aPaulogy ~ Curious Illustration

I met Priya Sebastian for a cup of chai few days back.

She suggested we drop by at this quaint place at the edge of Richard's Park in Richard's Town, which houses the work of Bangalore-based illustrator Paul Fernandes.

Not knowing what to expect I just followed her obediently into this space, habitually taking out my camera while she exchanged pleasantries with Mona and Jatin of aPaulogy~ Curious Illustration.

As I looked around this colourful space, I was at once enveloped in a multi-hued world of water colours!

What followed was an hour of surfing the waves of sheer nostalgia of the years spent in the beautiful Cantonment area of Bangalore.

Paul Fernandes' illustrations are an ode to this charming part of Bangalore. Light-hearted, funny depiction of scenes from the days gone by~ the 70's, his memories and experiences and of friends and families.

He's work has captured some grand landmarks of the area, which conjures up numerous memories in people who have lived here. The work is also a satirical take on these fast disappearing heritage buildings and structures.

The charming Mona taking us on a trip down memory-lane. She narrated such delightful little stories associated with each illustration and also some very interesting piece of information.

Thom's Cafe, a landmark building on Wheeler's Road! I have such fond memories of picking up their warm, fresh out of the oven bread, you drop a blob of butter on it and it would melt:-)

Mona tells us that, in 'those days' it was the only cafe in the Cantonment area which had a Jukebox and they played some lovely music.

His gallery is peppered with vintage furniture, collectibles and memorabilia's that are remnants of the old Bangalorean charm.

Paul is a collector of miniature vintage cars...

An old framed photograph.

Miniature cars glide on window sills and on tables...

Paul has captured some beautiful heritage houses, which are fast disappearing.

This illustration depicts the sincere policemen of yesteryears checking for lit oil lamps on the cycles. There is an antique lamp placed next to the artwork, which almost brings the scene alive!

Priya and Mona engrossed in one of the illustrations depicting a scene of a pre-wedding Mangalorean party.

What a fabulous treat it was to the senses, we walked out feeling like one of the characters that Paul Fernandes so beautifully brought to life, from another era.

A little melancholy lingered in my heart thinking about the heritage buildings, that filled us with so many happy memories, were slowly disappearing giving way to huge concrete structures.

Presently Paul Fernandes walks the various mains and streets trying to paint the other remarkable landmarks of Namma Bengaluru!

Kudos Paul Fernandes!

(images by Arch)

Funny face - funny faces

Front cover

I discovered Funny Face by Nicola Smee while reading an article by a friend and colleague Janet Evans.  

The front cover shows a simply drawn but bold looking face, smiling.  The back cover gives a photo album-like view of the same face demonstrating all sorts of emotions and the blurb reads: 

"One little boy, one big bear.  Many different faces!"

That's it in a nutshell!

Funny Face is a board book, so it contains none of the peritextual features a picturebook can include (like endpapers or title pages), the reader moves from front cover to the story pages immediately. I say story pages because even though this is a concept book, there is a narrative to it.  Each verso page shows the story and each recto the emotion evoked by the happenings in the story.  I find this very useful as it contextualizes each emotion, making it clearly understood by the children you are sharing it with. 

There are seven different faces in all, showing a range of emotions and we start with the happy face:

Opening 1

"I love playing with my ball." ... so I'm happy because that's what I'm doing.   As we read this we can use a light hearted voice expressing happiness, so children hear and see the emotion. 

Opening 2

But what happens next?  "Ooh!  A big bear!", children call out this emotion as soon as they see the illustration, the child in the book is so clearly surprised!   

Opening 3

Oh no!  The bear takes the ball and the children will all call out "he's crying", and he is, but what emotion is he showing us? And his dog too! He's sad.  It's a sad face. 

Turn the page ... Naturally once the feeling of sadness dissipates, anger takes over. The words tell us, "I'm very, very angry".  The pictures show us a cross looking boy and the dog is shaking his fist at the bear as he lumbers off behind a tree. Children will empathize with this change of feelings, they will have felt similarly.  Another page turn ...

Opening 5

Anger moves to confidently being rude!  "Here's what I think of you, big bear!" As the reader you can say this arrogantly, and even blow a raspberry!  That is one naughty face!  Turn the page ... But STOP! "Oops!  I think the big bear is coming back - with more bears!"  The illustrations show the dog and boy looking at each other worriedly. The face shows a clearly worried look.  Let's turn the page again...

Opening 7

The bears are ever closer and the boy and his dog are clearly terrified. As we read the words, "What do they want?", we can slightly stutter and make our mouth quiver.  The children you are sharing this book with will be leaning backwards slightly and their mouths will quiver as they say loudly "He's frightened". 

Opening 8

Why, all the bears wanted was to play!  Hooray!  And so we are all happy again and full circle we come back to a happy face. 

The very last page is a firm favourite showing all the different emotions and a mirror where  children can peer at their own funny faces!  (You'll have to excuse the photo here, my arm and blue sunny sky instead of a child's face is reflected in the mirror!)

Opening 9

Funny Face. Nothing complicated, a simple story and a load of faces, but it works really well and children request this book over and over. Remember that even if the children call out in their own language when you turn the pages, it's OK, they are demonstrating they have recognized the emotion, which is after all the objective of this little book.  It is our job to help them say these emotion words in English, which isn't too difficult, especially if it is re-read many times. Recast and paraphrase what they say and gradually the children's calls should turn into English calls as the pages are turned and they gleefully demonstrate they can recognize emotions and label them in English.

Bubbly Namitha in CCL..!!

Two penguins who do everything together

Front cover

Fluff and Billy by Nicola Killen arrived last week.  What a cute little book, so cute I had to feature it immediately.  Cute in the sense of being endearing and clever at the same time. And just perfect for pre-school children, with the natural repetition in the verbal text and the expressive illustrations. 

Fluff and Billy are two penguins, great friends, who do everything together. Fluff has red feet and Billy has yellow chest feathers.  The painted font on the cover helps us focus on their different features, highlighting their differences, despite both being penguins. Here they are on the back cover, swimming together under water.  

Back cover

Though red and yellow appear on the front cover, it is blue and yellow which are the two base colours, and white of course.  Yellow introduces us to the two penguins, it appears as we open the paperback version of this picturebook in a recto page splatted with yellow paint, followed by a further spread, a yellow background with an oval window showing the two penguins, wings touching as though holding hands. 

Opening 1

The copyright page brings us the blue, that deep sea we saw on the back cover.  The two penguins are speeding forward into the book and a splat of blue slap bang in the middle of the title page repeats the front cover combination of these three words, "Fluff and Billy", the birds' names written with a paintbrush and brought together with an "and" written in Times Roman(?), the rest of the title is also in the same font. 

Copyright and title page

The play between these two font types continues within the picturebook pages.  The paint brush font represents the birds' voices and the other the narrator's.  You may also have noticed that Fluff's font is slightly darker than Billy's. 

Let's begin ... as though we haven't already!

Opening 2

I think this is one of my favourite spreads.  Look at the movement! Those blue foot prints on the verso spread  pushing us upwards as the penguins rush up the snowy hill and then zooming down the hill following the bluey dots as the penguins slide on their bellies.  The font slopes up and down too, and the verbal text comes twice each time, first it's Fluff, then it's Billy.  Each doing the same thing, so their voices repeated. As the mediator you can use slightly different voices too. Then ...

Opening 3

Aaaaaaa!  Aaaaaaa!  Now that looks fun. Lines and dots again showing movement and that crack in the ice on verso once again pushing our gaze across the spread.  Those splodges of yellow just adding a touch of sparkle to the page. 

Fluff and Billy go swimming, "I'm swimming" they both say; then splashing.  Fluff runs here and Billy runs here. 

Opening 6

Fluff jumps up and so does Billy, but woah!  That is one big jump, shown in the illustrations (we can only see his legs as he jumps out of the page!) but also the way the font has been turned on its side and is whooshing up, following Billy off that page. 

Opening 7

We see the result on the next spread.  Fluff looks worried as Billy lands on his head, those yellow splodges falling around him and things change, Fluff rolls a snowball, but Billy throws one ... right at Fluff. But that's not right, don't they always do the same thing?
"'Ouch!" cried Fluff".  On the next three spreads, we see the two friends sitting back to back, but apart, one on each side of the spread, separated first by the penguins words, "I'm not talking to you".  Their feelings are so visible, from their postures, the way their heads are tilted upwards.  They are as frosty as the snow around them.  

Opening 9

On the next spread it is the narrator who reinforces the point: "Fluff said nothing." "Billy said nothing." The penguins don't look quite so haughty.  Then ...

Opening 11

No need for words, we all know how both these penguins are feeling. And so Fluff tickles Billy, and Billy tickles Fluff. 

Opening 13

And they laugh ... "together!"  Yellow and blue in soft floating shapes. Friends again. 
But that's not the end, remember that yellow spread at the beginning of the book, well here it is again, but this time the penguins are leaving, wings touching, rushing off into more adventures. 

Spread 14

One of the cleverest picturebooks I've seen in a while: it's visually exciting and tells a real story, one of friendship, falling out and making up. The illustrations provide brilliant examples of emotions for children to see and talk about. And, as an added bonus, everything gets said twice!  Love it, love it, love it. A MUST for all early years English classrooms. 

Chain Lakes

If there were some magic elevation near the equator where it was fall all year long i'd move there in a heartbeat. No matter how many years you live up here, a drive out in the mountains on a perfect fall day will leave your jaw on the floor. Every curve in the road smashes you with an incredible vista. The Boreal Forest glows gold in crisp sunlight below mountains crowned with fresh snow rising above vermillion bands of berries on the slopes in between. You may come back home and self righteously scorn your friends for missing such incredible sights, only to find out they were doing exactly the same thing as you that day, and were equally angry at you. It might take some drinking to work things out.

On one such day this fall i drove down the Matanuska Valley to the Kings River. I'd brought my ATV and decided to try and get farther up the Chain Lakes Trail, where i'd been turned back months before just as things started to get interesting. Depending on where the trail stopped i thought i might do some hiking.

Looking upvalley at Castle Mountain. You can see a couple of the "Chain Lakes" at the bottom if you look hard enough.

A close look at the summit of Castle Mountain. Instead of typical jagged and broken rocks it shows erosional features that look more like something out of the dry desert with characteristics of wind erosion.

 Higher up were rolling meadows of Caribou Grass.

This time around i made it up the trail pretty quickly. There was much less water and mud, and i'd learned my way through the more technical rocky areas. Even better news was that i had no mechanical problems. The machine worked flawlessly with no heating or power issues even on long slopes so steep i didn't dare stop and was resting my hips over the handlebars to keep the front tires on the ground, basically standing on the back wheel hubs.

Soon i was in new territory, and i followed the main trail up to it's endpoint high on a ridge. There was a lot of evidence of people who tried to get higher and failed tearing the place up, unless they were on a dirt bike. The dirt bike trails when incredibly high up the mountain. It's possible that some crazy nuts may have made it all the way to the top.

The mountains behind Castle Mountain have some orange patches that i believe are gypsum. The orange becomes more prominent as you go up the Matanuska Valley, culminating in Sheep Mountain beyond the Matanuska Glacier.

I'd never seen this mountain before. Just shy of 8,000ft, this peak marks the edge of what i would call the core of the Talkeetna ranger. It's 15 miles back from the road but technically reachable via the Kings River drainage, which i'm looking up here.The Talkeetna Glacier is just 3 or 4 miles to the west of it.

Looking down valley from up on the ridge. The weather had started to get a bit unpredictable. I couldn't tell if the storm was going to pass by or jump over to my side.

The trail for the ATV had ascended around 3,000 feet. I continued up higher, another 1,000 feet before i made it to an even higher ridge at 4,600 ft. From there if you had the time you could continue up to the summit at 6,200ft. The views were great; maybe you've noticed.

The light was pulling off some pretty amazing tricks but the weather started to turn bad on my side so i headed back.

During the whole trip storms were brewing to the south but they seemed to be moving east to west along the mountains, so i felt safe and enjoyed the light show. On the way back i did get to enjoy some rain/sleet for about 20 minutes until i rode out of it. All in all it was a great day, and i got back to the truck right at dusk.

The Boreal Forest in fall. Fun riding all the way back.

You can see a tiny sliver of white on the far left above the sunlit trees. It's the Matanuska Glacier hiding out. It was more visible up higher.