![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: The Growing Story
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Helen Oxenbury
Published: HarperCollins, 2007 (1947)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 328,480
Text Number: 1164
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Another Krauss story with updated art, and again I wish I could read it with the original illustrations (by Phyllis Rowand), if only to see how they compare. Oxenbury's human figures are weirdly simple against vibrant, lush backgrounds, but those backgrounds do the heavy lifting for a narrative about passing seasons and growth. I'd call this more effective than evocative—it feels teachable, in a way which fails to capture an adult imagination—but it has good payoff and rich art.
Title: And I Love You
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Steven Kellogg
Published: Scholastic Press, 2010 (1987)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 328,520
Text Number: 1165
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Another Krauss story with new art (this was originally Big and Little, illus. Mary Szilagyi), and again I wish I could read it with the original illustrations because this is such a sparse—although effective—narrative that the atmosphere and tone is effectively carried by the art, and Kellogg's work is bold: vibrant, textured, expansive, distractingly busy; clever details flow between panels and pull out bits of the narrative; the lumpy, furry protagonists and even-more-creepy monkeys are frankly dumbfounding. I'd be fascinating to see another take on it, because the art is the best and worst (those monkeys! why!) of the book, but also overwhelms it.
[Future Juu: I just found Big and Little via Open Library! review here]
Title: I Can Fly
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Mary Blair
Published: Random House, 2003 (1951)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 25
Total Page Count: 328,545
Text Number: 1166
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This is familiar to me from my childhood. Children's books about the power of imagination are a dime a dozen; this is an adequate, classic take on the subject, but doesn't rival the more strange, dangerous, evocative, fantastic takes on the trope (like Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are or Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon). What makes it successful is the playfulness, creativity, and Blair's vibrant art—particularly the clever details that mirror the protagonist to the animals and which give the book so much life.
Title: A Very Special House
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
Published: HarperCollins, 2001 (1953)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 328,575
Text Number: 1167
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Raucous and rambunctious isn't my style, as a child or an adult, so this didn't speak to me. But Sendak and Krauss pair beautifully for this type of gleeful, selfish nonsense, and it feels authentically childlike. The comparative simplicity of the quiet coda makes it much more palatable.
Title: Bears
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
Published: Michael di Capua Books, 2005 (1948)
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 25
Total Page Count: 328,600
Text Number: 1168
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: I got more emotional about this edition existing—Sendak redrawing art for Krauss's book after her death—than I did about the book itself, because Sendak's broad, messy, slightly unsettling crayon work fails to appeal and overwhelms the sparse text. As best I can tell (from images online), I prefer Rowand's original illustrations, which are less ambitious and more twee but also read as teddy bears, and allow the text room to read as playful in its own right.
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Helen Oxenbury
Published: HarperCollins, 2007 (1947)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 328,480
Text Number: 1164
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Another Krauss story with updated art, and again I wish I could read it with the original illustrations (by Phyllis Rowand), if only to see how they compare. Oxenbury's human figures are weirdly simple against vibrant, lush backgrounds, but those backgrounds do the heavy lifting for a narrative about passing seasons and growth. I'd call this more effective than evocative—it feels teachable, in a way which fails to capture an adult imagination—but it has good payoff and rich art.
Title: And I Love You
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Steven Kellogg
Published: Scholastic Press, 2010 (1987)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 328,520
Text Number: 1165
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Another Krauss story with new art (this was originally Big and Little, illus. Mary Szilagyi), and again I wish I could read it with the original illustrations because this is such a sparse—although effective—narrative that the atmosphere and tone is effectively carried by the art, and Kellogg's work is bold: vibrant, textured, expansive, distractingly busy; clever details flow between panels and pull out bits of the narrative; the lumpy, furry protagonists and even-more-creepy monkeys are frankly dumbfounding. I'd be fascinating to see another take on it, because the art is the best and worst (those monkeys! why!) of the book, but also overwhelms it.
[Future Juu: I just found Big and Little via Open Library! review here]
Title: I Can Fly
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Mary Blair
Published: Random House, 2003 (1951)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 25
Total Page Count: 328,545
Text Number: 1166
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: This is familiar to me from my childhood. Children's books about the power of imagination are a dime a dozen; this is an adequate, classic take on the subject, but doesn't rival the more strange, dangerous, evocative, fantastic takes on the trope (like Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are or Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon). What makes it successful is the playfulness, creativity, and Blair's vibrant art—particularly the clever details that mirror the protagonist to the animals and which give the book so much life.
Title: A Very Special House
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
Published: HarperCollins, 2001 (1953)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 328,575
Text Number: 1167
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Raucous and rambunctious isn't my style, as a child or an adult, so this didn't speak to me. But Sendak and Krauss pair beautifully for this type of gleeful, selfish nonsense, and it feels authentically childlike. The comparative simplicity of the quiet coda makes it much more palatable.
Title: Bears
Author: Ruth Krauss
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
Published: Michael di Capua Books, 2005 (1948)
Rating: 1 of 5
Page Count: 25
Total Page Count: 328,600
Text Number: 1168
Read Because: reading the author, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: I got more emotional about this edition existing—Sendak redrawing art for Krauss's book after her death—than I did about the book itself, because Sendak's broad, messy, slightly unsettling crayon work fails to appeal and overwhelms the sparse text. As best I can tell (from images online), I prefer Rowand's original illustrations, which are less ambitious and more twee but also read as teddy bears, and allow the text room to read as playful in its own right.
