Tag Faye Hanson

All At Sea

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All At Sea
Gerry Byrne and Faye Hanson
Walker Books

This wonderfully warm story is subtitled ‘There’s a new baby in the family’ and chief protagonist, young Liam certainly has his very own way of dealing with the arrival of a new brother.
He plays out his feelings using the small world hippo family – a daddy, a mammy, two little hippos and a tiny, baby hippo – his parents give him when they come back from the hospital bringing with them a new baby brother for him and his slightly older sister.

First he puts the baby hippo in the mouth of a hungry crocodile to be gobbled up. The following evening the tiny hippo is squashed under an elephant’s foot …

and on the third night it ends up down the loo, supposedly swept over a waterfall when out swimming with the rest of the hippo family.

All these actions however result in Liam having bad dreams …

and ending up sleeping in his parents’ bed with them.

On the third night though, something else happens too: Liam has a change of heart not only about the baby hippo, but more importantly concerning a certain Baby Brother.
The following night all is well both with the hippo family and Liam’s.

This is a fine addition to the new sibling genre and an ideal picture book for a young child with, or about to have, a new baby in the family.
It’s beautifully told, the dialogue both child and adult, is spot on and Faye Hanson captures the inherent warmth of Gerry Byrne’s tale, and the emotions of Liam and his mum in particular, in her superb, textured illustrations. Her colour palette – predominantly sepia, violet, inky blue – give the whole story a slightly dreamlike quality.

Few picture books I’ve seen – and that’s a lot – capture the mixed emotions of a young child with a new sibling so perfectly as this one.

Midnight At The Zoo

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Midnight at the Zoo
Faye Hanson
Templar Publishing
We join Max and Mia on a school trip to the zoo; but this is no ordinary zoo for seemingly there are no animals there at all. So where are the lemurs, flamingos, pandas and salamanders, the lions, meerkats and monkeys? There’s not a single one in sight … they hunt but eventually it’s time to go. Everyone boards the bus; everyone except Max and Mia who manage to get themselves left behind …

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Midnight strikes and that’s when the magic begins. With a new friend as guide …

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there are fabulous fountains, flouncing flamingos, mischievous monkeys, prancing pandas …

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and many more marvels to be seen before eventually, replete with wondrous sights, the two children fall fast asleep

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and don’t wake up until morning light when there’s another warm embrace awaiting them – from their Mum this time. Will she believe what they have to tell her? Would you?
Everything about this wondrous whimsical book is dreamy delight. Faye Hanson’s artistic skill is truly awesome: Her intense rich colour palette glows with near incandescence; every line, every brush-stroke, every tiny detail builds up to an exquisite resplendent whole scene at every turn of the page.
Go back and look again at the early vignettes and you’ll notice that Max and Mia might not see any of the animals they’ve come for, but they do what small children tend to do, they stop and pay close attention to detail …

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finding things of interest where less observant others have passed by unaware.
Faye Hanson’s The Wonder was truly that; this one is even more brilliant; even the endpapers are amazing.

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The Wonder

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The Wonder
Faye Hanson
Templar Publishing
If you want a beautiful book and one that celebrates the imagination, then most definitely The Wonder is for you; indeed I can’t imagine many people who would say no to either of those things.
I have a good friend in Rajasthan, India, an artist, who has this written large on the wall of his studio: “ Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” Picasso. Essentially this quote is the key to Faye Hanson’s fantastic book.
The story follows one small duffle-coated boy who finds something to wonder about in everything he sees. He sets out for school through the park, onto the bus, then across the road with the lollipop lady

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and into the school building.
(Children want to know why such a little boy is going to school alone and why he wears his coat in science.) I wonder …
At every stage he encounters adults who, seemingly, want to stifle his imagination, none more that his ‘form teacher’ who barks, “No daydreaming today” in greeting and his science teacher who isn’t interested in his question about the stars (What kind of school is this? one wonders). Joy of joys though, his art teacher has written up on a board in the art room, that very Picasso quote I mentioned and she clearly believes what it says. Here in her room, the boy is encouraged to use his imagination and truly he does as his daydreams take flight across the, initially daunting, large blank page in front of him.
It’s at this point in the story that the predominantly sepia tones of the illustrations give way to glorious, coloured, intricately detailed flights of fancy. There’s a park scene with amazing subterranean animal homes among the tree roots…

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A skyscape with cloud makers creating incredible dreams …
A mouth-watering edible landscape, a glorious playground parade populated by all manner of animals

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and finally (my favourite and also hidden under the dust jacket) wherein the galaxy makers wield star-shaped dough cutters and every star is buffed and polished to make it shine.
Just like the boy in the story, Faye Hanson’s imagination knows no bounds. Not only the fantasy scenes, but every one of her spreads, including the sepia-toned real world ones, are filled with wonderful details: and, it is actually these early spreads, with their brighter coloured daydream insertions, that are harbingers of what is to come.
What a fortunate child to have adults – his parents

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as well as his art teacher -in his life who at a crucial stage, encourage the boy to use his imagination for, on the final endpapers we are shown that same boy, now wearing a much larger duffel coat standing between his parents and an amazing spiralling exhibit in a large gallery – one assumes his sense of wonder has been encouraged to flourish.
Totally immersive, inspiring and a joy to behold, this is not just for dreamers. I would love to see this amazing and powerful book as a required focus for reading and discussion on every course where teachers are in training, for every teacher in schools and for all those who design (and prescribe) curriculums. If only I had the power to prescribe … I wonder what might happen, I wonder …
The trouble is you cannot measure imagination.

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