More Than
Words Can Say
By PAMELA PAUL
THE BIG BOOK OF WORDS AND PICTURES
By Ole Könnecke
22 pp. Gecko Press. $14.95. (Board book; ages 1 to 3)
PICTURE MY DAY
By Séverine Cordier and Cynthia Lacroix
172 pp. Owlkids Books. $18.95. (Picture book; ages 2
to 4)
Nothing is quite so boring as reading a
wordbook aloud to a toddler for the third or 13th time. The endless pointing
and repeating and prodding. The clip-art photographs of obsolete household
objects and objectionable clothing items, seeming to date from sometime in the
early 1980s when nothing looked good.
And is there anything so
countereducational? The descriptions of jobs that no longer exist; the often
sexist or overly politically correct labels, few of them reflecting the actual
life experiences of children today. The confused look on a child’s face when
he’s told the foreign object on the page, dangling cord and all, is a
telephone, even though it looks nothing like Mommy’s iPhone.
What a welcome pleasure, then, to discover
two ingenious new wordbooks that actually entertain and enlighten. “The Big
Book of Words and Pictures,” by Ole Könnecke (a German, and the author of
“Anton Can Do Magic”), is not only irresistibly cute, it’s incredibly well
organized. Less busy than Busytown but with plenty to entertain the curious
eye, the book captures, page by page, the spectrum of subjects that make up a
young child’s day — various rooms of the house, seasons, animals presented
according to habitat.
Könnecke doesn’t settle for scattering
illustrations across the page. Instead he assembles them into mini-narratives.
In the bedroom, we see a mother donkey whisk her foal out of his “toddler bed,”
surrounded by the playthings of a 15-month-old. There’s a mother elephant
trying to hide in her “double bed” while her baby ambles around for
attention. In the bathroom, a discarded “diaper” leads to a contemplative
toilet trainer facing a “potty” and, next in line, a “toilet.” My favorite,
however, is a sequence on clothing. It shows a pair of “pajamas” on the floor
and then a small animal as he dresses article by article just as a child would
do — feet uplifted as he scooches into a pair of “pants.” Meanwhile, a stork
with a “vacuum cleaner” trails two babies eating “cookies” and making “crumbs.”
Another great sequence follows a bird as he segues from “baby buggy” to
“stroller” to “push bike” and chronologically onward through “cane” and
“wheelchair.”
This is the rare wordbook that can
actually spur ideas and conversation and the spontaneous telling of stories.
The one omission is subject headers for each page, though in each case they are
easily figured out. Not since Richard Scarry has an illustrator taken such
obvious care to imbue a basic vocabulary primer with so much humor and
relevance.
Small in format and chunky but with
172 pages of full-color illustrations, “Picture My Day,” by Séverine Cordier
and Cynthia Lacroix, differs in format from the usual oversize lap-friendly wordbook.
But like Könnecke’s book, it presents basic vocabulary through storytelling.
Opening with the phrase “It’s getting light . . . ,” the story follows a group
of children and stuffed animals as they wake up and go about their day,
labeling everything from “crib” to “bunkbed” to “nightgown” and “pajamas.”
At regular intervals, another phrase will
jump in — “Breakfast is served,” “From head to toe,” “Time to play” — and
introduce a series of words and scenes. Again like Könnecke, Cordier and
Lacroix offer miniature narratives to frame their labels. A girl whose hair
needs “combing” appears opposite another girl “sulking” while her older sister
styles her doll’s hair. A baby in a “diaper” clutches a bunny, while an older
child reads a picture book on her “potty” and another, a chapter book on the
“toilet.”
“Picture My Day” has been translated from
French, and a few words have been muffed. Stuffed animals in a pile are called
“stuffies” (actually, not bad), utensils are rather stiffly referred to as
“cutlery,” and the “sardines” pictured among the foodstuff would have been
better replaced with “tuna” for American readers. But then, at a time when so
many American parents seem interested in bringing up bébés, perhaps serving up
a Continental vocabulary will be welcome too.
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