wordwalker's Full Review: John Vernon Lord, Janet Burrowway, Janet Burroway ...
THE GIANT JAM SANDWICH is not the newest deli item available at Giant Foods....
This may be the only Weekly Reader Children's Book Club book that I have ever liked. It has an un-self-conscious sense of humor:
"One hot summer in Itching Down,
Four million wasps flew into town."
A small British village prone to puffy green-and-yellow hills, fat, stylized trees and really interesting landscaping is attacked by a barrage of nasty wasps, causing the villagers to run around with open mouths, wildly waving their elongated limbs. And no, the fancy vocabulary words in this paragraph are mine and not the Book Club book's; this picture book contains only those words which were actually necessary to tell the story!
"They stung Lord Swell on his fat bald pate,
They dived and hummed and buzzed and ate."
The named characters enjoy appellations such as "Mayor Muddlenut" and "Farmer Seed", but even the nameless ones are strikingly drawn, with exaggerated facial features, frequent funny hats and every item of typically British garb you ever saw in England. The lady with the flowered hat has five huge wasps buzzing over her flowers, but the stems are so long that neither she nor anybody else even notices! Bright colors are popular, as are ugly shoes.
At a town meeting well-attended by both villagers and wasps, Bap the Baker cooks up a wonderful plan; soon he stands high upon a step-ladder shouting through a horn while villagers knead dough for the enormous loaf of bread they need:
"...Salt from the seaside, water from the spout.
Now thump it! Bump it! Bang it about!"
How they bake the silly thing is a story in itself. Two giant slices are cut, and the bottom one carefully spread with first butter and then jam....
Oh, but this is a silly, funny book! Ostensibly a story in which a little community solves a problem, it reveals an entire village full of cheerful lunatics who leave all the windows and doors open during the big meeting, bake an entire loaf of bread when one single, sliced-through bun would do, and put a humongous tablecloth down in the field first ... presumably just because it is the proper thing to do when hosting a picnic, even one held for the 'benefit' of insects!
And then there's the layer of butter. What are they hoping to do with that -- ruin the wasps' cholesterol?!
But they all have a simply marvelous time furthering their great project.
So, obviously, did the authors of this little jam, er, gem from 1972. The 'story' and pictures are by John Vernon Lord, the verses themselves by Janet Burroway. The perspectives from which the pictures are drawn are like nothing I've ever seen before. Imagine Seuss if he had had a yen for round shapes rather than pointy ones....
Many bright but not-quite-primary colors make the scenes lively yet somehow restful.
And yet these illustrations are some of the very busiest, as people take all kinds of actions, film the 'parade', wave to their friends,and pause to bird-watch. Only the (obvious) Oldest Inhabitant seems to need any rest, as he sits on a bench circling a tree near the bandstand where music is made for the big celebratory dance in the center of town at the end of the story.
Boy, is this book ever English!!
And of course, England's beloved birds are the ones who really benefit:
"What became of the sandwich? Well,
In Itching Down they like to tell
How the birds flew off with it in their beaks
And had a feast for a hundred weeks."
THE GIANT JAM SANDWICH would be a lousy, er, poor choice for storytime during mosquito season or when a child has measles or chickenpox, but otherwise offers good, fun reading for young children, who will want to spend a lot of time looking at the intricate pictures. The book may, however, make them hungry.
Most Weekly Reader books I have encountered were obviously written to push Vocabulary and Message rather than to tell a story. This one was published elsewhere first, and only subsequently brought out by Weekly Reader. They should have done more of that sort of thing.
(I have been to England. People there really do dress funny.)
It's a dark day for Itching Down. Four million wasps have just descended on the town, and the pests are relentless! What can be done? Bap the Baker ha...More at HotBookSale
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