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And now for something completely different. Different from all the sketch crawl stuff that I've been posting of late anyway. Here's a couple more from the James and Giant Peach project. These drawings will become the backdrops to the play. I find it quite difficult to not get sucked into all the details. After all, that's what I love to do.

The scene below is what goes on inside the peach on an average evening. As I was finishing it I was reminded of one of my favourite Spike Milligan poems which goes like this;

'Today I saw a little worm wriggling on his belly,
perhaps he'd like to come inside and see what's on the telly.'

I bloody love that.

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Had a lot of fun illustrating these two poems in the past week for School Magazine. Both are quite clever in different ways. 'The Quarrel' by Eleanor Farjeon is a poem about two stubborn brothers who have a really good argument over something that is long forgotten. The line that stood out for me was, 'the afternoon turned black' and I used this as the central idea for the illustration.


The other poem was very different. So many nonsensical elements which is generally the case in a Spike Milligan poem. I'm a huge fan of his brand of wackiness so illustrating 'On The Ning Nang Nong' was a nice challenge for me. I did my best to be as equally silly but it's a tough act to follow. Spike's just too damn crazy. At the very least I captured some of the poem's pervading madness. Hopefully.

Both illustrations were done primarily with collage. It's such a fantastically diverse medium. Over the years I have amassed a large collection of painted tissue papers, pattered art papers, interesting washes, old books, postcards & ads that I can use. It's a lot of fun working out what should go where.

Anyhoo, better get back to it I guess. Stay well peoples.

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I once wrote a post on the poem “On the Ning Nang Nong” by Spike Milligan.  That poem has never left my mind and since then I have happily acquired more wonderful poetry by Spike Milligan in the form of a ‘collected’ called A Children’s Treasury of Milligan.  Ever his whimsical self, Milligan purports that the collection is a result of a search for six of his childrens’ titles that were supposedly found in various locations like a haddock-stretching factory and a dead whale in Newfoundland among other outlandish places.   But seriously folks, this collection does indeed draw from Milligan’s previous works for children that include such classics as Unspun Socks from a Chicken’s Laundry and Silly Verse for Kids.

Milligan is particularly good with animals.  Indeed, one of his six books is titled A Book of Milliganimals.  This section is not just confined to word-play on the theme of animals but also has some great illustrations done by Milligan himself.  There is, for example, the rouge-colored “Strawberry Moose” and the “Three-legged Hippo” which is a rendering of the animal with three legs, of course, from different perspectives, one of which includes a “rare back view.”  And of course, there is lots of silly verse such as:

Tiger, Tiger Burning etc

Tigers travel stealthily
Using, first, legs one and three.
They alternate with two and four;
And, after that, there are no more.

As well as Milligan’s verse, the collection contains two stories — “The Bald Twit Lion” and “Sir Nobonk and the terrible, awful, dreadful, naughty, nasty Dragon” which make good counterpoint to the poetry.   With all this wonderful material, this book can easily entertain parent and child for many a bedtime read, as my daughter and I are discovering.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Becky’s Book Reviews…

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When I was in the UK this spring, I found a delightful poetry anthology called I Like This Poem: A collection of poems chosen by children for children in aid of The International Year of the Child.  The book was published in 1979 as a fundraiser and was unique insofar as the poems had been selected and recommended by children from ages 6-15.  The anthology is divided into age categories, so a parent or children themselves, can select the section appropriate to their age or the age of their child.  As to be expected, I had differing experiences reading the poems to my twelve year old son and my eight year old daughter.

One of the nice details in this anthology is the inclusion of a child’s comment on why s/he liked the particular poem.  I found with reading the poetry to my son — some of it difficult to grasp or opaque to him — that it helped to have another child’s comment on why the poem was liked or meaningful.  Indeed, it also helped me as a reader better experience the poem as well!  My son preferred funny poems, but I was struck by several comments by readers about how the ‘beauty’ in the poems moved them.

With my daughter, I had an entirely different reading experience.  My daughter responded best to poems that played with sounds. Midway through our readings, she got it into her head that she would like to act out the poems.  A particular favorite was “On the Ning Nang Nong” by Spike Milligan.  A playful-with-words kind of poem, it goes like this:

On the Ning Nang Nong

Where the Cows go Bong!

And the Monkeys all say Boo!

There’s a Nong Nang Ning

Where the trees go Ping!

And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo.

Watching my daughter happily ‘booing’ like a monkey and ‘bonging’ like a cow, I felt she was experiencing poetry at its most exuberant and celebratory best.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Kate Coombs at Book Aunt.

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