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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