Infrastructure and architecture have long been a favorite subject of picture book illustrators (see The Man in the Manhole and the Fix-It Men or The Brownstone). Today we’ll look at three vintage titles that take the reader down several streets (or, in one case, into a room on a street) and feature a simple story paired with a beautiful illustration style. You can hit up Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to search for all three of these!
What’s even easier than having a simple story? Having no story at all! That’s the reason Let’s Take A Walk has the credits ‘Designed By’ and ‘Illustrated By’ on its cover, as opposed to ‘Written By’. There’s no text beyond street names and city signage, each two-page spread displaying another street scene, from 1st to 12th. Everything is very quaint and yesteryear (1963), although, as is typical of older books, there’s just about zero racial diversity depicted. As a group of kids take an extended stroll through the city they encounter folks either relaxing responsibly – playing chess, visiting the bookmobile, throwing trash in the proper receptacle – or hard at work: fireman, construction worker, grocer, etc. The illustrations possess that midcentury urban optimism so prevalent in picture books and are more than enough to make this worth a look, despite the absence of a story.
With just slightly more story, Nothing Ever Happens On My Block focuses on one street instead of twelve, and shows what manner of chaos goes undetected by the world’s most unobservant child, Chester Filbert. Author Ellen Raskin is perhaps best known for her classic juvenile novel The Westing Game, but here shows that her illustration skills are just as sharp as her prose. Everything other than Chester (bored, sitting on the sidewalk) and the row of fancy houses on his block (all rendered in black and white) is drawn in bright, solid colors, punctuating the unusual event and creating clear continuity between multiple brief storylines in the background. From 1966, Raskin’s charming picture book is a great example of a stylistically interesting yet narratively simple idea that is plenty of fun and without a heavy-handed message in tow.
Richard McGuire’s adult graphic novel Here unofficially owes at least a little something to Mordicai Gerstein’s The Room (1984). On a random city street is an apartment with a room that is occupied by a variety of different folks over the years. Families come and go, animals occasionally appear, professionals practice their trade or set up shop, and the room always remains, ready for the next occupants to give it life once again. Gerstein opens and closes the short book with all we really know about the room: “It is full of sunlight all day” – how’s that for charming simplicity! The color illustrations are detailed without being fussy and moments of humor are sprinkled throughout the simple story. We don’t know what year it is when the first young couple arrive, but by the time the slim book is over decades have passed and the author has successfully guided us on a poignant journey. Gerstein won a Caldecott in 2004 for The Man Who Walked Between The Towers, which you should also check out, but this book from the early part of his career deserves your attention as well.
