Naughty Bus!
My mum just got back from overseas, where she spent some time in the UK. She brought back a great present for Rowan - a toy London bus. Needless to say he loves it. Accompanying the toy was a fantastic book, Naughty Bus by Jan and Jerry Oke.
It is a self-published book, written by the author and photographed by her husband. Judging by the fact the it is sold at the Tate in London it must have been pretty successful. The book is unconventional in many respects, some of which give a hint that it hasn’t gone through a rigourous publishing process, but this kind of adds to its charm.
The author manages to get in the head of a child immersed in imaginative play, you can ‘hear’ the voices of the bus and the adults and other toys he encounters. The world is seen through the eyes of a toy bus, as the photos show the bus driving down a street of toys, wreaking havoc at the breakfast table, and getting into trouble in the garden. (”I don’t think much of the roads around here”, he says as he drives across the lawn.) The typography itself contains visual clues, aimed to aid and boost confidence in early readers.
Somehow the book also manages to incorporate a whole list of messages for children - from not getting to close to the edge of a pond, to saying thank-you and and the necessity of cleaning ones teeth. Gotta love that.
Hi Katie and Lou
I think it would be a good idea to research if - and where - this book could be sourced in Australia - perhaps contact the Tate if you can’t access the writer. Congratulations on the site - it’s great.
31 Mar 2008 at 7.43 am
Hi Katie and Lou,
Thanks for your kind comments about Naughty Bus. I’m still distributing the book myself and if there is a bookshop owner over there who’d like to talk to me about stocking a few copies, I’d love to hear from them.
Jerry and I had begun a sequel, but he died in 2006 so the book remains a one-off. He had a great sense of fun and was a very talented advertising photographer, shooting the pictures for the book using an old fashioned plate camera and 10×8″ film. Surely one day we’ll see photography used more in children’s fiction, and photographers earning as much credit as other illustrators. Reading photographs - especially those which are funny and taken at a child’s eye-level - is a great way to introduce story and sequence, and encourage early reading.
I think there must be a strong link too between appreciating story and character through floor play and later wanting to be immersed in a book. I used speech only for the text to reflect the way children give dialogue to their toys.
Thanks again for the review. All the best, etc
23 Jun 2008 at 7.15 am