Before moving on I thought I'd take a small amount of space to discuss the books in this piece. Since the display id for the children's book section of a book store, I felt it was appropriate to either show the characters reading, or carrying books. I knew right away that I didn't want to be arbitrary in my choices. I wanted the books to be ones that I enjoyed and I also wanted the books to be somehow related to the character posessing them.
For some characters, the choices were easy. Others, less so. One thing I didn't want to do is go for the obvious, such as having the monkey reading "Curious George," or the bear reading "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." I wanted the books that were still in print to be classic enough that the well-read child would be in on the joke, and for the out of print books I chose, I wanted the connection to be a little more obvious.
The Books I chose decided upon were these...
The opossum is reading Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree" which seemed appropriate for an arboreal creature.
The bear is reading "Blueberries for Sal" by Robert McCloskey which features a bear cub and small girl exchanging parents.
The monkey is reading "Caps For Sale" by Esphyr Slobodkina, which, of course, features monkeys.
The ant is carrying copies of "The Nutshell Library" by Maurice Sendak and "Stuart Little" by E.B. White, chosen because they reflect the ant's diminutive size.
The girl is carrying copies of "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the 1st Nancy Drew book "The Secret of the Old Clock" by Carolyn Keene and "Cherry Ames, Visiting Nurse" by Helen Wellswhich was a tribute to my wife and my daughter and their childhood favorites.
The chicken was meant to be carrying a copy of "The Animal Fair" by Alice and Provensen, two of my favorite artists, but it just didn't look right tucked under her arm, so the idea was dropped.
The Robot holds a copy of "B-9 The Hungry Metal Eater" an "Iron Giant" type story by Ester Hauser Laurence with illustrations by Ron Bradford.
The multi-eyed monster has copies of "How to Care for Your Monster" by Morman Bridwell and "Movie Monsters" by Alan Ormsby, two of the most important books of my childhood, and two of my most treasured books today (See the April 11, 2006 entry for more on the Ormsby book).
The crocodile is reading "Peter Pan" by J.M. Barrie. Not that anyone will ever see it, but he's reading about the crocodile's appetite for Captain Hook.
As discussed in previous posts, the books were all reduced photo copies of back and front covers glued onto an appropriately sized white paper wrapped cardboard rectangle. The books being read also have reproductions of a couple interior pages. As you can see in one of these photos, the books are quite small, though I ended up having to make a larger scale version of "B-9" once the robot itself was completed. The copy depicted here proved to be too small.
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