Jack & Jim
Written & Illustrated by Kitty Crowther
Hyperion Books, 2000, 32 pp.
ISBN: 978-078680614
Jack, a blackbird from the forest, goes exploring and makes friends with Jim, a seagull. When Jim invites Jack to visit him in his seaside village, Jack discovers a whole new world that he did not know existed. As the two friends explore Jim’s home, the seagulls in the village turn up their noses at having a blackbird as a neighbor. Their friendship grows in spite of the treatment from others. One day they look in a sea chest full of books that Jim uses to light fires. When Jack quizzes Jim about why he does not read them, Jim confesses that no one in the village knows how to read. Jack introduces Jim to books and storytelling. Unbeknownst to him, Jack not only has Jim as an audience but also a little Norbert seagull outside the window who spreads the word about the wonderful stories Jack is reading. Gradually more and more villagers come to hear Jack’s tales and eventually accept him as a welcome member of the community. The friendship across ‘bird ethnicity’ is sealed. The last frame shows Jack sitting on an ocean rock, listening while Norbert reads to him.
The narrative is almost poetic as Jack and Jim notice their different feet, tastes in food, habitats, and literacy skills. While Jack and Jim are curious about diversity, the villagers are suspicious until Jack introduces them to the greater world of story, turning their focus away from differences to the common experience of laughing over a good book.
The picture book is written and illustrated by Belgian Kitty Crowther. While there are not cultural markers that place the story in Europe, there are elements such as dress and food that make the illustrations feel European. The book is written with multiple frames on most pages. Crowther manages to convey a lot of emotion in the eyes and body language of birds. With a dot she communicates the hostility of the village seagulls, transforming the same small dots into hilarity as the seagulls laugh at Jack’s stories. Crowther primarily illustrates her books with pencils, colored pencils and ink outlines. However this particular book is mainly done in watercolors, filling the pages with transparent watery light. Her style is simple, making the anthropomorphized birds warm and welcoming to the young reader.
The text was originally written in French (Mon ami Jim/My friend Jim) and published by Pastel in 1996. The translator made decisions that change the pacing of the story and created tension for reviewers. By interchanging the words for forest and woods, the English text frustrated a reviewer who criticized Crowther, saying that she did not cover the blackbird villager’s reactions to a seagull when the two protagonists visited Jack’s forest home (which they never did but instead visited a nearby wood). The original text is written more simply with fewer words highlighting Jack’s desire to explore, Jim’s simple friendship, and the change in attitude of the villagers. The translator added content, interpreting the story for an English-speaking audience. The story still has impact, but adding to the narrative gears the story for an older set of readers than does the original text and changes the rhythm of a read-aloud.
Crowther grew up in a multilingual and multicultural home and the universal theme of cross-cultural friendship comes through loud and clear. The book could be paired with The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson (2000) and How My Parents Learned to Eat, by Ina Friedman (1984). The book would work best with elementary-aged children since the pictures and text font are smaller in size and rich in detail.
Kitty Crowther’s work is not available in English but that will probably soon change. She is the 2010 Astrid Lindgren award winner so hopefully her work will soon be available in other languages. Her work is often peppered with little black mouse-like creatures like Poka and Mine in her well known series with that name. The two little friends have adventures in many places, similar to Paulette Bourgeois’ Franklin the Turtle or Margaret and H. A. Rey’s Curious George.
Susan Corapi, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
WOW Review, Volume III, Issue 3 by Worlds of Words is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on work at https://wowlit.org/on-line-publications/review/iii-3/
After reading the commentary about Mirror- I was very curious about how my Moroccan student would respond. I mentioned that it was all rural- and didn’t that bother her? She said to me very quickly- Did you read this part? The writer explains that she only just happened to travel in the rural parts. This book is really good”
I teach English as a Second Language in the South Western United States. I have several students from North Africa. Many are young and are quite homesick. I decided to see how they might respond to representations of their cultures in children’s books available in the United States. I did not have enough lead up time to do justice to an explanation of cultural authenticity, so I used questions such as, do you think this book is fair? do you think this book is good? Should I read this book to my son to teach him about your country?
I can’t say that one student from Morocco can completley decide the authenticity of a text, but her approval for my son’s library means a lot to me.
I remember when I read Yenika-Agbaw’s “Images of West Africa in Children’s Books: Replacing Old Stereo-types with New Ones?” in the book “Stories matter: the complexity of cultural authenticity in children’s literature”, she argued that “a fair comparison would have been to compare urban life and children from similar socioeconomic backgrounds in both regions”. however, at that time, my first, shallow reflection was that “there is no such thing as a ‘fair’ comparison”, since these two kinds of kids/lives do exist in this world, so would this kind of comparison. I was wrong. And I am glad I realized that. By reading the book Mirror and this review I now understand that authors of children’s literature should keep in mind that their works have the impact deeper than we imagine, therefore they must possess the social responsibility to provide authentic and non stereotype stories to their young readers, who have less knowledge and sensitivity to read critically. I was really impressed that there are so many similarities the Baker designed in the book, even the color of each family member’s clothes, that makes readers connect two countries almost effortlessly. However I also noticed that if Baker didn’t choose to portray them this way, this book could inevitably end up in just another “unfair” comparison. This is such a outstanding book with beautiful illustrations and noble themes. But just because it’s so success and wild recognized, we should also pay more attention on its influence, either positive or negative.
I think this review is really exceptional! The respect she shows for both cultures is great! I especially enjoyed her interruptions of the differences and yet the main purpose of the book Mirror was to focus on similarities as what connect all of us. I found some books that I thought would go well alongside Mirror, “Why I Love Australia” by Bronwyn Bancroft, Bundle of Secrets: Savita Returns Home by Mubina Hussanti Kimani and Ikenna Goes to Nigeria by Ifeomas Onyefulu. These are just other suggestions. I personally liked these three because they go into the cultures that Mirror compares in a child friendly way.
I found Mirror to be a beautiful book with extraordinary illustrations. It really made me think about the stereotypes that we all make and that our similarities are really what hold us together.
I found this review of Mirror expressed wonderfully; I enjoyed the intensive review and information provided here. I enjoyed this book greatly and felt that the images of the cultures told a beautiful story of culture and identity. The story that each side of the book represented was told in a way that children of all ages could understand. I brought this book into my classroom and my students’ had many questions, but the exposure to the literature was great. I am usually not a huge fan of wordless picture books but this one is one that grabbed my attention and I would like to do into depth more so with it and my future lessons in my classroom. There is a lot to expose our children to in this text and doing so will invite them into many different culture related discussions.
I loved the design of this book! It was a “clever” way to capture my attention. I studied it forward and backwards the first day I had it because I was so intrigued with the design. This is a powerful book with a deep message, I thought, that shows we are all just people living life. In certain aspects we connect in the way that we live and in other aspects we don’t, but that is what makes it all so very interesting. The details of the illustrations are quite detail oriented. It certainly is a book that can be studied repeatedly and you will discover something interesting within the illustrations.
The review is done nicely. I enjoyed reading her thoroughness of the book and that she reflected on the positives and slightly negatives. Authenticity is an important aspect that we have discussed throughout this semester. The reviewer discusses that the cultural authenticity was done correctly and portrays each culture accurately except for the magic carpet. I agreed with her. Usually there are words or situations that cause you to think that something does not seem right. I didn’t have that with Mirror. This is a great picture book to own!
I enjoyed reading this review. I think the book Mirror was very unique and beautiful. The pictures were so crisp and naturally stunning. Baker obviously took great care and consideration in the images she chose to represent and compare. As the reader it was very apparent to me that her goal was to show similarities while highlighting differences. I think that this book could be appreciated for is central message and beautifully crafted images, we shouldn’t get too carried away with judging the book on its relevance and representation within a social-political responsibilities of the author.
I do think that Short raised a good point, describing how the boy drew pictures of the magic carpets, and how that connection to Arabic is overdone and could be construed as negative. I did not view that as a negative quality.
Overall this is a beautiful thought-provoking book that I will soon be adding to my library.
I definitely enjoyed the book. Honestly, I believe it is more complex than many picture books I grew up with as a child and critiqued when I was old enough to babysit. The differences were actually what stood out most to me–the greater the differences, the more similar the families. For example, at the end of the story, when the Australian family settles in to enjoy some time away from the constant overflow of technology by the fireplace, while on the other hand, the rural, Moroccan family chooses this time to enjoy technology together as a family…it’s still family time, with the members enjoying each others’ company; it’s just done differently for the families. It reminds me of trying to read a book in a mirror: while a human face reflects exactly in a mirror, a book will always read backward in a mirror. This story’s ending example is no different: while there are places in the book where there are similarities between the cultures, it is still a fascinating joy to explore the differences, just as much as holding the book to the mirror.
Because of such symbolic complexity expressed in this book, I see the lack of political societal structure representation as negligible, particularly when considering its main target audience. It is, after all, a PICTURE book, written for children whose parents and primary adult environments very likely teach stereotypes about people of foreign origin. Children in this case often see the attacked culture from very simple perspectives simply because ignorant perspectives are exactly that: simple. The author, therefore, appears to be using the very stereotypes (for example, the notorious “magic carpet”) to bring respect, rather than ridicule, to the different cultures. After all, when we look into a mirror, we might not always like what we see–yet often what we dislike about ourselves just might be what others see in us as beautiful. The book, the author, doesn’t focus on political structures because that isn’t the heart of the book. The heart of the book is to bring us back to the very simple truth: that no matter what our differences, at the end of the day, we are beautiful when we work together, especially when we work together to bring out the good in others, no matter how far away that may be.