Alice Schertle, illustrated by Kenneth Addison,
We
Lee & Lowe Books, 2007.

ages 6+

Poet and veteran author of children’s books Alice Schertle dedicates her latest book, We, to “the whole family,” by which, the text leads you to realize, she means the entire human race. In twenty nine pages of gently evocative language, she takes young readers through the course of human history, beginning in Africa and ending there again with archeologists on a dig.

“And some of us
returned to the water-carved canyon
to find our bones

But we had forgotten
the river running slow and cool
and the African wind in our hair
in the first place

It was so long ago
and we had come so far
from home”

Schertle’s lyrical lines were illustrated by the late Kenneth Addison with exuberant collages that incorporate fabric, Japanese paper, cutout print images and oil paint. Addison’s work walks a fine line between awkward and charmingly primitive, but it grows on you and becomes as lyrical in its way as the words it illustrates. A double page documenting human ingenuity, for example—Schertle mentions baseball bats, elevators, and four-poster beds, among other items—is a starry night layered behind a jungle forest vividly inhabited by an acrobat balancing on the bed canopy, a Buckingham Palace guard, a park bench, a jivey sax player and other charmingly juxtaposed images.

The sans serif font of the text has an unfortunately clunky look amidst so much richness. But  there is a world of visual and aural pleasure here for an imaginative child to mull over as impressions of the whole of human history sink in.

Charlotte Richardson
May 2007