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SLIS 5420
Blog Post 3

Owl Moon
written by
Jane Yolen
illustrated by
John Schoenherr

Plot Summary: Owl Moon is the story of a child and father going for a late night walk, through the snowy woods looking for owls. The child recalls the various necessities and pleasures of owl watching or owling. To owl one must be quiet, patient, weather resistant, brave and most of all filled with hope. Eventually the father and child get to see an owl and as great an experience as seeing the owl is, the time spent with one another is the real treat.

My Impression: Owl Moon is a touching story of father and child spending quality time alone together. The father is sharing something that seems to be very important to him with his child, while at the same time creating a priceless moment that the child will remember forever. This is the kind of story that creates warm fuzzy feelings and recalls memories of ones own parents. What Owl Moon does really is create the warm fuzzy feeling without having to explicitly say that a warm fuzzt feeling was being created. The illustrations are deceptively good. I don't think the illustrations themselves are genious or beautiful stand alone paintings. What the illustrations do well are the staging of the scene. All the action of the father and child are played in wide shots and medium shots. The distance from the father and child helps to create the mood, by showing how isolated and special the activity is.

Review: Book reviews: Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen
by Moe Zilla

Owl-watching seems exotic, and this book captures the mystery. The author dedicated it to her husband, "who took all of our children owling," and the illustrator dedicated it to his granddaughter, "For when she is old enough to go owling." But the book is really about a childhood memory. All the details are lovingly preserved - every sound and feeling, all these years later, from one magical night of owl-watching.

The real details set a strong mood, from the first drawing of the tiny house by a cold snowy field. "Somewhere behind us a train whistle blew, long and low, like a sad, sad song." All the intimate memories of that night flow together seamlessly. "I could hear it through the woolen cap Pa had pulled down over my ears. A farm dog answered the train, and then a second dog joined in..." There's an implied hush, since there's no wind and the trees "stood still as giant statues." And together the girl and her father walk into a colorless forest.
Illustrator John Schoenherr sets the tone from his first drawing - the overhead view of a house and barn by a wide snowy field. It's simple yet realistic, with thin black lines representing the bare branches of trees. In his next drawing the trees are grey with shadows as the tiny pair of humans trudges up over the horizon. And they're nearly swallowed up by the white snow of the next package, appearing small beside their long shadows at the end of a long trail of grey footprints.
"Our feet crunched over the crisp snow and little gray footprints followed us." And then beside a snow-covered tree, the father stands and calls to the owls. The next page shows strange blue shadows from the branches overhead - but no owls are heard. The tension grows. Will the little girl be disappointed? Half of the next page is filled with the blank white of snow - and a dark background of pine trees - as she follows silently behind her father. "We walked on..."
There's more beautiful drawings of the dark forest in the pages to come. I have to give the book credit for being about the experience of looking for owls - and not the owls themselves. It records the girl's experience - all her feelings on this first mysterious trek. "I didn't ask what kind of things hide behind black trees in the middle of the night. When you go owling you have to be brave."
And then an echo came threading through the trees.

Zilla, M. Helium [Review of "Owl Moon"] retrieved from http://www.helium.com/items/1380483-jane-yolen-caldecott-medal-winner-childrens-book-owl-moon-about-owling

Suggestions for Library Use: This is a good book for children seven and under. Owl Moon would be a good book to read if the librarian had books with winter theme, because of the great depictions of the snow, surroundings and the people in their winter clothes. Owl Moon would also be good to read for fathers day because of the quality time between father and child. Perhaps an owl craft could be made afterwards. Some examples of owl crafts can be found at http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/birds-owls.html

The Three Pigs
written & illustrated by
David Wiesner

Plot Summary: The Three Pigs by David Wiesner starts off by skipping over the pigs leaving their mother's house and purchasing house building supplies and moves right to the wolf knocking at the house of straw. Right at the moment when the Wolf blows the house of straw down, the force of the Wolf's blow knocks the pig out of the frame of the picture and through the fourth wall of the story, changing the pig from 2d to 3d. The pig takes this opportunity to save his brother. Although the events in the three pigs story have changed the written words on the page stays the same, befuddling the wolf. As the pigs traverse the added dimension of their world they notice that the pictures begin to fall off the page. The pigs fold one of the fallen pictures into a plane and fly through their new found world. what the pigs find are portals into other story book worlds including the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle" and a story involving a dragon. Followed by the cat who ran away with the spoon, the pigs rescue the dragon before the Knight can attack. The dragon so thankful for being saved from his fate agrees to help the pigs solve their wolf problem. However, in the process of reemerging in the pigs story, the pigs and the dragon knock the letters off the page.

My Impression: This book is too self aware. While reading this book I felt like David Wiesner was patting himself on the back, congratulating himself for being clever. If I were to read this book to a child I would have to stop and explain every page just so the child could have a clear idea of what is going on. Having to explain a story defeats the purpose of reading a story to a group. The pictures are good, but the story is awful.

Review: David Wiesner's The Three Pigs; illustrated by the author 40 pp. Clarion Reviewed 5/01David Wiesner’s postmodern interpretation of this tale plays imaginatively with traditional picture book and story conventions and with readers’ expectations of both. (Though with Wiesner, we should know by now to expect the unexpected.) Astute readers will notice the difference between the cover’s realistic gouache portrait of the three pigs (who stare directly out at the viewer with sentient expressions) and the simple outlined watercolor artwork on the title page. In fact, the style of the illustrations and the way the characters are rendered shifts back and forth a few times before the book is done, as Wiesner explores the possibility of different realities within a book’s pages. The text, set in a respectable serif typeface, begins by following the familiar pattern—pigs build houses, wolf huffs and puffs, wolf eats two pigs, etc. But while the text natters on obliviously, the pigs actually step (or are huffed and puffed) out of the muted-color panel illustrations without being eaten Escaping their sepia holding lines and the frames of their predictable storybook world, they enter a stark white landscape where they are depicted realistically with more intricate shading. The now-3-D-looking pigs, released from the story’s inevitability, explore this surrealistic realm. The perplexed wolf remains behind in the two-dimensional pages which, when viewed from the pigs’ new vantage point, stand vertically in space, looking altogether like paper dominoes waiting to be knocked down. And that’s what the three pigs do, with glee. The pigs’ informal banter appears in word balloons in a sans-serif font; a few striking wordless spreads feature the pigs flying (this is Wiesner, after all) across blank spreads on a paper airplane made from a page of their story. Obviously there’s a lot going on here, but once you get your bearings, this is a fantastic journey told with a light touch. The pigs encounter other free-standing story pages; they enter and exit a nursery rhyme and then a folktale, morphing into and out of each one’s illustrative style. Saccharine, cotton-candy illustrations cloy “Hey Diddle Diddle” (“Let’s get out of here!” one pig exclaims); precise black-and-white line drawings dignify a folktale about a dragon who guards a golden rose. The cat and its fiddle as well as the chivalrous dragon join the pigs in full-color, realistic definition, and eventually the five friends end up back at the pigs’ story. After shaking the type off the pages, the animals re-enter the tale— but this time on the pigs’ own terms. The last page shows them all happily ensconced in the full-page watercolor illustration, using letters of text to write their own happy ending while the wolf sits outside at a nonthreatening distance. Wiesner may not be the first to thumb his nose at picture-book design rules and storytelling techniques, but he puts his own distinct print on this ambitious endeavor. There are lots of teaching opportunities to be mined here—or you can just dig into the creative possibilities of unconventionality. K.F.

K.F. HBook [Review of The Three Pigs] Retrieved from http://www.hbook.com/magazine/reviews/group/wiesner.asp

Suggestions for Library Use: I suggest this book not be read to a group of children. However, if this book must be read it might be a good idea for the book to be read with "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" and James Marshall's "The Three Little Pigs" to give multiple perspectives on the same story. If the librarian wanted to do a three little pigs craft with it, the librarian could find one at http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/pigs.htm.