Chalk by Bill Thomson
Marshall Cavendish, 2010

On a rainy day, three children go to the park to play. When they find a bag full of sidewalk chalk and start drawing on the asphalt, they discover that whatever they draw becomes real. A sun dissipates the rain, a swarm of butterflies flies all around, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex fast becomes more terrifying than anticipated.

Wordless books are some of my favourite picture books, and Chalk is no exception. Without words, illustrations become paramount and Bill Thomson makes his acrylic and colored pencil drawings look almost like photographs: the reflections are bright and the different textures (skin, plastic, fabric) are realistic. The children's facial expressions when they discover the power of the chalk are wonderful, with one girl appearing almost crazily delighted and the boy looking very mischievous (guess who draws the carnivorous dinosaur?). I particularly loved the spread where monarch butterflies were magically taking flight from the asphalt.

Thomson uses perspective to his great advantage as well, by showing one of the frightened children fleeing up a playground ladder from below to accentuate her wide-eyed, wide-mouthed terror at being chased by a T. Rex. The perspectives he used created tension themselves, such as when the reader is in the covered slide with two of the children looking out at the dinosaur's menacing teeth, and the scene involving the demise of the T. Rex is masterfully done.

I hope Bill Thomson makes more like Chalk, as it's remarkable.

Farm by Elisha Cooper
Orchard Books (Scholastic), 2010

Farm takes readers from early spring through to late autumn on a modern family farm. Although it is strictly speaking a fictional picture book, Farm reads much like nonfiction with it's descriptive chronological text. At the end, I felt as if I had watched a months-long, time-lapse film of the farm.

Cooper's text, while concise, results in a very atmospheric book. Phrases like "even the clouds seem to make sound as they bump across the sky"* and "to the south are more cornfields, which smell sort of buttery" permeate the book with evocative details of farm life. It is these details, the minutiae of farm life from squeaking corn to the smell of the barn, that made me feel as if I had been there. Despite the detail the text manages to show the reader instead of telling them, leaving me to fill in blanks.

The use of white space in the watercolour illustrations also reflect this sense of filling in blanks. From the farm animals to the children doing chores, all are illustrated with a stark white background, and without much detail except for some animal close-ups. The feeling of wide open spaces is tangible when Cooper shows panoramas of the farm, which are dominated by the sky filling the vast majority of the page.

A subtle humour is at play as well, which I enjoyed: describing the lazy activities of the month of June, "Bear [the cat] plays with a snake then eats it (some animals enjoy June more than others)." A bit dark? Sure. But the cycle of life is alluded to every so often in Farm, and rightly so.

This is a poetic and evocative book about the day-to-day, season-to-season life on a family farm. Lovely.

*I would provide page numbers for quotes but the book is not paginated.