THE STONECUTTER by Gerald McDermott

 
The Stonecutter is a 1975 retelling of a Japanese folk tale by Gerald McDermott. The story, which features themes of being content with one’s situation in life and being careful what one wishes for is simple, yet deeply profound.

But what makes this book amazing is McDermott’s art, which is nothing short of phenomenal. Here, McDermott has formed his illustrations as collages made from paper colored with gouache; this gives them a rich visual texture. The characters and environments are done in the blocky, somewhat abstract style McDermott excels at, and which spark the imagination. In all, the art is similar to his prior work on the outstanding Arrow to the Sun.

McDermott is a king of illustration, and his art is rarely more spectacular than it is here. It makes The Stonecutter a wonder.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

JAPANESE CHILDREN’S STORIES FROM SILVER BELLS

Japanese Children’s Stories from Silver Bells is a 1952 collection of stories from Tomikazu Matsui’s Hiroshima-based children’s magazine Silver Bells, which was exported to the United States, and which featured stories from around the world. Most of the stories here are adapted from Japanese folktales; all are by Japanese authors and illustrators.

The book’s target audience is children between the ages of four and nine, and that seems about right. The stories are all short and simple, although there will be some words you’ll have to define for your kid (and maybe for yourself) – “wen,” for example.

All the stories are fully illustrated (most in full color), in a variety of media, including watercolors and oil pastels. The introduction declares these illustrations to be “noteworthy for their Japanese flavor, serving as an introduction to the remarkable knack the Japanese artist has always possessed in the realms of line, color and form” (p. 3). That may be overstating things a bit, but most of them are definitively Japanese in style, and they are a strength of this book.

Japanese Children’s Stories from Silver Bells is an endearing little book, with quality stories and illustrations.  

RECOMMENDED

P.S. You can learn more about Tomikazu Matsui and the impressive work he did with Silver Bells here.

ANANSI THE SPIDER MAN by Philip M. Sherlock

Anansi the Spider Man is a 1954 collection of folk tales by Philip M. Sherlock, who gathered them in Jamaica. They all feature the spider Anansi, a trickster of West African and West Indian folklore, and his dealings with the other animals.

Not surprisingly, then, every story features somebody trying to trick somebody else. Since Anansi gets conned nearly as much as he gets over on others, the reader never gets too fed up with him, and, on the whole, these stories are rather charming.

Marcia Brown provides the illustrations, which are simple pen-and-ink affairs. They’re a little bit rough, and are reminiscent of Jules Feiffer’s work on The Phantom Tollbooth.

On the whole, Anansi the Spider Man is a solid and entertaining collection of folktales.

RECOMMENDED

WEMBI, THE SINGER OF STORIES by Alice D. Cobble

Wembi, the Singer of Stories is a 1959 collection of twenty-five African folktales gathered by Alice D. Cobble during the twenty-five years she was a missionary in the Belgian Congo. It is illustrated by Doris Hallas.

The stories here mostly center around animals, and they’re always decent but never amazing. Many of these stories feature shockingly bizarre turns of events, which I can only chalk up to a cultural divide between African and Western culture. In some of these stories, the protagonist does something horrible to somebody else, and is lauded for it; in one, the protagonist, having committed no transgression, gets eaten, and that’s the end.

Cobble’s Wembi frame is in many cases more interesting than the tales Wembi tells. Here the reader will learn about many of the practices and traditions of the native Congolese, and about the concerns and issues of a shift toward Western culture.

Halas’s illustrations are relatively few; they are best described as adequate and unremarkable. I found the cover design, which is not by Halas, considerably more impressive.

Wembi, the Singer of Stories is a nice little look into Central African culture, even if its stories are just so-so.

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