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Rainbow Bay.
Stephen Eaton Hume. Illustrated by Pascal Milelli. Subject Headings:
Preschool - grade 3 / Ages 4 - 8.
**** /4
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Visually this is a very beautiful book. Its illustrations spread
right to the edges of the pages so that the reader is sucked into
the atmosphere of each picture. The text, which is clearly displayed,
in white or black depending on the mood of the background, is not
set out in any other way so that it becomes a part of the whole
design. The story is a very gentle meander through a happy day,
magical in its very ordinariness. The one jarring note is the total
absence of adults! Parents are mentioned only initially as fellow
residents of the boy's house; after that, the boy and his dog live
their day alone, making a sandwich to take with them for lunch, and
returning in the twilight not to dinner and a hug, but to the frog
chorus by the bay. It is an idyllic existence, but a very lonely
one.
Childhood can be a time of loneliness, however, and certainly
the children to whom I read this story were captivated and delighted
by it. They loved the pictures as pictures, but also for the elements
that they added to the story which were not specified in the text. It
was I who felt the lack of human realationships, not they! Certainly
this book deserves the honour it has been given.
Highly recommended.
Mary Thomas works in two Winnipeg School Division No.1 elementary libraries.
Rainbow Bay, runner-up for the 1998 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon
prize for illustration, is a quiet, lush book, and appropriately so
as it is the story of a day in the life of a boy and his dog on
Silver Spring Island where cars and trucks are not allowed,
where transport is by bicycle, horse, or boat, and where time is
determined by the sun and the tides. The intense colours of the
oil-painted illustrations glow with the deep greens of the forest,
the bright blues and turquoises of sunny coastal waters, and dark
mysterious shadows, as the boy moves from waking to morning chores
(digging for clams at low tide, filling the wood box) to a day of
exploring and imagining, and an evening of listening to the "thousand
frogs in green tuxedos [who] bang their drums along
the banks...announcing the arrival of high tide".
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © 1998 the Manitoba Library Association.
Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice
is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without
permission.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - JUNE 5, 1998.
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The Manitoba Library Association
ISSN 1201-9364