Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts

Wednesday, 12 March 2014

The Snowy Day

Author: Ezra Jack Keats
Illustrator: Ezra Jack Keats
Ages: 3+ years


Ezra Jack Keats is one of my favourite illustrators. I was reading about him last week and I learned that it was his birthday yesterday - March 11. This post is a day late, but a tribute to his wonderful contribution to children's literature.

Ezra was born just after World War I. He struggled his way out of a childhood in poverty, served in second World War and later went on to become one of the most beloved American authors with his beautiful books and illustrations.

The Snowy Day is a book with a special background and a testimony to Keats' compassion and spirit of humanity. It was the book that Ezra created to defy the colour barrier in children's publishing prevalent at that time. The book, in his own words had "a black kid as hero".

"None of the manuscripts I'd been illustrating featured any black kids - except for token blacks in the background. My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along", said Ezra in an unpublished autobiography. The character - Peter, was inspired by the clipping of a little boy from a newspaper that Ezra had preserved in his room for a long time. He won the Caldecott Medal in 1963 for the book's extraordinary illustrations accompanying a very simple, yet timeless storyline.

Today, you would barely notice the colour of the boy or ponder about it. In that way, he has certainly defied and thwarted not just the colour barrier, but also bridged generation gaps and created an ageless classic that appeals to children of this century as well, despite being created 52 years back!

The Snowy Day is about Peter's joy on experiencing snow for the first time, discovering the beauty of the flakes, awed by the canopy it creates and his urge to preserve a part of it for posterity ( in his coat pocket!). It reminds us of beauty of little children - their openness to nature and instant bonding to its wonders, their happiness in the most simplest things, their sense of exploring and discovering new things and most of all, their extraordinary ability to exist only in that moment and enjoy it to the fullest.

This book was also Ezra's first foray into illustrating with collages, home-made stamps and textured cloth and paper. The end result, as seen in the book, is so simple, which makes it even more stunning.

And the book reminded me of little M's first experience of snow - how he stood out looking at the flakes all day, asking me who threw them down, trying to catch them in his tongue and simply not getting enough of it even by the end of the day! And of course he wanted me to store bottles of snow in the freezer "for tomorrow"! :o)


Here is a Youtube reading of the book.

You can read more about Ezra and his books here.

Monday, 21 January 2013

Tea Break - Ginger

The freezing temperatures and long hours of snowball fights demand this throat and tum warming tea for sure! Bye bye colds, sore throats and sinus pains!

It has been a while since my last post. I got into that zone where you think all that blogging or FB activities or twitter posts or any social appearance you had made online are mocking at you. And you think why you ever started it all in the first place and made a fool of yourself.  Perhaps you have been a bit too over enthusiastic?

But it is a passing phase, I realized. That familiar feeling of gloom that hits us every now and then.

Then the Snow came. Nothing much. Only a few odd inches and yet it brought out the child in everybody, as always. It is a always feeling of great ecstasy to behold the snow that blankets the town in shimmering whites. There is certainly something so mesmerizing about the snow.

For the first time ever, I started looking at the snow extra closely just to see if I could make out the famous no-twin-anywhere flake patterns. And what a successful treasure hunt it had become! So many crystals, so beautiful, so alluring! So hypnotizing!

If only I had a proper camera to capture them. I have heard of flakes being enormous and the pictures some folks have taken make me so jealous! But the flakes here were really tiny, about a fifth of a small mustard seed. The patterns, though, were just out of the world!
 
 
 
 
 




 
 
 




These were the only pics ( and many of similar quality) I managed to take in my mobile phone, which is quite primitive. But I was so glad I took the time to look into the snow. Every bit that shimmered like sequin was a perfect geometrical wonder. I close my eyes now and I can only see little patterns in my inward eye ( If Wordsworth hadn't written about the Daffodils, I swear I'd have written the poem to mean the Snow flakes :o) ). It is most certainly the bliss of solitude!

Then I had to trade my solitude for the infectious enthusiasm of my boys, and went sledging with them. This time I did see that flash upon my inward eye again, but it turned out to be the after effects of hours of innumerable bumps and tumbles and the painful beckoning of my barely-there bottom!

Came home to a hot bath, tea, hot chocolate and plain buttered toasts. And a Wodehouse for me and Tinkle for boys!

So much of contentment meant only one thing. Snoozing off and drooling even before you knew it!

And That accounts for the missing blog posts.




 


 

Saturday, 12 January 2013

Snow Tales

Author: Michael Morpurgo  Illustrated by Michael Foreman
Ages: 5+


Michael Morpurgo's books are wonderful entertainers. So much so, that Spielberg created a classic movie adapting Morpurgo's "The War Horse". Snow tales is no exception.

This book has two stories both involving creatures of the Arctic - the Polar Bear and an Albatross family. The settings for the story spring right out of the book with Michael Foreman's cool illustrations in arctic hues and you can almost hear the soothing voice of Sir David Attenborough narrating about life in the north pole in the background, like his episodes in Natural History channel.

The stories themselves are very warm and engaging. While the Polar bear dreams the impossible during hibernation, the Albatross family face a few challenges in their brave fight for survival in the frozen north.

Snow tales... a melting composition.