This & that by Mem Fox
This & that by Mem Fox
Ill. by Judy Hoacek. Scholastic, 2015. ISBN 9781743622537
(Age: 3-6) Highly recommended, Bedtime, Stories, Readaloud, Family.
The elegant simplicity of Fox's words in this book, parallel the
line and colour block illustrations by Horacek. Each is deceptively
simple, foreshadowing the effort gone into the book to pare it back
to the bare minimum.
The words 'I'll tell you a story of this, and I'll tell you a story
of that' introduce the book, and are repeated after every rhyming
couplet which gives a hint of a fanciful tale. In putting the baby
mouse to sleep, the parent tells stories. The first is of a
cavernous tale and a chimp with a magic hat, then two boys running
down a road with a cat, then on to a pair of crazy giraffes and so
on. Each gives the illustrator the opportunity to embellish and
extend the lines, as each turn of the page reveals something from
the page before peering over the next illustration. And watch out
for the mice running through the whole story, beginning on the
cover.
And the illustrations allude to many other stories; stories about
animals, giraffes and elephants, mice and cats, kings and queens,
carriages and castle, reminding children of stories they have heard
at night before sleep. Finally the story ends and the baby mouse is
bid goodnight with a hug.
Fox's story is imbued with family, with storytelling at its heart as
the children go to bed, of love and hugs, of familiarity. Children
will love recognising images from other stories they have heard, and
join in with the refrain, laughing at the antics of the mice as they
make their way through a range of stories. Hoacek and Fox worked on
Where is the green sheep (2010) and I heard Mem Fox read this
aloud to a group of children keeping the audience enraptured, and
this will too.
Fran Knight