SPECTACULAR PICTURE BOOK -
HUGE ARTISTIC SKILL & GREAT IMAGINATION COMBINE
IN JEANNIE BAKER'S LATEST MASTERPIECE - MIRROR

Every now and again a book comes along that just knocks your socks off and Jeannie Baker's unbelievably gorgeous latest title did just that to me.

Baker, one of my all-time favourite children's author/artists, has a long list of fabulous books to her credit but this one is her best yet, and that is saying something when you consider the likes of  Belonging, Window, (these two both gems also without words), Where the Forest Meets the Sea and The Story of Rosy Dock. What a huge talent this woman has.

This latest masterpiece, Mirror, has this as a foreword:

There are two boys and two families in this book.
One family lives in a city in Australia
And one lives in Morocco, North Africa.
The lives of the two boys and their families
Look very different from each other
And they are different.
But some things connect them . . .
Just as some things are the same for all families
No matter where they live.

Then at the end of the book this author's note:

The idea for this book came from my delight when travelling in a country very different from my own.

At the time, in my own country, there was much political poisoning of attitudes towards foreigners and foreignness. But travelling in Morocco, as a woman “stranger”, I was met with much friendliness and generosity from “strangers”. The idea for the book was right there: that outward appearances may be very different but the inner person of a “stranger” may not be a stranger at all. We all live to be loved by family and friends and to be part of a larger family, a community. Inwardly we are so alike, it could be each other we see when we look in a mirror.


The settings I chose for the families in the story are the Valley of Roses (famous for the rose perfume) in southern Morocco and my home in Sydney, Australia.


The pictures started as drawings. Using these drawings as a guide, collages were made. The collages were constructed layer by layer on a wooden baseboard using a combination of natural and artificial materials such as sand, earth, clay, paints, vegetation, paper, fabric, wool, tin and plastic. The natural materials were preserved and fresh colouring added. The completed collages were then photographed to be reproduced as you see here.

The book depicts two parallel stories: a boy growing up in inner-city Sydney, and a boy living in a remote Moroccan village. ''What I love about doing books without words is that children have to think for themselves. Every child will see something different, whereas words are more black and white,'' Baker says. ''In this way, it is engaging a child's mind.''

Mirror, a  hardcover book is also a most impressive, complex piece of publishing engineering and design enabling the "reader" to follow two stories simultaneously, it is essentially two complete books between one set of covers.I am not surprised that the NZ rrp is $45.00. This truly is a book to treasure.
The Bookman offers Jeannie Baker and her publishers, Walker Books, heartiest congratulations on producing this very special book, I shall put it on the book shelf in my study which I reserve for the very best.

A couple of Jeannie Baker's spreads follow which will give you some idea of the quality of her art although of course these small low resolution pieces do not do justice to the real thing.

The above  pieces of art from each of the stories show part of the route each father takes going to work.