Lovable Lobel

Tots to Teens, Star Mag

23rd July 2006

Lovable Lobel

Tots to Teens
By DAPHNE LEE

WILL I ever be done raving about Payless Books? Each time I pop into one of the chain’s many outlets, I find something that’s impossible to resist. Often, it’s a title that I’ve long wanted to add to my collection.   

It’s not that I wouldn’t be able to buy it new. It’s just that, like everyone, I’m always on the look out for bargains. Children’s books, picture books especially, are so expensive. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance of owning one for under RM10? 

Last weekend, while looking through the picture books bin at Payless, Ampang Point, I came across a copy of Uncle Elephant by Arnold Lobel.   

I don’t know Lobel’s work terribly well – not his writing anyway. I do adore his illustrations, though.   

I first came across his drawings in Bear Goes Shopping by Harriet Ziefert. This lift-the-flap book, which my eldest child used to love as a baby, is about a plump, scruffy, sweet-faced bear who goes to a different store each day of the week. The reader is supposed to guess what he can buy at each store – the flaps lift to reveal the right answers. 

I must admit that it didn't click that Bear was drawn by the same person responsible for the illustrations of another great favourite of mine, Tales of Oliver Pig by Jean Van Leeuwen.   

However, the pachyderms in Uncle Elephant immediately brought to mind Lobel’s pig family. Elephants and pigs are very different animals, but there is that certain something about Lobel's characters – the same air of drooping sadness or beaming joy that is recognisable, whether in the tilt of a snout or angle of a trunk. 

An acquaintance recently donated several Frog and Toad books to the library I’m helping to set up.   

They are written and illustrated by Lobel but I can’t comment as I’d never read them before and didn’t get the chance to look at the copies that were given to us (yes, I’m kicking myself as I type this).   

Lobel’s other books include Small Pig, Mouse Tales, Owl At Home and the Caldecott Medal winner, Fables. 

I am especially curious about Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep by Jack Prelutsky. Lobel’s biography on amazon.com describes his illustrations in this collection as “chilling pen-and-ink drawings” and the quote from Booklist magazine states that “Young readers will be amazed that the gentle Lobel of Frog and Toad fame can be so comfortably diabolic.”   

Intriguing! I fear I may have to start collecting Lobel from now on.