Bibliotherapy: The Right Kind

I love publishers' previews, and the passion that editors bring to their newly-birthed titles.  Two of the picture book titles that I previewed at the Macmillan Spring preview will be added to my wish list.  These books, though different in style, approach social issues in an authentic way, through the story line, rather than through a sermonizing voice.  There are oodles of those kind of character education or "issue" books; they are "functional books," i.e., designed for a therapeutic purpose, and often designated to the shelves of the school guidance counselor.  The alternative is a piece of excellent illustrated literature that happens to deal with a relevant social issue.

Missing Mommy, by debut author/illustrator Rebecca Cobb, deals with a very fragile subject, the death of a child's parent.  The story doesn't force any answers or advice; it articulates the fears and questions that a bereaving young child might have.  Bully, by the brilliant Laura Vaccaro Seeger, is a sparely worded graphic novel (19 words in all) that propel the reader through the story of a bull's turnaround from bully (the eponymous main character) to friend.  Here, the reader even sympathizes with the regretfully tearful bully.  Missing Mommy is just so sad; I may house it on a back shelf  on reserve for the right time.  But Bully will hopefully find its way into every classroom.

 

Book Paintings

Sometimes I wonder whether I am painting pictures of words or whether I’m painting pictures with words.

—Ed Ruscha

Fanned Book

Old Book Today

The highlight of my Saturday Chelsea Gallery walk was the Ed Ruscha show at the Gagosian Gallery on West 24th Street.  Ruscha pays tribute to the printed book in his super-scaled realistic paintings of rare books, painstakingly capturing the marbled endpapers, or the yellow fox marks on a blank page.  I loved the smaller paintings that present text distilled into their rectangular ghosts, footprints of phrases that correlate to the length of the words.  Ruscha also manipulates actual books, using the covers as supports for painting.  In the age of digital reading, these works convey a reverence for the tradition of the printed form.

installation view