The Old Woman and the Wave

The Old Woman and the Wave is one of those serendipitous library finds. I was looking for something else, saw this on the bookshelf, and picked it up too.

The story is good, good enough to make me love the book for no other reason, but it's the illustrations that really make the book outstanding: lovely mixes of collage and painting, with bits of the dialog done in cut up newspaper and magazine clippings, and unexpected little words floating into view under the paint. Marvelous.

Unfortunately, Shelly Jackson doesn't seem to have written any other kids books. Her novel is intriguing, but suspiciously literary looking, which means I may be waiting for a while to read it (not being, so to speak, in a literary mood just now).

Hm, ok--there are other books by her I hadn't noticed before, maybe not picture books, but other books. This bears further investigation.

Oh, and I loved the illustrations in The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County, which was illustrated by Jackson, but as a book it's not up to The Old Woman and the Wave. The story by Janice N. Harrington, was good, but not in the "Oh, wow! What else has she written?" category.