Picture Book Pause
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picturebookpause.bsky.social
Picture Book Pause
@picturebookpause.bsky.social
27 followers 140 following 19 posts
Inserting moments of joy in your doomscroll via the mighty artform of the picture book, using examples on our bookshelf in Aotearoa New Zealand. (Profile pic is a Brian Wildsmith owl.) Always check the alt-text.
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They did it! They unjumbled the letters to spell Aotearoa. Congratulations all round.
Ants shaking hands (first limbs?) in front of a random clock (perhaps they were under time pressure?) and a map of Aotearoa showing place names i te reo Māori. The blocks now spelling "Aotearoa" are under the map. Caption: Ko Aotearoa! Ko tōku whenua.
September 19, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by Picture Book Pause
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.. Case in point: "A is for Aunty" (2000) by Kamileroi artist Elaine Russell (1942-2017) about her childhood at Murrin Bridge mission. There's a brilliant rhythm continuing across all the pages: trees, river bends, hills and roads. And real-life stories that are a privilege to read.
Cover of "A is for Aunty" with a bendy river contrasting with red dirt and white-trunk trees. Not shown: at the back of the book, text explains Elaine Russell won an art competition around age 12 (approx 1953) and the prize was a trip to the Philippines. As it was govt policy to steal fair-skinned Aboriginal children, "Elaine's mother was afraid the prize was a trick and refused to allow her to go. Elaine can remember children just disappearing from the mission, never to be seen again, and she remembers her mother hiding her when government officials visited." Four neat mission houses - one blue, one pink, one peach and one yellow - with a pink-skinned lady in white in the middle of the crossroads, and Aboriginal people on the edges. "I is for Inspection Day The manager's wife visited each house on the mission to make sure our homes were clean and tidy - which they were. Our mothers scrubbed the wooden floors with a piece of sandstone, and when the floors dried the would be white. The manager's wife was amazed that a stone could clean the floors so white." Double paged spread - the same landscape-rectangular artwork is used cleverly for both A (is for Aunty) and B (is for Billycarts). [later in the book, the same artwork is used for both "joeys" and "kangaroos" - so we can marvel at J&K being right next to each other as one is a subset of the other - whereas "Aunty" & "billycarts" are a study in contrasts!] The A text explains that Aunty loved to cheer the races on with her big red bandanna - the B text explains the making of the billycarts.
August 23, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Reposted by Picture Book Pause
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The images are looser than some of Francis' other work... they're soft glances at a slightly other-worldly time & place that may disappear if you focus too hard. suffolkartists.co.uk/index.cgi?ch...
"She made crowns of daisies and then she was a queen sitting on a green throne under a willow tree that waved away the heat of the sun. Her silver hair looked lovely with crowns of daisies on it. I made bracelets for her and bracelets for me and we wove grass together for little green mats." Image: Grandmother Lucy sits on her green throne, daisy chains around her wrists, head and top knot.
August 26, 2025 at 6:19 AM
picturebookpause.bsky.social
The images are looser than some of Francis' other work... they're soft glances at a slightly other-worldly time & place that may disappear if you focus too hard. suffolkartists.co.uk/index.cgi?ch...
"She made crowns of daisies and then she was a queen sitting on a green throne under a willow tree that waved away the heat of the sun. Her silver hair looked lovely with crowns of daisies on it. I made bracelets for her and bracelets for me and we wove grass together for little green mats." Image: Grandmother Lucy sits on her green throne, daisy chains around her wrists, head and top knot.
August 26, 2025 at 6:19 AM
picturebookpause.bsky.social
Finally in this 1/2 alphabet-sized🧵: a puzzle with a twist. "Tomorrow's Alphabet" (1996) insists "A is for seed" & "B is for eggs, tomorrow's __"
But oh! If ever a book calls for use of the codex tech of the page reveal, it's this one. Why show the solution right by the clue? Grover would never.
An image of big red juicy tomatoes - maybe beefsteak by the size? - then thick red tomato sauce being tipped out of a bottle. Caption: "K is for tomato - tomorrow's ketchup." Not shown: We love these images way more than the cover which doesn't do the book justice so we're not going to show it to you. Between that and the "too impatient to wait for the puzzle time" thing, the publisher dropped the ball imho. Anyway! Tomorrow's alphabet is written by George Shannon and illustrated by Donald Crews, who went on to win the Children's Literature Legacy Award in 2015, for his "lasting and substantial contribution to children's literature". Yay. A hand holding an acorn, and a large lucious oak tree. Caption: "O is for acorn - tomorrow's oak tree" Thanks for reading our first thread! We hope you had fun!
August 23, 2025 at 4:58 AM
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Mid-Atlantic diorama artist Valorie Fisher gives us "Ellsworth's Extraordinary Electric Ears and other amazing alphabet anecdotes" (2004).
Front cover centring a toy bloke in a suit whose lightbulb ears really do light up, to the amazement of a kid, a camel, a cowboy on a horse. The pig in the tutu couldn't care less. Painted background of trees in blossom. photograph of a toy yellow duck driving a pink truck full of pink and white dice, surrounded by dinosaurs, a dog and some daisies. Caption: "Dot dreamed of driving a delightfully dainting dump truck"
August 23, 2025 at 4:35 AM
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More wholesome is this 2005 semi-steampunk alphabet of found objects by Polish artists Anita Andrzejewska and Andrzej Pilichowski-Ragno (rhymes by Ramon Shindler and Wojciech Graniczewski).
Cover of the Found Alphabet showing a cute "T for Train" made out of metal odds and ends, with a wavy steam subtitle claiming "the ordinary becomes the extraordinary". "Extraordinary" also features in the title of the next book we'll feature... is everybody trying to go 'hey guys, this is no bread-and-butter alphabet, like those other ones. Some of our pages don't have animals!" B is for butterfly, made up of two oval wholemeal bread slices for wings, and a stripey bit of cut off cord(?) for a body, with wire antennae. Text: Butterfly, butterfly! You're not flying - tell me why! / "My wings of bread cannot fly without butter they get dry" Always butter your bread, kids!
August 23, 2025 at 4:15 AM
picturebookpause.bsky.social
This one's Aussie too! And definitely one for the grown-ups.
From 2006 - and several of the jokes feel a generation older than that. But if you're living fast and dying young, we guess you don't care about aging well.
Front cover of "M is for Metal! The loudest alphabet book on earth" by Paul McNeil and Barry Divola. The font is mostly gothic and several vowels have umlauts over them lol. Bright colours on black background with grey cartoons of people playing guitars etc X is for "X rehearsal studios" is definitely cheating. Anyway, we have a green-faced (?) guy in kiss-makeup playing golf out a top window; a blond mullet playing a tiny triangle; a scandi mou playing a geometric guitar; Lemmy (in a harness?); a glam rocker; a Kiss drummer; Ozzy Osborne; a singer using snake as feather boa; ACDC bagpiper; Slash with top hat, and a small cat (dog?) cheerfully peeing in front of them all. The building is headed "AB / CD" instead of ACDC hehe.
August 23, 2025 at 4:01 AM
picturebookpause.bsky.social
.. Case in point: "A is for Aunty" (2000) by Kamileroi artist Elaine Russell (1942-2017) about her childhood at Murrin Bridge mission. There's a brilliant rhythm continuing across all the pages: trees, river bends, hills and roads. And real-life stories that are a privilege to read.
Cover of "A is for Aunty" with a bendy river contrasting with red dirt and white-trunk trees. Not shown: at the back of the book, text explains Elaine Russell won an art competition around age 12 (approx 1953) and the prize was a trip to the Philippines. As it was govt policy to steal fair-skinned Aboriginal children, "Elaine's mother was afraid the prize was a trick and refused to allow her to go. Elaine can remember children just disappearing from the mission, never to be seen again, and she remembers her mother hiding her when government officials visited." Four neat mission houses - one blue, one pink, one peach and one yellow - with a pink-skinned lady in white in the middle of the crossroads, and Aboriginal people on the edges. "I is for Inspection Day The manager's wife visited each house on the mission to make sure our homes were clean and tidy - which they were. Our mothers scrubbed the wooden floors with a piece of sandstone, and when the floors dried the would be white. The manager's wife was amazed that a stone could clean the floors so white." Double paged spread - the same landscape-rectangular artwork is used cleverly for both A (is for Aunty) and B (is for Billycarts). [later in the book, the same artwork is used for both "joeys" and "kangaroos" - so we can marvel at J&K being right next to each other as one is a subset of the other - whereas "Aunty" & "billycarts" are a study in contrasts!] The A text explains that Aunty loved to cheer the races on with her big red bandanna - the B text explains the making of the billycarts.
August 23, 2025 at 3:45 AM
picturebookpause.bsky.social
Here's another city - a 2013 Sydney book at least as much for grown-ups with nostalgia as it is for young denizens or tourists. It's by Antonia Pesenti and Hilary Bell (illustrator styled first, good to see!)
Side note: Australia seems to create more than its fair share of excellent picture books.
Cover of Alphabetical Sydney showing a yellow & green collage boat on blue sea. Not shown: Throughtout the book, the mix of drawing & photo collage is v cool & amusing, as are the items highlighted: Mr Whippy for W; Vinegar (as a antidote to bluebottle stings at the beach); an Ibis with its head down a rubbish bin (a non-verbal nod to the "bin chicken" label) French/Aussie illustrator (architect) & Aussie writer (playwright) met in Paris in 1995. A photo collage of a house with unfinished, unbalanced storeys on top of it and a crane swinging in a bathtub. The heartfelt anguish of the architect/illustrator shines through Not shown: the text opposite - "R: renovations - the clanging and clamouring/ Ladders and scaffolding, banging and hammering./ Here comes teh pool and the pond full of fish,/ The ensuite, the guest wing, the satellite dish!"
August 23, 2025 at 3:16 AM
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More cities should love an alphabet showcase imho; there could even be a series?
This adorably wonky energetic 1981 book about Dunedin is by George Griffiths (whose wikipedia entry knows him as a historian and, significantly, not as a poet) and artist Annie Baird.
The front cover of "Letters [geddit?] from Dunedin to all young New Zealanders". I wonder if the "young New Zealanders" tag was to evoke the very popular 1974 book "Poems to read to young New Zealanders". There's a blond kid feeding ducks because the cover is brought to you by the page for D. C is for this fun blue-and-red container crane scene, old skipper's hat is flying off beside a little girl enjoying the wind. There's a couple of very lightweight-looking crates on a hook, with a sketch lamb on one and a sketch cow on the other, I simply do not believe they contain meat, or even cleaned wool, had the artist ever been to any port. Meanwhile, historian Griffiths has rhymed "work" with "New York", maybe leave the near-rhymes to Emily, George. U is for University and also for "underclothes". Apparently University of Otago capping circa 1981 was all about women marching in yellow skirts while blowing horns and banging drums ("the band's so weird, every cat's disappeared"), can we bring that back please.
August 23, 2025 at 2:00 AM
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Sometimes an alphabet book is less about learning the alphabet and more about using the schema to explore different topics or artforms or - in the case of this Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki 2011 alphabet showcasing multiple artists - both.
Front cover of "I spy NZ art" - "NZ" is a cut-out to reveal Reuben Paterson's appealing & immediately recognisable glitter-dust kowhaiwhai pattern art: this one is "The Kaiahuwhenua and his three sons" in blues and greens. Not shown: credited as a collaborative project led by Hanna Scott and Julia Waite. An iconic NZ buzzy bee toy flies above a hill, some forest ("bush" in NZ vernacular) and a typical NZ colonial villa in Robin White's 1977 screenprint "A buzzy bee for Siulolovao". Not shown: the facing page proclaims "I spy...Bb", and of course the buzzy bee is the obvious. The cheat sheet in the back of the book also suggests: building and bush [ok] and black and blue [ok, sure] and bold, border, balance and background [background - really??]. Anyway, an amusing thing is that this screenprint is using (parodying? commenting on?) Don Binney's bird-over-house/landscape format eg "Tabernacle" (1966). But kids reading I spy NZ art will likely be introduced to White's version first, and it will be their OG. This type of thing - seeing the homage/parody before the real thing or even instead of the real thing - happens elsewhere as well of course - Interesting to think about how that shifts cohort cultural perception.
August 23, 2025 at 1:29 AM
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Pī'ā Pā (1991) is a Hawaiian alphabet book by Nona Beamer (Winona Kapuailohiamanonokalani Desha Beamer, singer, dancer, composer, Hawaiian culture advocate) illustrated by Hawaiian artist and conservationist Patrick Ching digitalumeke.hulapreservation.org/person/about...
front cover of Pī 'ā Pā Hawaiian Alphabet which is also... the back cover of the Hawaiian counting book which the alphabet book is conjoined with. A green character called "Palaka Joe" is climbing alphabet blocks: five vowels, seven consonants and an apostrophe and macron. consonants/ nā leokanipū start with H for he'e , a muscular looking octopus. 'ō is for 'ō'ō mahi 'ai (farmer's digging stick); ū is for 'ūpā makani (bellows). Not seen: in the introduction, Nona Beamer writes: "In our family we were taught this traditional Hawaiian alphabet chant.... The vocabulary of this pī'āpā opened a glorious new vista of learning for us. Each word was a whole story and Sweetheart Grandma [Aunty Nona's grandmother, Helen Desha Beamer], with her infinite patience and wisdom, taught us these new words with fresh excitement... The 'ūpā makani was the most intriguing riddle.... We had never seen a bellows, but Grandma said the missionaries brought the bellows to Hawai'i to build up their cooking fires. Such fun!"
August 23, 2025 at 12:48 AM