Emily the Chickadee

Is it possible to fall in love at first sight with a black-capped little bird? Yes, girls and boys fall in love at first sight with puppies and kittens. So why not with a five-inch chickadee?

One spring morning, a little girl looks up a tree and sees a chickadee. The black-capped little bird returns the little girl’s gaze and they know in their hearts that they’ve found a friend in each other.

A true story, Emily the Chickadee is a three-part series about the friendship between a little girl and a black-capped chickadee. Written by Carol Zelaya and illustrated by Kristin Metcalf, the first book is entitled, Emily Waits for Her Family.

Approximately six by six inches, the hard-bound book consists of 32 pages, but the story proper unfolds in ten double spreads. The layout has the text on the left side and the illustration on the right side.

The text is a narrative poem which consists of six to eight lines of verse on each side of every double spread. The lines burst with life, enthusiasm, a sense of expectation, surprise, and joy in the wonders of nature.

Warm and happy shades of green dominate each page of illustration which bleeds into the borderless imagination of children. There are yellows, blues, browns, pinks, purples, and lavenders, but the black-capped chickadee with her white cheeks and brown breast is always in the limelight.

In fact, the nameless girl appears only five times while Emily, the chickadee, appears on every page. Ironically, it is the nameless girl who gives the chickadee a name, Emily.

It seems that the little girl has been a chickadee watcher because she can tell in one look that her new friend Emily is going to lay eggs soon. True enough, Emily starts building a nest the very next morning.

To create suspense, the first-person narrator – the girl – addresses the reader and asks:
“Can you guess where she might be?
Do you see the Chickadee?”

A child reader will surely want to turn the page, right now!

To whet children’s natural curiosity, each stanza, starting with the second double spread, begins with the question, “What do I see?” It certainly reminds one of Eric Carle’s well-loved picture book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?

In addition to the visual images, there are auditory ones as well: “Emily sits on the fence chirping happily.” With flowers all over the garden, there are also images which appeal to one’s sense of smell.

What does it all mean? Child readers will probably not be able to articulate the meaning of the story beyond the literal level of witnessing and rejoicing in the wonders of creation.

Hopefully, children everywhere will imbibe values embedded in the story and will share the nameless little girl’s respect for the bird. Unobtrusively, she observes the bird as it builds a nest till its family becomes complete. She never disturbs the chickadee.

Does this book have any weakness?

In the ninth double spread, the picture-text relationship disappoints. The text oozes with suspense and makes for a compelling page turn:
“Another surprise is waiting for me.
The nest is empty… finally.”

But the illustration does not show the empty nest at all. There is no element of surprise in it.

Is there a symbolic or metaphorical level in this book? Again, most children will probably not bother to extend the meaning of this simple, adorable book. But I started to think deeper when my 5-year old granddaughter asked where the birdie daddy-to-be was.

I said he was probably busy working.

I read up on chickadees and learned that the females choose their mates and they remain monogamous. The male chickadee is a hands-on dad who helps build the nest and feed the birdlings.

So where was the birdie daddy-to-be?

Is this book, Emily Waits for Her Family, a metaphor for single mothers? Is the little girl nameless because she represents abandoned children who grow up in orphanages? Is it the reason she never smiles in the pictures although the text is bursting with joy?

Maybe I’m over-reading this simple, adorable little book about the black-capped chickadee who returns the little girl’s gaze and instantly know in their hearts that they’ve found a friend in each other.

Maybe I should read the other two books in the series….

Stephanie Ho and the 'Samsui Girl'

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. – Day 2, February 18, 2009.

Have you ever wanted to be a strong woman? Stephanie Ho, an educator turned historian turned writer-illustrator told us about a real-life strong woman and a girl who wanted some respect from her mother.

Stephanie is also Singaporean like Suchen Christine Lim. But unlike Suchen, Stephanie said she thought she was English when she was young. She went to the US with her parents when she was two.

She hated going back to Singapore and refused accepting her Singaporean heritage and identity for many years. She refused using her Chinese name and insisted on being called ‘Stephanie.’

Ironically, Stephanie majored in history, taught history, then became a museum curator and history researcher. Her professional training has forced her to introspect, to look inside herself as well as her heritage and identity.

While working in the museum, her boss told her to try and make history ‘not too dull’ for the children who’d come to visit for their required learning journeys. And so she started trying to view history from the eyes of children.

Stephanie said that she has always been drawing and sketching even as a student. A self-taught artist, she credits having graduated from the ‘School of Long & Boring Meetings.’ She’d amuse herself by drawing and sketching.

While she was in Australia doing her Ph.D. in Public History, she sent in her manuscript to the First-Time Writers & Illustrators Publishing Grant by the National Book Development Council of Singapore.

Needless to say, Stephanie’s manuscript was chosen and her first picture chapter book was published in 2006. She made an important decision with the publication of her first children’s book. She reclaimed her Chinese identity publicly and used her Chinese name, Lee-Ling Ho.

Putting her professional training as a historian to good use, Lee-Ling’s first book, Samsui Girl, is a historical fiction about Amber, a 10-year old girl, who makes friends with an elderly Samsui woman.

The Samsui women of Singapore are touted as the first feminists who championed equal rights between men and women. They were immigrants from China and have always been fiercely independent.

They worked as laborers in construction sites and proved that they could do what the men could. Most of them remained single. Only very few of them are still alive. It is one of the few elderly Samsui women whom Amber, the Samsui Girl, befriends.

Through their friendship, the life of a Samsui woman unfolds before the eyes of the readers. Through their friendship, Amber learns independence and hard work. The book ends happily with Amber earning her mother’s respect.

Stephanie… oops, Lee-Ling, said some of her friends thought Samsui Girl wouldn’t work because it had no magic. It’s plain historical fiction. But Lee-Ling says the book has been accepted by schoolchildren.

And so Lee-Ling published her second book, Wayang Girl, in 2008. (Wayang is Chinese opera.) She has also been commissioned to write other picture books which champion children’s rights. One of those books is The Boy with a Tree on his Head which exemplifies multiculturalism and racial harmony without being didactic.

Quite appropriately, the second day of the seminar ended with a buffet dinner and cultural show which gave me a glimpse of Malaysia’s history and heritage.

I went to bed thinking that the Samsui Girl has caught her very own star!

Oliver Jeffers: How to Catch a Star

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. – Day 2, February 18, 2009.

Have you ever tried catching a star? Did you get lost while trying? Did you find your way back home?

Have you tried eating books in order to get smart? Would you like to play detective to find out why trees are disappearing from the forest?

Oliver Jeffers, a multi-awarded children’s book writer and illustrator from Northern Ireland, is a brilliant new talent who has written about all of the above.

On the second day of the seminar, he took us on a guided tour inside the picture book process the Jeffers style!

With a degree in visual communication from the University of Ulster, he works as a freelance painter, illustrator, and picture-book maker. Now based in New York, he travels around the world on the wings of art-fueled jet planes.

How to Catch a Star was Jeffers’ debut picture storybook in 2004. Without any trace of arrogance, he said that he sent his manuscript to the top 10 publishers of children’s books. One of them signed him up, pronto!

As a writer and illustrator, he said that he begins with an idea, then sketches something that represents the idea. Sometimes, he sketches a picture, then writes something to describe the picture.

He said he doesn’t begin with a plot outline or a character sketch. He simply follows where the idea takes him by sketching and writing at the same time. He draws and re-draws from different perspectives. He also writes and re-writes. He said that every word matters. One word can change the meaning of an illustration.

He makes it a point to show his work to test audiences. Finally, he shows it to his editor. Being Irish, he sometimes clashes with his American editor because of cultural and linguistic differences.

What’s special about a boy who wants to catch a star? He dreams. He perseveres. He stretches beyond his reach. He never gives up although he seems to be all alone with no one to help him or cheer him up.

In the process of trying to catch his very own star, the boy is shown in magical, humorous, and fantastical moves.

Jeffers’ illustration is simple yet profound. His canvas or page is almost empty. There’s very little text and the illustration is mostly simple figures on a panoramic background.

For example, the first two pages say, “Once there was a boy, and the boy loved stars very much.” The illustration shows the evening sky with four white stars being gazed upon from below by a cartoon-like boy with stick legs.

But Jeffers said that he researches everything meticulously – the sky, the moon, the stars, the sun, light and shadow, ocean waves, trees, sailing, flying, digestion, paper production, printing, etc.

He said he’s been inspired by Shel Silverstein, Quentin Blake, and Eric Carle. Most of all, he always remembers what his Dad has advised him, “Never let the truth get out of your story.”

Granny and Suchen Christine Lim

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. -- 17 February 2009. It was already 5:30 p.m. and yet there was another presentation. I wanted to protest, I wanted to excuse myself, I wanted to sneak into my room, just one floor below the Executive Lounge.

But good manners prevailed over childishness.

“Please wake me up if I snore,” I told my table mate.

Suchen Christine Lim posing graciously with me.

The last speaker on the first day of the seminar was a slender lady with a gentle voice. She was a reserved speaker compared to the flamboyant, expressive, and gregarious Janet Evans of UK.

A Singaporean, she is Suchen Christine Lim. She began by reading a poem of hers from her book, The Lies That Build a Marriage.

The poem’s about a child who doesn’t speak a word of English on her first day in school. The child is bewildered, scared, and lost. Then a teacher reads stories from picture books to the class.
The child is assured by the illustrations and the sound of the words. She doesn’t understand the words but the illustrations open the world of imagination to her. After two years, the child becomes fluent in English.

Suchen Christine Lim closed the book she was reading, then said, “That child was me. My advice to teachers? Keep reading aloud to your pupils even if they don’t seem to understand. One day, they will.”

Suchen said she was number 44 out of 45 pupils when she was in Grades 1 and 2. Then she shot up to number 3 in third grade! Stephen D. Krashen, an American reading advocate, would love to meet Suchen and document her early reading experiences.

However, although Suchen had become an achiever, all was not well. Suchen was soon reading on her own, fluently and critically. She said she was agitated that her Chinese family, culture, and identity were not in the books she read.

The solution? She wrote books about her own people.

She read to us a simple book entitled, Granny, and illustrated by Roy Foo. She wrote it in 1990 for the Ministry of Education of Singapore. It was almost aborted because it was deemed inappropriate for children.

Thank heavens, there’s a tenacious and steadfast child in the slender and soft-spoken Suchen. Surreptitiously, she asked her colleagues to read Granny and to read it to real children.

Her colleagues told her they cried after reading the story. And the children cried after listening to the story. They all cried and they all loved Granny.

Thanks to their honest and courageous tears, the book has lived and has been re-issued this year for official use of the Ministry of Education of Singapore!

What is Granny all about? It’s about a Chinese grandmother and granddaughter in Singapore. They don’t have names, just granny and child.

The book shows the everyday relationship between them. Like every curious child, she asks many ‘why’ and ‘what if’ questions. One day, death snatches Granny away from this curious and adorable child. The book ends with the little girl lying in bed, caressing the quilt her granny had made for her.

Roy Foo’s simple illustration matches Suchen’s simple story. And yet the illustration deepens the impact of the text and honors the elderly as well as the culture of Chinese families in Singapore.

Taken together, Suchen’s text and Roy’s illustration tell a powerful story which score’s a bull’s eye because it goes straight to the readers’ heart. Its simplicity is its strength. There’s no sentimentalism, no mawkish tears. All it offers is innocent grief, quiet acceptance, and loving remembrance.

As I write this article, I cry quiet tears for a child I never met and never will. His name is Julian Carlo Miguel “Amiel” Alcantara, a 10-year old pupil at the Ateneo Grade School in Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Philippines.

The present tense in the previous sentence isn’t a grammatical mistake. I am deliberately choosing the present tense.

Amiel’s young life was snuffed out by a van gone berserk in his school’s parking lot last Tuesday, February 24.

Death isn’t an inappropriate subject matter for children’s picture storybooks.

Someday, I wish Amiel’s family, classmates, and friends would be able to read Jenny Angel and Granny. I wish they’d be comforted and healed.

Janet Evans and Jenny Angel

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. – Four fabulous days in a fantastical world – the realm of illustrated children’s book!

Janet Evans, vivacious and passionate, showed us the magic door which opened into the world beyond the here and now. It is a world which enchants, entrances, imagines, comforts, heals, and nurtures.

With Janet’s exceptionally animated presentation, the ‘Animating Literature Seminar,’ hosted by the British Council of Malaysia had begun. It was the most incredible seminar I had ever attended with 20 delegates, nine speakers/facilitators, and six seminar staffers.

No, I wasn’t a speaker. I was an ordinary delegate and I felt as if I’d become a child again. The speakers stayed with us the whole time, interacted with us, and joined our workshops.

Janet was the first speaker on Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at the Executive Lounge on the 19th floor of Concorde Hotel in downtown Kuala Lumpur. It was a balmy afternoon outside and we had just eaten a lavish buffet lunch.

I had travelled by bus from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur for five hours on that particular Tuesday. Having left Singapore at 7:30 a.m., I felt very sleepy. But Janet’s presentation was so compelling that it didn’t give me any chance to doze off. She talked about how children read and respond to picture books.

The part I liked best was when she shared with us some of the illustrated books which her pupils in the United Kingdom were reading. She read each of them aloud while holding the books and showing us power point slides.

I was greatly touched by the book Jenny Angel by Margaret Wild and illustrator Anne Spudvilas. It’s about the death of a brother whom Jenny tries very hard to protect. But the inevitable comes to pass. It is incomprehensible. It is a loss and a pain beyond words, beyond pictures.

Author Margaret Wild and illustrator Anne Spudvilas hold the readers' hand and help them come to terms with death through Jenny Angel.

I must say that Janet read the book with so much heart and compassion and humanity. We hushed into the silence of our hearts, cried quietly with Jenny, and hugged her tenderly…