Tag Suzy Lee

The Shade Tree / Rapunzel

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The Shade Tree
Suzy Lee (translated by Helen Mixter)
Greystone Kids

This is a re-telling of an old Korean folk tale wherein we see how a young traveller tricks a rich but heartless man into selling him the shade from the tree that grows on the latter’s land. The rich man considers he’s made some very easy cash but hasn’t considered the effects of the lengthening shadow of his house as the day progresses.Whatever the shade touches is thus owned by the traveller, and he can share it with whomever he wishes. Furthermore when the shade covers the rich man’s house, the traveller can enter that house, which he does,

eventually causing the wealthy one to move out. Once the house is vacant the traveller settles down and enjoys life as the new resident.

Much of the power of this thought-provoking telling lies in its simplicity, simple too is Suzy Lee’s art; it’s almost abstract in style and uses a limited colour palette to effect. With its dramatic gatefold, this is altogether an unusual book that feels at once both old-fashioned and contemporary. It would probably appeal most to older readers especially those with an interest in folk stories.

Rapunzel
Sarah Gibb
Harper Collins Children’s Books

Sarah Gibb has taken the original classic fairytale and turned it into a visual feast.with a mix of gorgeous silhouettes and delicate, detailed colour illustrations, without losing any of the essential elements of the plot in her simplified telling. We still have the drama: the witch discovering the young husband helping himself to the salad leaves from her garden to cure his ailing wife and his promising to give her the baby when born in return. And romance: the baby Rapunzel becoming a beautiful girl incarcerated in a tower, who is visited by a prince and the two eventually marrying.

Rapunzel’s tower is illustrated in true fairytale style, with turrets and weathervanes, vines and roses
and the contrasting silhouette style prince staggering through the forest having been seriously hurt as a result of his fall from the tower.

Recently reissued with a new cover, I suggest that if you are looking for a highly pictorial version of the fairytale, look no further than Sarah Gibb’s offering.

Lines

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Lines
Suzy Lee
Chronicle Books

This truly is a wordless wonder.
A skater whizzes across the white page etching swirls and whirls onto the surface of the ice in a glorious solo dance – a veritable symphony of graceful motion, dizzying sometimes even.

But then she takes one pirouette too many, loses her balance and crashes to the ground losing her hat in the process.
Turn over and you see a crumpled sheet of paper, a pencil and an eraser indicative perhaps of frustration on behalf both of the skater and the artist.
Turn over again and there’s the skater, alone and gazing at her hat on a wrinkly background. But then, enter left another skater and then another and … before long there are several others tumbling clumsily, but joyfully, around her.

Suddenly the whole of the ice is alive with skaters; one of them helps the girl to her feet and …

There’s joy in abundance as readers see the wintry wonderland that is the iced-over pond and the surrounding countryside.
Essentially the book can be viewed as an exploration of the notion that making mistakes is a vital part of the learning process be you a skater, an artist or any other kind of learner. This is something all children need to learn early on, and that some teachers would do well to remind themselves of from time to time.
Equally it’s a superb, thought-provoking picture book that transports us into unexpected places pushing at the boundaries of creativity.