The Slowpoke Picture Book Gift Guide

I’m willing to bet that a picture book is the perfect holiday gift for someone in your life, so I compiled a list of great ones. These are all books for kids, though this list was not really made with kids in mind. They’re books that mean a lot to me as an illustrator and children’s literature enthusiast. Some of them also happen to be books my kids love. All of them are from my own collection and well worn.

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Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor
Written and illustrated by Mervyn Peake

This was the first book by prolific illustrator and Gormenghast author Mervyn Peake to see publication. It was printed in the UK in 1939. The first edition was stored in a warehouse that was bombed during the Blitz and nearly every copy of it was destroyed. If you happen upon a true first edition of this book from 1939, that’s very exciting. The war prevented its reprinting until 1945. I think it’s aged pretty well for a pirate story penned by a British guy in the thirties. In fact I’ve always interpreted Captain Slaughterboard as a gay love story, but maybe that’s me. Read it yourself and let me know what you think.

FOR: Kids who love silly pirates and fantastic creatures; fans of ornate, trippy pen and ink drawings

BUY IT: If it was me, I’d splurge on the limited edition facsimile of the original 1939 printing.

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Outside Over There
Written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak

As a teenager I rediscovered this gorgeous, moody book in a box in my basement. It struck a chord in me so deep that it kicked off a lifelong obsession with picture books. It showed me - a young artist who loved to draw and write - a brilliant, affecting example of those two things in combination. I knew it was a book for young kids, but it seemed to also be a book for me. It exploded my idea of what a picture book could be and who it could be for. It put me on my path. It’s also a book that both of my kids loved in a profound way when they were younger. It’s the rare book that is truly for everyone: kids, adults, unhappy teenage poets rooting around in their basements.

FOR: Everyone

BUY IT: You can find this book anywhere. By all means buy it at your local independent bookstore if you have one, but if not, I love bookshop.org. They ship quickly and your money will go to an indie bookstore. You can even choose which one.

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Shaker Lane
Written and illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen

The Provensens were a husband and wife picture book team. They both wrote and illustrated. Shaker Lane was the last Provensen collaboration before Martin’s death, and my personal favorite. It tells the story of a poor community in New York State who are displaced when their neighborhood is razed to make way for a reservoir. When I was a kid, I lived in the rented carriage house of an old estate in New York that had gone to ruin. It was a dreamy place to grow up - on a dirt road, surrounded by acres of forests and fields, with a feral pony in the pasture across the street. We moved when I was seven and, not long after, my old house was razed to make way for a housing development. So Shaker Lane resonates, but I’ve never met an actual child who likes it. My own kids find it boring. I prefer to think of it as quiet. Regardless, it’s a beautiful book that raises some great philosophical questions, such as: Can a picture book be good if kids don’t like it? I’ve thought about this a lot and I think the answer is yes.

As an aside, I own the original art on the upper right. It was a gift from Colin and it’s the first thing I’d save in a fire. It features - improbably - a teenager smoking a cigarette on a stoop.

FOR: A person who loves folk art, muted palettes, and quiet picture books; a person whose childhood home was demolished by greedy real estate developers or soul-less city planners

BUY IT: It’s tragically out-of-print but this copy looks pretty good.

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Russian Folk Tales
Recorded by folklorist Alexander Afanasyev and illustrated by Ivan Bilibin
Translated by Robert Chandler

Ivan Bilibin is arguably the greatest illustrator of his time. This collection of Russian folk tales, illustrated in 1899, is his most celebrated work. While he seems to have been an outspoken critic of the tsar, Bilibin didn’t love the Soviet Union either and left his Russian homeland post-revolution to live and work abroad. But he was always homesick. He finally returned to the USSR in the 1930s only to die of starvation in the Siege of Leningrad and be buried in a mass grave. Come for the children’s book recommendations. Stay for the World War II tragedy.

Every illustration enthusiast should have an Ivan Bilibin book in their collection. I loved the cover right off of mine. 

FOR: Russophiles, medieval nerds, kids who love folk tales, appreciators of fine illustration

BUY IT: This edition is impossible to find but there is a single copy of it for cheap on ebay.

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Sun Moon Star
Illustrated by Ivan Chermayeff and written by Kurt Vonnegut

Per the book flap:

This book is an experiment in making music for the eye rather than the ear.
Ivan Chermayeff made the illustrations first, without saying what they meant. Then Kurt Vonnegut wrote words to fit the images he saw.
This is a song then, whose music came first.
A simple hymn for printing press.
Others may find it entertaining to put their own words to Chermayeff’s tune.

Apparently this book is about the nativity. It’s not my very favorite, but it’s lovely and I really appreciate this experiment. Also, I believe it’s the only picture book Vonnegut wrote.

FOR: Fans of Kurt Vonnegut. We all have one in our lives. Or, I suppose, fans of Ivan Chermayeff who was a famous graphic designer. Also: people who obsess over the relationship between words and art in picture books and like to consider the possibilities.

BUY IT: New from the publisher!

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The Magic Butterfly (and Other Fairy Tales of Central Europe)
Illustrated by Ugo Fontana
Translated by George Obligado

This is one of the classiest illustrated books I own. It’s an oversized Golden Book published in Italy in 1963. The art is superb. The design is perfect. I can’t say enough nice things about it. I included tons of photos so you can see for yourself.

FOR: Medieval nerds, kids who love folk tales, fans of mid-century book design, minimalists, maximalists

BUY IT: There are plenty of used copies online.

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Breasts
Written and illustrated by Genichiro Yagyu

This book opens with these two crazy spreads and goes on to be a mostly informative book about breasts. It’s practical, but also adorably weird. I know very little about it but I’m glad it exists.

FOR: Fans of Japanese picture books; fans of weird picture books; parents who want a book that makes learning about breasts and breastfeeding kind of fun: kids who are not mortified by pictures of boobs

BUY IT: There are a few copies on Thriftbooks.

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People
Written and illustrated by Blexbolex

Look, it’s my sunbleached, coffee stained, tattered copy of People by French cartoonist, Blexbolex. I owe this book a big debt. After about a decade of attempting to write my own picture book and failing - of trying to concoct a story that I deemed worthy of publication and ultimately psyching myself out time and time again - I read this book and had an epiphany. Picture books don’t have to adhere to literary conventions. They have the most open-minded readership in the world: kids! They don’t have to be narrative in a conventional sense. They can be anything. I stopped perseverating about telling a good story and decided to approach writing as a visual artist first; to build the text around paintings I knew I wanted to make instead of vise versa. I don’t know if that’s how Blexbolex approached People, but that’s how it feels to me. And that’s how I finally got around to writing my first picture book, Home.

FOR: Lovers of good design and printmaking; fans of duality and juxtaposition; smarty pants kids

BUY IT: I couldn’t find any new copies but there are lots of used ones out there.

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That’s all for now. Next year, I’ll make a gift guide with books that my kids love. Books that are easy to find in bookstores. But in the meantime, someone snag that copy of Russian Folk Tales. And everyone get a copy of Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor. Let me know what you make of it. We can have a book club.

Some of these links will be to books that are no longer available by the time you click them. You may have to search a little for these mostly out-of-print titles. But that’s fun and often leads to the dicovery of other undersung or forgotten books. Go forth! Just make sure to read the fine print so you know what you’re getting.

Until next time,
Carson

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