Lee, Dennis. Garbage Delight. Illus. Sandy Nichols. Toronto: Harper Collins, 2015. Print.Should anyone doubt the power of illustration in children’s literature (no children’s literature specialist would—but should anyone) all doubt can be dispelled by a comparison of this new work illustrated by Sandy Nichols, with Lee’s earlier one of the same title: Garbage Delight, illustrated by Frank Newfeld, classic edition, Harper Collins, 1977. In the original work, Garbage Delight is the title poem of a collection as irrepressible as its intended audience. (Five and six-year-olds would be a good target.) Frank Newfeld’s illustration of the “Garbage…” eater is “Bigfoot,” a ferocious stuffed animal with a unicorn’s horn, an alligator’s teeth, and a lion’s claws—and, oh yes, a dress. Introduced to us on page 18, Bigfoot returns to preside over a table laden with a spectacular array of food—all in living color: the jelly, the “hamburgles”, ice cream, and cake that the poem promises, along with a whole lot more. Interestingly, there isn’t any real “garbage” on that overflowing table; it is just the prospect of the gluttony to follow that strikes us as obscene, hilarious, and memorable.The new edition, focusing on one single poem, and physically designed for the very young, enables illustrator Sandy Nichols to take a very different tack from that of Newfeld. Nichols has the freedom to tell a whole story: a bear cub clambers into a fenced yard where a pair of toy creatures, one reptilian (possibly a stegosaurus), one sheep-like, are picnicking. The cub, eschewing the picnic treats, tears into and devours the garbage. When it collapses from its exertions, the toy creatures wrap it lovingly in their picnic blanket and cart it out of their yard. Ultimately, the cub returns to its much relieved mother.The color palette Nichols uses is delicate, her line drawings often evocative. Her depiction of the reptile beating a pan with a spoon while the horn-tooting sheep, cub in tow, brings up the rear is particularly charming. (For reasons unknown, it connotes an illustration of the nursery rhyme “Hey-Diddle-Diddle” for this reviewer. We even see the moon come out, although no one jumps over it!) To describe in a single word her storyline, her illustrations, her evocations, and her tone, I can do no better than the publisher’s notes accompanying the text: winsome. In sum, Nichols’ work is a fresh and entirely valid interpretation of a Canadian children’s classic. Well done.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Leslie AitkenLeslie Aitken’s long career in librarianship included selection of children’s literature for school, public, special and academic libraries. She is former Curriculum Librarian for the University of Alberta.
The Never Weres by F. Smyth