From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 17:12:00 -600

A number of people have commented on the novelty of the vertical layout of the Caldecott Honor Book "Tops & Bottoms." For those who haven't seen the book yet, it reads top to bottom, rather than left to right, and one must turn the book so that its spine is at the top.
 Most of us see this "innovation" every day in an art form we take for granted known as wall calendars.

Nor is it a particular innovation in picture books: Ed Young used this technique years ago in several of his picture books with bilingual (Chinese/English) texts. For him it was not so much of a novelty as a case of form following function, since the Chinese characters read from top to bottom. Several years ago, Thacher Hurd used this device cleverly in a picture book called "Wheel Away," which follows the progress of a runaway wheel rolling downhill. And Ginny Kruse has also cited a couple of books by Lois Ehlert which employ this technique. I believe there are many others, as well, because my wrist holds a deeply embedded memory of many awkward occasions sharing up-down books with children at preschool story hours. But my brain cannot call up other titles. It tends to think of books in terms of their art and story, rather than the direction their spines point.

One of the challenges of the Caldecott (and Newbery) committee, however, is that books can only be considered in the context of their year of publication. One cannot make specific references to 20-year-old books by Ed Young, for example, to counter claims of originality. The Caldecott Committee would have been discussing
"Tops & Bottoms" only in reference to other books published in 1995 and, among these, there are at least two others which use the vertical device: the afore-mentioned "Snowballs" by Lois Ehlert and
"Grandpa Toad's Secrets" by Keiko Kasza (Putnam). In both of these books, I think the vertical pages are used much more effectively, in terms of rationale and execution, simply because both were illustrated by more skillful artists. After you turn "Snowballs" or
"Grandpa Toad's Secrets" to one side, the story and illustrations take over once again and you forget the spine is at the top. In
"Tops & Bottoms," the up-down device calls attention to itself on each and every page spread, rather than ever becoming an organic part of the book. For this reason, it never seems to be more than a gimmick, even in the illustrator's mind.

Going beyond the vertical pages to look at the illustrations themselves, I still can't find anything particularly distinguished in this book. Her cutesy cartoon style of art reminds me of illustrations one sees on greeting cards aimed at children. There is no depth of perspective in Janet Stevens' illustrations so things that are supposed to be in the background are -- literally -- on top of things in the foreground. This is especially noticeable in the illustrations where the bear is in the foreground (at the bottom) of the pictures: it looks as though the hares in the background (at the top) are jumping around directly over his head, instead of in the garden behind him. There are certainly artists who purposely use a flat plane in picture books, however, I don't think this artist is one of them since her use of perspective is so inconsistent throughout the book.

All of this is not to say I wouldn't recommend purchasing this book for library collections and sharing it with children. It has a lot of appeal, as many others have pointed out, and as the Caldecott Committee no doubt noticed. Someone might even be able to convince me that it was a Notable Book of 1995. (Maybe.) I'm just disappointed that it won an award for distinguished art.
Received on Sat 10 Feb 1996 05:12:00 PM CST