A World of Wonder Awaits On Market Street

In my 20-some years of reading children's book, I have come across all sorts of books intended to teach children the alphabet. Most have "alphabet" or "A to Z" in the title, but some are a little more subtle, like On Market Street, which is written by Arnold Lobel and illustrated by his wife, Anita. In this case, Arnold doesn't have a whole lot to do. Aside from introductory and closing verses of eight lines each, the only text in the book is one word per page. It's what Anita does with those items that makes the book so interesting.

The book is a fanciful adventure upon which a little girl embarks in dreamland. As she sleeps, safe and secure next to her dozing cat, she imagines herself of Market Street, a wondrous avenue full of an incredible assortment of items. On each page, she buys enough of these things to fashion a body for herself. For instance, for "A", she has baskets of apples for feet. Her legs and arms and shoulders are branches laden with apples, while her mid-section is composed of more baskets and a halo of apples surrounds her head, the only part of her body besides her hands that is still human.

So it goes throughout the book. Only her face and hands remain fleshy as the rest of her becomes a creatively composed display of complementary objects. She pays tribute to her husband with the toys, which include figures of Frog and Toad, while the colorful array of flowers reminds me of The Rose in My Garden. She tickles tiny taste buds with pages dedicated to doughnuts, ice cream and lollipops, which she balances out with tributes to healthier foods like noodles, oranges and vegetables.

While most or all of the objects should be familiar to young readers, they are presented in an incredibly unique way, with great intricacy on every page that merits in-depth study. Children can take the time to count how many individual objects are in each picture and point out all the varieties there are. While the apples are pretty much the same aside from coming in red and green varieties, most of the objects differ greatly in terms of color, size, design and other variables.

The Lobels were a winning team, and the Caldecott Honor this book earned is well deserved. On Market Street is a unique and delicately designed alphabet book with the capacity to delight time and again.

One Lighthouse, One Moon and One Cat in Many Illustrations

Reading Fox on Stage the other day, I noticed that the book was dedicated to Anita Lobel. Not only have I enjoyed her books before, but I happened to have taken one out of the library on this particular trip, so this little dedication made me all the more anxious to read One Lighthouse, One Moon, which is driven by her detailed watercolor and gouache illustrations.

There are many books aimed at young children that involve counting or colors and some that have to do with the days of the week or the months of the year. One Lighthouse, One Moon encompasses all four of these basic concepts in three separate stories - though they're not so much stories as progressions of objects or activities.

The real star of the book is Nini, a grayish-brown striped cat that appears in all but a couple of the illustrations. In All Week Long, she mostly stays in the background, peeking out from behind the shoes of a girl who we never see from the waist up. On each day of the week, we see a different pair of shoes and just a bit of the matching ensemble. For instance, we have "Blue shoes on WEDNESDAY," in which the mysterious character sports blue sneakers with stars on the sides and complementary athletic pants. The print is very large and gray, and the day of the week is written in caps, while the font color of the first word of the sentence changes with each page.

Nini moves to a central role with Nini's Year, in which we go through the year observing how the cat acts in any given month. The font is a bit smaller here but still very easy to read, and once again the key word in the sentence is written all in caps. For example: "In FEBRUARY Nini avoided kisses on Valentine's Day." We get a funny picture of the reticent cat peering over the top of the bucket in which she has concealed herself, evidently to see if the coast is clear. In this story, we get two illustrations per page, one on top of the other, until December brings a little twist that merits one more full-page illustration.

Nini's presence is considerably diminished in the title story, which focuses on a series of events in this small lakeside town. The font is again as large as in the first story, and this time the numbers are in caps: "FIVE whales blew spouts of water in the air." In addition to counting to ten, the tale progresses through the day, beginning with the dim pre-dawn hours and ending with the inky night, which serves as a sort of epilogue with "And ONE HUNDRED stars and ONE moon lit up the sky."

Kids will get a kick out of finding Nini in most of the pictures, while adults can rejoice that they're getting four lessons for the price of one in One Lighthouse, One Moon.

Must Pigs Fly Before This Farmer's Wife Gets a Little Help?

When you're as accomplished an artist as Arnold Lobel, what reason would there be for not illustrating one of your own books? I contemplated this when I borrowed the book A Treeful of Pigs from the library. As the illustrator is Anita Lobel, his wife, my guess is that they either dreamed up the idea together or that he wanted the opportunity to give her career a boost by collaborating with him. When two people in the same family have such talent, it seems natural that they would eventually join forces. At any rate, she's up to the task, and her vibrant drawings have a lovely folksy quality about them that perfectly complements the straightforward but silly story.

A Treeful of Pigs is not an I CAN READ book. It is presented in a considerably larger format, with plenty of room for the pictures that fill the pages. Every other page is entirely devoted to a picture, most of which depict the pudgy farmer (bearing a mustache and head of black hair reminiscent of Mario of Nintendo fame) lazing about in bed or reacting to the unusual antics of the pigs he convinced his wife to take in. The text is cleverly framed by another illustration, and these are a bit more stylized, with creative borders on top rather like the ones Jan Brett uses in so many of her books.

The story reads like a folk tale, and there are hints of the classic The Little Red Hen. A farmer sees a dozen pigs for sale and is eager to purchase them. When his wife objects, citing all the hard work raising them will require, the farmer assures her that the job will be simple, especially since they will be working together. When it comes time to actually take care of his newly acquired livestock, however, the farmer makes like Toad in several of Lobel's Frog and Toad books and unequivocally states his intention to remain in bed.

There is an enjoyable cadence to this book as the wife goes to the husband with her request that he assist her in some caretaking task and he responds by promising to help her some other time, providing a highly unusual set of circumstances by which that time is defined. The wife, determined and self-sufficient, performs the necessary tasks but also manages cleverly to bring to fruition her husband's unlikely scenarios, causing the pigs to bloom like flowers, dangle from a tree and fall from the sky like rain. Each time, however, the farmer goes back on his promise, and she has little recourse but to grumble about what a lazy husband she has.

Finally, annoyed by all the interruptions in his napping, the farmer wishes the pigs would just disappear. But when they actually do, he begins to appreciate how much his wife has done for him up to this point. This is a sweet and funny story about equality in marital relationships and making good on your promises. Enjoyable as the book is likely to be for kids, I think married couples might get an even bigger kick out of this silly but ultimately touching tale of cooperation and compromise.