Look at the endpapers - repost

I did something very silly - I deleted some of the images in my Picasa album - and it played hells bells with my early blog posts.  I am recreating those which were well visited.  This is the first of these recreations. 

Look at the endpapers (Originally posted in July 21, 2010)

Endpapers from The very hungry caterpillar (Carle)

Endpapers are part of the picturebook peritext. I thought I'd take a closer look at the different endpapers we might find in some of the more widely used picturebooks in ELT.

Endpapers from Winnie the witch (Thomas and Paul)

There are endpapers that are left blank, in white or cream. Sometimes endpapers echo a colour that belongs to a book. Winnie the Witch, by Valerie Thomas & Korky Paul has black endpapers (naturally!) with striking slashes of colour... which we can associate with Winnie's magic wand once we've read the story. 

Endpapers can hint at aspects of the story, like the wand slashes by Winnie. The end papers from The very hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle are at the top of this message. Did you recognise them? Ripped paper, full of holes. I wonder if it was the caterpillar? 

Endpapers from Brown bear, brown bear what do you see? (Martin Jr and Carle) 

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle has strips of coloured tissue paper in the sequence of the animals as they appear in the story. Can you see Carle's signature? We put our signatures on works of art, what is Eric Carle telling us? Interestingly in the hard back edition, the endpapers have no signature, but instead a red bird. 

Endpapers from The Gruffalo (Donaldson and  Scheffler)

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1999. The endpapers show us a quiet green wood, waiting for something to happen!  My anniversary edition has two sets of endpapers.  The second set has the sketches for early versions of the characters by Axel Scheffler,  lovely!

Additional endpapers in the anniversary edition (front illustrations)

Room on the Broom by the same authors, has endpapers showing us the four items belonging to the witch which appear in the beginning of the story and are lost / broken, as the narrative progresses.   

Endpapers from Room on the broom (Donaldson and Scheffler)

They're also in sequential order, with a dark storm brewing, introducing us to aspects of the narrative again.  

Endpapers from Is it because? (Ross)

Is it because? By Tony Ross is a part of a set of materials from the British Council Learn English website. The endpapers are covered in question marks, reinforcing the question the narrator is asking. 

All these examples show us endpapers which are the same at the back and the front. But there are end papers which are not the same. We’re going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury has two different endpaper sets. The front ones show us an empty sea shore, possibly early morning, before we set off for our bear hunt. The back endpapers show us a dark sky at the same beach, with the bear walking away from us.  Dejected and unwanted, poor bear.

Front endpapers from We're going on a bear hunt (Rosen and Oxenbury)

Back endpapers from We're going on a bear hunt (Rosen and Oxenbury)

Down by the cool of the pool  by Tony Mitton and Guy Parker-Rees also has two different endpaper sets.  The front depict a cool bluey pink watery scene, the pool.  Possibly reflecting the pink sky as the sun rises in the morning. The back ones are a delicious orangey yellow, the sun is shining right into the pool.

Front endpapers from Down by the cool of the pool  (Mitton and Parker-Rees)

Back endpapers from Down by the cool of the pool  (Mitton and Parker-Rees)

Handa’s surprise by Aileen Browne has a wavey line of delicately drawn fruit from the story on the front endpapers, and the back ones show us the animals who appeared in the story. There's a sequential order to both sets.

Front endpapers from Handa's surprise (Browne)

Back endpapers from Handa's surprise (Browne)

Suddenly! by Colin McNaughton has front endpapers which confirm, 'where there's a pig, there's a wolf!'  For this is what our story is about, a  wolf  following an unsuspecting pig.

Front endpapers from Suddenly! (McNaughton)

But as in all "Tom and Jerry" like comedy, the poor wolf never manages, and the back endpapers are a second ending, with the wolf being taken to hospital!

Back endpapers from Suddenly! (McNaughton)

Many endpapers can surprise us by extending the story and giving us more.  One of my favourite picture books, is Say Hello! by Jack and Michael Foreman.  The blurb on the back of the books says: "When someone's looking lonely and in need of a friend, there's one little word that can help…" The front endpapers are a cool blue, and blue line is used throughout the book, defining places and backgrounds. A little boy watches a group of other childen playing and it is a friendly dog who makes the first move to invite him to play.  A double spread of children watching as the dog jumps up and licks the boy is accompanied by "No need to be the lonely one.  When someone's feeling left out, low, it doesn't take much to say …" Turn the page and the book ends with the children calling out a huge group "Hello!" 

Back endpapers from Say Hello! (Foreman & Foreman)

The back endpapers show us how we can say 'Hello' in lots of languages, black pencil line font, on the same cool blue background.  Truly spectacular.

Endpapers are amazing things, don't ever forget to pay them the attention they deserve. Go back to them after you've read the picture book and talk about them with the children. If they are there, they're definitely worth looking at.   

Six Men: a story about war

Front cover

David McKee created the picturebook Six Men very early in his career. First published in the UK in 1972, it's now only available new in the US edition I think.  I blogged about another of his picturebooks, Tusk Tusk a while back, also about conflict and war, but published a little later (1978).  These two picturebooks are similar in theme, but quite different visually.  Unlike Tusk, tusk, which is brightly coloured, Six men is black and white, the only colour appearing on the covers, the deep brown, which, as in all good picturebooks, unites both back and front covers, creating the heavy ground and a heavier sun.

Back and front covers

On the publisher's website it has been described by Ken and Sylvia Marantz, who write:  "Once upon a time six men search for and finally find a land where they can settle down and grow rich. But they fear thieves, so they hire six strong guards. When no robbers arrive, the men worry that paying the guards is a waste of money. So they put them to work capturing a neighboring farm. Enjoying the power, they add soldiers and capture more land. Some, who escape their expansion, work and live happily together across the river, but still worry about the six belligerent men. So in case of attack, they take turns being both farmers and soldiers. Unfortunately one day the bored soldiers on both sides of the river shoot at a passing duck. The anxious armies, fearing they are attacked, gather and a mighty battle begins. In the end, only six men on either side are left. And so they set off in opposite directions, beginning again the search for a place to live and work in peace. ..."

The story is one we all know, the causes of war.  The picturebook is a modern-day parable and very suitable for older students, I'd say teens in particular, but if the topic is suitable and the children's level of English is good it could be shared with children down to about 9 or 10 years old. 

Peritextually, other than the covers, it's not very exciting.  Lots of white pages and space, with the two word title sitting alone in the middle of the page.  

Opening 1

On the spreads, the white space is used cleverly balancing McKee's illustrations, which are made up entirely of fine line drawings in black ink.  If you look at opening 1 the recto page is full of neat lines juxtaposing each other, creating a sort of mountain of jagged rock for the six men to climb over. The verso contains those oft heard words "Once upon a time ..." and and single circle, representing the sun, hanging empty, yet together with the white space, balanced against the rocky crags of the facing page. 

I don't now if McKee was influenced by Paul Klee, but as I look more closely at his lines they remind me of some of Klee's work, though lack the colour which would have been present in the Swiss painter's masterpieces. 

The balance that McKee manages to obtain on each spread is visually very satisfying. McKee also uses pattern and symmetry very successfully.  

Opening 4

Look here at opening 4, where he has illustrated six soldiers.  They all look alike at a glance, their helmets resembling bullet heads, yet as we peer closely we can see they each have a different expression. Opening 5 is similar in its patterning ...

Opening 5

The soldiers are shown with their helmets placed neatly together, creating a whole symmetrical helmet Edam cheese shape. The change in perspective, from eye level to birds eye view is odd. The six men are laid along the verso edge, eyeballs upwards - it makes you want to turn the book round and follow their gaze upwards towards the lazy soldiers, thus returning to the more comforting eye level.  Pattern appears in a number of spreads:

Opening 8

Here in opening 8, the soldiers helmets fit neatly into the body of each soldier next to them, the drawing is almost geometrical, it's a delight. 

Opening 9

The six men's greed culminates in opening 9, where we are told that they "ruled over the land from high watch tower down to the great river." A long shot view of the land shows us the soldiers at work. You can just make out the platoon chasing two figures towards the river, which is only visible as water because boats sit upon it.  From here onwards the drawings begin to take on a symmetry that reflects two sets of men at war with each other, for those chased men cross the river and begin living with farmers, who as yet have not been conquered. Together they create an army to fight that of the six men across the river.

They took turns in working as farmers and training as soldiers and "in this way they became prepared to face an enemy:" And so it began. A soldier on each side of the river bank ... symmetry representing the two sides of the story, the conquering and those not wanting to be conquered. 

Opening 11

All  because of a duck ... the alarm was called and each soldier rushed back to his army. 

Opening 13

Each army separated from the other by a carefully drawn, thin black line. Fear spread and the war began...They fight ... 

Opening 14

... and they die. 

Opening 15

These soldiers are pilled upon each other, bullet shaped helmets nose to nose with the squared ones... it's a muddle but a neat one, with soldiers fitting into each other as they die in unison. Once the battle was over everyone was dead, every one, but for six men on either side...

Opening 17

And so the story begins again, as the six men search "for a place where they might live in peace."  If used as a prompt, the simple black lines in this picturebook, stark, sharp and pointy and very clear in their message, open doors to discussion and interpretation.  

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via here

The Ruth Gorge

So just how big is the Ruth Gorge? Imagine flying through the jagged mountains above and landing in an isolated snow covered amphitheater surrounded by sheer rock walls 1,000 feet high. Specifically, let's say you landed in the amphitheater pictured below. The cliffs on the left side of the snowy basin tower 1,000 feet over the glacier. You'd probably think it was fantastic, and would feel lucky to be in such a pristine mountain environment.

Imagine your surprise, then, when you found out this amphitheater was just a tiny part of a structure so big it rivals all the mountains on Earth. If you were to walk across the basin and peek over the foreground ridge you would be staring into an abyss 3,000 feet down to the Ruth Glacier. Looking across the gorge to the northwest you would see Mt. Dickey rising in sheer granite cliffs a mile high over the ice. Those granite cliffs are one of the largest rock faces on earth. Even so, the cliff continues downward beneath the ice. In 1983 the ice was measured to be 3,800 feet thick. Add that to the mile high granite face above the ice.

Looking north you could see the Moose's Tooth, rising even higher than Dickey but not all at once, and 15 miles beyond that Mt. McKinley would recline back into the sky twice as high as everything else. The Ruth Glacier is 40 miles long. It averages one mile wide.

Looking downstream in the Ruth Gorge. That amphitheater previously mentioned, with it's 1,000 foot cliffs is just poking into the picture on the far left. Under the clouds on that side you can see some little yellow cliffs leading down to a patch of snow, followed by darker snow dusted cliffs. That snow patch between the two colors of rock is the snowy basin. The yellow cliffs are the ones on the right side of the previous photo. You can match up the snow chutes.

The first time i saw the Ruth Gorge i was flying to base camp on Mt. McKinley, just for the sights. I was amazed at how close to the the pilot was flying to the cliffs, which were absolutely huge, filling up the entire window. Then i spotted some color on the cliffs, which i thought must be a climber.

I told my friend Patrick just in case he was missing it. At that moment both our jaws hit the floor as we were kicked in the head by reality. We weren't looking at a human climbing the wall, we were looking at another AIRPLANE flying in between us and the cliffs, the same cliffs i thought we were dangerously close too! In other words, we had just been proven to be stupid animals that didn't even understand what we were looking at.

Taking off from Talkeetna, which is in the middle of flatlands, you fly over the vast semi-marshlands called muskeg. I think the one above is the Tokositna River.

A visit from my friend Jimmy was a good excuse to do the trip again. I hadn't been back since the days i used film (I need to go on more flight tours)! This time i took the Wickersham Wall flight (an even bigger wall of rock than what you can see in the Gorge). Unfortunately, the weather was typically unpredictable and in the time it took the pilot to get fuel some storms had moved into the mountains, sealing off the north side of the range. There was plenty to see on the south side, and i was delighted to get to land in a new spot on the way back.

On these flight tours you always take a megaton of pictures. The only thing i don't like about it is how obstructed the view is and how incredibly scratched up the windows always are. I've narrowed these down from about 85 and tried to locate them on google earth.

Flying over the Tokosha Mountains. The Ruth Glacier meanders in the background. The Tokosha are a little group of cool looking mountains about 4,000 feet in height, reaching up to 6,000 feet above sea level. The are highly visible from the Parks Highway. 

Flying across the lower reaches of the Ruth Glacier. I could have had a great time if they could have dropped me off here for some exploration.

Looks like a satellite image.

A beautiful ice-dammed lake on the side of the Tokositna Glacier. Looks like the water level has dropped. These things come and go.

The impressive upper reaches of the Tokositna Glacier are a  textbook study of lateral and medial moraines.

Looking back downvalley at the the Tokositna.

For a while the pilot was flying in confusing directions as he tried to find a way through the snowstorms, and i lost track of where we were. We were in a thick cloud and without warning burst out of it directly in front of Mt. Foraker.

Jimmy was having a good time in the back of the plane with two windows to look through.

We veered right as to not smash into Foraker and flew towards Denali base camp across the massive upper reaches of the Kahiltna Glacier. The Kahiltna relieves the slopes of both McKinley and Foraker.

Very large crevasses on the Kahiltna.
Lakes scattered in a maze of ice mesas.
Looks like something under an electron microsope. I assure you it is quite large.

Water far below pools up and tries to find a way down before winter returns.

Base camp wasn't very pleasant so we headed east. This is the back, or west side of what i think is called Mt. Wake in the center.

Giant fins of granite on the side of Mt. Bradley.

Mt. Bradley and the Great Gorge in the background. The south face of Mt. Dickey was on the other side of the aircraft, and is so large i couldn't get any meaningful image from across the pilot's lap.

The massive granite complex of The Moose's Tooth.

Things started to get abstract as we flew over parallel walls of granite with neatly rectangular canyons between each toe.

Another view of the walls with a surreal  Antarctic icescape in the background.

Finally the pilot decided to give us a break and land. This is looking down the Ruth Gorge. The mile high cliffs of Mt. Dickey are on the right. A bit of Mt. Barrille on the far right.

Outside at last! The sunlight was scorching around here. Our Dehavilland at the base of what i think is called the Gargoyle.

Looking into one of the valleys across from where we landed.

Here's a labelled panoramic of the high peaks on the west side of the Amphitheater. Mt. McKinley is just peaking out above the clouds. It's worth pointing out that "the Roosters Comb" is a mountain feature far in front of Mt. Huntington but the contrast here makes it look like the same mountain.

The impressive view to the north.

Above all those mountains were the lower flanks of Mt. McKinley.

A peak through the clouds at some of the upper flanks of McKinley.

We took off again and headed down the gorge. Mt. Barrille is the first on the right. Not pictured (because i didn't spot it) and just off to the right is a cool hut you can stay in called Mountain House. Mt. Dickey is the next mountain, and the tallest. Mt. Dickey is just so big that i couldn't get a picture of it except from a long distance.

All the mountains on this side of the gorge burst out of the ice like giant teeth. This one is Mt. Bradley, followed by the north and east face of Mt. Wake (pictured previously from the west face).

On the east side of the Ruth Gorge stands The Broken Tooth (on the left), and a surprisingly accessible looking valley beneath it.

We followed the Ruth Glacier downstream until we returned to a part of the world that could support life.

The rivers up here are always changing course. Here you can see traces of the old river course where now stands forest. At the top you can see where it flowed more recently, suggesting that it now is cutting back into the trees. It's a well known fact, but people always seemed completely surprised when the river swallows their house that they build so close to the edge.