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March 10, 2008
Getting in Touch with Easter: The Colt and the King
In this series, I’ve already mentioned how holiday books tend to be long, too long for the average preschooler. As I’m reading more Easter books, though, I’m realizing that maybe one of the reasons I haven’t read more of them sooner is that a lot are too long for me, too. In my continuing quest to fall in love with some picture books that focus on Jesus’s death and resurrection, for example, I tried to read He Is Alive! by Helen Haidle, illustrated by Joel Spector. I have to confess that the cover was my first stumbling block with this one:
Every time this book found its way to the top of my pile, I’d get a fit of giggles thinking that it looks like Jesus is shrugging off the Panhandler Mary. (“No, sorry. I didn’t stop at the ATM. Sorry.”) This is no way to go into reading a book about Easter. I finally quieted myself down, though, and decided to give the first page a try earlier today. The first spread offers a take on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, an event that truly earns the word “awesome,” but then there’s this solid wall of text running down the left-hand side of the page, and I don’t know. It just looks SO LONG.
So I put aside He Is Alive! and picked up The Colt and the King by Marni McGee and illustrated by John Winch. Yay! A book you can read to a four-year-old AND a 34-year-old children’s librarian! The book focuses on the story of Palm Sunday and is told by the little donkey Jesus rides into Jerusalem. The colt is confused and irritated when his owner takes him from his beloved hill. Winch’s first illustration focuses on that hill, so beautiful and green—a sharp contrast to the desert hues that take over on the next page when the colt is given over to strangers who bring him to Jesus. At first, the colt resists, but Jesus calms him, and the colt carries Jesus into Jerusalem with pride. “And I knew that truly I carried a king,” he says. “Yet how I longed to take him away, far from that worrisome crowd!” That bit really gets me. Then the book ends with the colt, now an old donkey, waiting under the stars for Jesus’s return. McGee’s text is short and lyrical, just this side of poetry without devolving into a singsong that wouldn’t suit the subject. Winch’s illustrations are equally lovely. His Jerusalem filled with sandy bricks and narrow paths is fascinating (particularly one spread showing a crowded street from above), and the scenes outside the city, where the donkey is at home, are peaceful, blue, and green. It works when you look at this as a book that contrasts the fuss of the Palm Sunday procession with the serenity of this donkey’s steady, enduring faith. It’s a complex subject distilled into a bedtime story I’d go right ahead and read all year.
Posted by adrienne at March 10, 2008 08:34 PM
Comments
I’d get a fit of giggles thinking that it looks like Jesus is shrugging off the Panhandler Mary. (“No, sorry. I didn’t stop at the ATM. Sorry.”)
Okay, now THAT'S funny. You got a big yuck out of me, A!
Posted by: Robin Brande at March 10, 2008 09:35 PM
Or he could be saying something like, "Whoa, easy there... I just washed these robes. This is last season Eddie Bauer, and it's not so easy to replace, if you know what I'm saying..."
Posted by: jp at March 12, 2008 01:34 AM
Stop, stop, please. JP, you just made me choke on saliva.
Posted by: Robin Brande at March 12, 2008 08:36 PM
I am going to have to look for this one. I am collecting good Easter books over here too.
Posted by: cloudscome at March 27, 2008 10:35 AM