Of course this is going to be your child’s first book about the fantastic and she’s going to learn the rules of that type of story. The animals are evidently a quasi-dream sequence: maybe they are there, maybe they aren’t! We know this because the soft, charcoal-like dreaminess of the forest tells us that we’re in for dreams here. The illustrations are all a soft, dreamlike black and white, with pops of vibrant colour in Kikko’s red hat and mittens and yellow hair, as well as occasional red and yellow sparks among the animals.Īny adult reader, educated by the experience of reading Alice in Wonderland, watching The Nutcracker, or just spending five minutes talking to my parents, would go in with certain expectations.
In her rush, she had crushed the original pie, so the animals provide her with a new one assembled from the tea party, and guide her safely to her grandmother’s house. She runs after him with the pie only to realize, at last, that she has followed a bear, not her father, and has ended up at a strange tea party of animals in the woods. The story goes that a girl, Kikko, realizes that her father has left the house without the pie he meant to bring to her grandmother. It is beautiful to read, and beautiful to look at. This book, the other Kids Can Press book I found at the Harvard Book Store, is translated from the Japanese, with the English edition edited by Yvette Ghione and Katie Scott. Almost, except that it defies adult expectations. The Tea Party in the Woods, written and illustrated by Akiko Miyakoshi could almost be a starter story in the fantastic. After all, I never studied this stuff, I just grew up hearing you talk about it!) Did it, or did it not? (Hey, if I got this wrong, Daddy, you can correct me.
My favourite was always that when the fantastic episode was over, it could almost never have happened… almost, except that there might be one sign which would raise doubt: a rose in the wrong place, for example. What I mean is that living in our house was an immersion course in love of the Romantics: there was an awful lot of Romantic music and literature around, and I grew up knowing that if you were talking about the “fantastic” in Romantic literature then there are certain rules or keys to look out for. They’re very practical, sensible people and would raise their eyebrows at the suggestion (or will send me a caustic email if they read this). Let me explain: I don’t mean that my family’s house was furnished in a particular way (although our living room furniture is lovely) or that my parents dressed us in replica 19th C clothes, or that they dressed up. Ours was the Romantic period, I often think. I sometimes wonder if other people grew up in families with a favourite time period.
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