I’m taking my cue for my Poetry Friday post today from my daughter.  She came home very excited about a book she encountered at school called The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base (Stoddart, 1988).  Get it out of the library for me, she insisted and so I did.  The copy was well-worn and tattered, obviously a book enjoyed by many.  A truly interactive book, The Eleventh Hour, in rhyming quatrains, sets out a mystery for the reader to solve through clues found on each of the elaborately illustrated pages.  Horace, the elephant has turned eleven, and has invited all his friends to a birthday gathering at his estate.  There will be a tremendous feast to be served at the eleventh hour — however, while the guests spend the day doing various activities, someone consumes the entire banquet, leaving nothing but crumbs for the hungry guests at 11:00.  Who has eaten all the goodies?  You the reader, must find out by deciphering all the clues found on each page.  A key at the back will help you if you are really stumped.

My daughter and I spent a Saturday afternoon together with this book, trying to figure out the clues.  It was tough, but fun!  Similar to his earlier Animalia which my daughter also enjoyed, this book is all about looking closely and in that way, reminded me a little of Anno Mitsumasa’s picture books.  If you and your child like a real good puzzle and figuring out clues, then this is the book for you.  And the rhymes aren’t all that bad either!

Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Sara at Read Write Believe.

The Peasant Prince, just published in Australia, tells the inspiring and now beloved story of author Li Cunxin in a picture book format. From a childhood of near starvation in the Chinese countryside to stardom in the highest echelons on classical ballet, Li told his story first in the 2003 adult memoir Mao’s Last Dancer, now in development as a film with director Bruce Beresford.

Encouraged by his friend, children’s book illustrator Graeme Base, Li pitched the memoir to Penguin and was enthusiastically encouraged first to write more, then to write in more detail, and eventually to cut some of the many hundred thousand words he had delivered. The finished book, an immediate success, soon came out in a young readers’ edition. The former dancer, by then a stockbroker, began doing book tours, where parents and schools urged him to do a picture book.

Li had read books illustrated by Anne Spudvilas to his own children and had loved them, so when she was suggested as illustrator for the picture book, he knew immediately that she would be “fantastic.” Anne got a grant from the Australia China Council to accompany him on a trip he was making to China, where she met his family, dance teachers, and ballet school friends. “She soaked it all up,” he said in a recent radio interview, and even decided to study Chinese painting. “Her first batch of illustrations took my breath away,” he said. He was especially impressed with how Anne had captured his family members.

“It’s been a great experience,” Anne emailed me recently, after we met at the book launch party for Elise Hurst. Li agrees. The illustrations really help tell the story. “Kids today are so privileged,” he said on the radio. “I think the picture of our family table when I was young, with just a tiny bit of food on it, might help them see how different my life was. Even my own kids seem to appreciate my story more since the books came out.”

More on Anne’s adventures in China coming soon…

Added on July 2008

The Peasant Prince is now available in the U.S. as Dancing to Freedom: The True Story of Mao’s Last Dancer (Walker).