From: Linda Mundt <lemundt>
Date: Tue, 01 Sep 1998 12:44:39 -0500

hi everyone,

in my mind picture books are only incidentally on the written page. they are, at their best, as oral as poetry, and so i want to know about the overall musicality of the book: the uses of repetition, the rhythm of the story and its pacing. in other words, i care about the words, how effective they are and the care with which they are apportioned to each page. and i care very much about the story being told. is it a good story? is the reader/listener likely to burst forth with his or her own stories after time spent with the book?

i find it shocking to discover, as i write here, that i care less about the pictures in a picture book than i do about the words.

but i get ahead of myself. my first concern, when i open a new picture book, is to find what age child (or adult) will read the book. i still am not accustomed to finding elegant picture books with full adult text. i know a picture book will have, mostly, 32 pages, but how many words am i gonna find on each page? perhaps the problem is with my expectation that a picture book IS one thing and then finding out that it's something else entirely. i want a picture book to be something to play with, and not every book is these days. i want a picture book to awaken the young child in me, and not every one does.

i want a review to let me know how playful i can expect the book to be.

(and janice, even if your book has a ga-zillion words on the page -- i haven't seen it yet--, i'll still read it carefully. i'm just admitting my biases here. that doesn't mean i'm not longing, daily, to be surprised in ways i never expected.)

linda mundt madison, wisconsin
Received on Tue 01 Sep 1998 12:44:39 PM CDT