Reviews: (by author)

Browne, Anthony. Changes. NY: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990. Sunburst paperback $6.95.

Like David Macaulay, Chris Van Allsburg, and David Wiesner, Anthony Browne creates unusual picturebooks, ones that make you think, pictures that can be revisited. Browne, an Englishman, recently won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest honor in children's literature. It is worthwhile to collect all his books.

In Changes, a boy's home and yard seem a little strange to him one day he spends alone. The words and art here are sly and full of enjoyable details. Then a baby sister appears; all is resolved in a closing scene of the new family close together on a couch.

Recommended

A.A. May '03

 

Browne, Anthony. The Shape Game. London: Random House, 2003. Hardback, no price. ISBN 0-385-60136-0.

Anthony's mother takes the family to the art museum and so begins Anthony Browne's career as an internationally-known author/illustrator. (He has, for example, won the Hans Christian Andersen award.) Autobiography mixed with art education and a healthy dose of humor, The Shape Game is also a mystery and, ultimately, an activity book—a mystery because we don't understand the title until it turns out at the end of the book to be the name of a game the author introduces us to, and an activity book because of the game we learn to play. In remembering this family day at the museum, Browne shows the family interacting with the art, speculating about it, trying it on for size—and also being complete louts, like the corny father and the unimpressed George (who do come around, though). Browne includes a lot of actual museum art in the book, and overlays the cartoonish family. Many readers will recall their own immaturity and skepticism when first encountering art, or their father's interminable puns and for these reasons as well as sheer enjoyment will want to buy the books; readers will get a lot for their money.

Alida Allison, January 2004

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