The house that crack built

Front cover

Not long ago a friend and colleague asked me if I knew this picturebook, The house that crack built by Clark Taylor and Jan Dicks.    I didn't, was intrigued and ordered it.  

My recent focus on traditional songs and rhymes is an excellent background for this particular title, which takes the familiar children's nursery rhyme, This is the house that Jack built  and turns it into a thought provoking picturebook about the drug trade and cocaine addition. What's so clever about taking such a topic and creating a picturebook is the wider audience it reaches. Children in primary can understand the simple text and look at and question the illustrations.  Older students, teens and young adults, can use both the words and illustrations as a spring board for deeper, more thought provoking discussion.   It's cumulative rhyme has a hip-hop beat to it, which again makes it very suitable for teens. The house that crack built was published nearly twenty years ago with the intention of helping children understand how to make the right choice about drugs. The proceeds of sales go towards drug education, prevention and rehabilitation programs that specifically help children.  

Le Rêve by Pablo Picasso (1932)

Let's take a look at the illustrations.  The front cover depicts the street where it all happens.  The two more realistic figures reappear in the picturebook on the title page and on the afterword page.  They aren't actually characters from the visual narrative, but possibly represent the children this picturebook is written to help.  Children with nothing to do, children whose parents aren't around much, shoeless children in an urban setting.  The pale figures in the wall mural, separated by the symbolic crack, hang as though in mid-air, their skin pale and sickly, their faces stylistically reminiscent of cubism.  There's a well-known portrait by Picasso called Le Rêve (The dream), shown here on the right, where we can see some similarities to the way the faces have been painted by the illustrator. The dislocated head position is seen again in some of the later illustrations, representative of being high. In the foreground, the gutter is full of cigarette ends or stubs from left over joints.
The endpapers are scattered with  coca leaves.

Endpapers

As we begin the rhythmic cumulative verbal text, the story reveals itself line by line on the verso, with the illustrations facing, on the recto: square illustrations with a white boarder, or frame, around them.  

Opening 1: "This is the House that crack built"

A framed illustration is supposed to have a psychological affect on the viewer, we look at it detached and unemotionally.  Do these framed illustrations make us feel detached? This particular illustration could be any beautiful mansion in a hot country, but the words make us rethink and its affluence takes on a different meaning. 

Opening 2: "This is the Man, who lives in the House that crack built"

We are shown the man who lives in the house:  a sleek, clean cut individual, with an original Matisse, La Nu Rose (1935), hanging on his wall.  The causal sequence continues, introducing us to the soldiers who guard the man, dark eyed men with rifles over their shoulders. Then the farmers who collect the coca leaves ...

Opening 4: "These are the Farmers who work in the heat and fear the Soldiers, who guard the Man, who lives in the House that crack built"

Many of the illustrations in this little picturebook contain unusual perspectives: in opening 4 we have  a close-up of the Farmer, but we can't see his eyes.  The poor woman with no shoes is only shown from the legs down: faceless in the sequence of events.  
In the next illustration we are shown the coca plant against a sunny blue sky, a pretty plant ...

Opening 5: "These are the Plants that people can't eat, raised by the Farmers who work in the heat and fear the Soldiers who guard the Man who lives in the House that crack built." 

... but as the verbal text emphasises the people can't eat it, it feeds no-one, instead it's made into cocaine and exchanged for large sums of money in the the streets of the civilized world. 

Opening 7: "This is the Street of a town in pain that cries for the Drug known as cocaine, made from the Plants that people can't eat, raised by the Farmers that work in the heat and fear the Soldiers that guard the Man who lives in the House that crack built." 

This illustration shows us what it's like in the street.  Seen through a window, a faceless woman holding a baby. Outside, an anguished woman is banging her head on the wall, a man with an upside-down head, high - the cigarette or joint ends separating the foreground figure form those in the background.   
We next meet "the Gang, fleet and elite" then the "Cop working his beat".  

Opening 9: "This is the Cop working his beat, who battles the Gang, fleet and elite, that rules the Street of a Town in pain ..."

We encounter a "Boy feeling the heat" who sells the "Crack that numbs the pain" ...

Opening 12: "This is the Girl who's killing her brain, smoking the Crack that numbs the pain, bought from the Boy feeling the heat ..."

We are shown woman, smoking. Her head too is upside down, her belly is large - is she pregnant? And then we are shown "the baby with nothing to eat, born of the girl who's killing her brain...".  Finally ...

Opening 14

"And these are the Tears we cry in our sleep

that fall for the Baby with nothing to eat,

born of the Girl who's killing her brain,

smoking the Crack that numbs the pain,

bought from the Boy feeling the heat,

chased by the Cop working his beat,

who battles the Gang, fleet and elite,

that rules the Street of a town in pain

that cries for the Drug known as cocaine,

made from the Plants that people can't eat,

raised by the Farmers who work in the heat

and fear the Soldiers who guard the Man 

who lives in the House that crack built."

"This is a book about choices." writes Michael Pritchard in the afterword, "... the author used his poetic voice to remind us the problem is out there. The illustrator used her artistic vision to bring the tragic nature of the problem powerfully alive. And the publisher chose to blend these visions into a book and use its profits (...) to help fight the problem.  Together they have created a tool that can be used to open discussion and to help children learn to make the right choices. Together they have reminded us that in small and personal ways each of us has the power to change the world."


It is indeed a very powerful, though physically small, book and one I am certain can be used with teenagers and young adults in ELT contexts.  I hope that in sharing this title, I have encouraged some teachers to  take up the challenge.