Mind Me Good Now! & Lady Kaguya's Secret: A Japanese Tale. & The Very Hungry Lion: A Folktale & Three Monks, No Water. (Book Reviews/Recensions).

Kertzer, Adrienne

Mind Me Good Now! Lynette Comissiong, illus. Marie Lafrance. Toronto: Annick, 1997. 32 pp. $16.95. $6.95 pa.; Lady Kaguya's Secret: A Japanese Tale. Jirina Marton, illus. Jirina Marton. Toronto: Annick, 1997. 48 pp. $19.95.; The Very Hungry Lion: A Folktale.. Gita Wolf, illus. Indrapramit Roy. Toronto: Annick, 1996.24 pp. $24.95, $29.95 Signed Limited Edition; Three Monks, No Water. Ting-Xing Ye, illus. Harvey Chan. Toronto: Annick, 1997. 32 pp. $16.95. $6.95 pa.

The flexible ability of picture books to introduce young children to different cultures' folktales is superbly demonstrated by four picture books recently published by Annick Press. The books are not made to order: Some are retellings of traditional tales, tales that the authors may themselves have heard as children; another is invented to explain an old Chinese saying the author heard as a child; and yet another is an adaptation prompted by the author's visit to a foreign country. What the picture books share, however, is a recognition of how illustration itself can convey cultural information to the child reader. This fact alone makes the books worth noting.

Lynette Comissiong, identified on the back cover of Mind Me Good Now! as both a specialist in Caribbean folklore and currently Head Librarian for the Trinidad Public Library System, tells a cautionary tale of the Cocoya, who, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, feeds children in order to feast on them later. The children, Dalby and Tina, are warned to stay away from the bridge (the font size grows larger as Mama Nettie's voice presumably gets louder and we know immediately that the children will disobey). As in Hansel and Gretel where it is the boy who leads his sister to the witch's house, but it is the sister who saves the brother, here too, the boy is the one to disobey, but the girl is the one who saves him after the Cocoya, Mama Zee, tricks them into the house. Tina is the one who remembers what her father has told her about Cocoyas, from their fear of daylight and crosses, to their inability to refuse the requests of little girls. So even as Mama Zee sharpens her machete, presumably in preparation for turning Dalby into supper, Tina repeatedly tricks and delays the Cocoya until sunrise destroys her. Like many cautionary tales, Mind Me Good Now! teaches its superficial lesson about obedience even as it proves that the disobedient child can trick the evil being. Unlike many of the folktales more readily avail able to Canadian children, Comissiong energizes her story with a rhythm and dialect of another place: "Veni veni poignard moi,/ Veni machete ah make you shine tonight." The strongly coloured acrylic illustrations by Marie Lafrance add to this energy as they fill the page, refusing all straight lines, encircling the children with Mama Zee's frightening power. Even the typeset is unable to sit still as it is shaped to match the meaning of the text.

Jirina Marton has a different relationship to the story she tells and illustrates in Lady Kaguya's Secret: A Japanese Tale. Since emigrating to Canada from Prague, Marton has published several books with Annick; in Lady Kaguya's Secret, she adapts a Japanese folktale about the Moon Princess. Lady Kaguya's Secret is only available in hardcover; the oil paintings that are the illustrations have been separately exhibited, but this is not to deny that the book itself is an artwork with a careful aesthetic balance between illustration and prose. Illustrations like those in the opening of the bamboocutter and his wife designed to imitate Japanese scrolls and the accompanying prose that looks like calligraphy immediately capture the reader's attention as Marton retells the story of the Moon Princess's temporary sojourn on earth. Adopted by the childless couple who find her and named Kaguya-hime (Radiant Princess), Kaguya refuses to marry and sets up impossible quests to deter her suitors. Only when the Emperor falls in love and proposes does she explain to her parents that her refusal has always been prompted by her knowledge that her stay on earth can only be temporary. By the time Kaguya does fall in love with the Emperor, the Moon King has come for her; her adoptive parents refuse her gift of immortality as does the Emperor, pouring the elixir of life over the fire he has set on the "mountain top closest to the moon." It is this act that explains, according to the last lines of the text, why ever since then "a small trace of smoke ... drift[s] towards the sky from the top of Mount Fuji."

The romantic sadness of Lady Kaguya's Secret with its exploration of the conflict between mortals and immortals is very different from the tone of Gita Wolf's The Very Hungry Lion: A Folktale, but the careful attention to the artistic presentation is equally impressive. Wolf is the director of Tara, a new children's press based in Madras, India. Dedicated to educational principles similar to those endorsed by Annick, Tara has co-published The Very Hungry Lion with Annick in two hardcover editions, one a signed, limited edition. A fable about a foolish lion who is predictably and comically outwitted by each of his potential victims, The Very Hungry Lion is a most unusual picture book in that its silk screen images are done on paper handmade from cotton fibre and rice husks, and the drawings are based on the Warli tradition of folk painting that originates in Western India. Such labour-intensive work, Tara notes, offered employment to eight people for six months; this production method also places the book with in the tradition of a handmade paper industry that thrived in India from the 12th to the 19th century. To learn this, the child reader need only turn to the note at the back of the book, but even before then the child reader will sense the book's difference for it will be evident as soon as she touches the book's paper.

Finally, Three Monks, No Water demonstrates yet another way to approach folktales. The author, Ting-Xing Ye, invented the story to explain a Chinese saying her mother often used when Ye and her siblings wouldn't do their chores. This information is provided in the author's "Afterword" as is a translation of the Chinese calligraphy that Harvey Chan has drawn throughout the book. A further note explains the meaning of the seal that appears on the front and back cover. Thus Three Monks, No Water does not simply translate a Chinese tale into English; it tells in English a tale invented to explain a Chinese proverb, and in the illustrations reminds its English readers that design itself has meaning, that in order to understand the story, we must be able to read the pictures as well. And when the pictures are as exceptionally crafted and culturally respectful as these four Annick books, such reading is well worthwhile.