much I adored it she replied: “It feels like
my first book all over again.”
And it is
that feeling that I feel that picture books still capture for us. So much of
so-called “adulthood” centres around the putting away of childish things, but I
don’t see a spectacular picture book as any less worthy to sit on a coffee
table and be admired and pored over briefly in quiet moments. A Christmas present
received from a close friend who knows me too well, Shaun Tan’s Tales
of the Inner City, is the only book that has reduced me to tears in
2019, and a large part of its success in doing so was a heartbreaking companionship
of text and image. Picture books are following me everywhere at the moment, and
I’m not upset about it in the slightest. Their succinctness in offering a brief
sense of wonder and nostalgia in a scattered and busy life cannot be
understated. They are a unique kind of magic.
It’s enough
to make you want to finish writing your own.
Lyndon
Riggall
@lyndonriggall
Lyndon great insight into the power and importance of picture books for all ages. To be immersed in the depths of a picture book is an enjoyable experience for children and adults alike and should be encouraged and celebrated.
ReplyDelete