Picture Books for Grown-Ups (by Kyo Maclear)
I looked at the bookshelf in my study this morning and found Anne Carson sitting alongside Charles Schultz. I have no idea what they were doing there together, but I would like to think they were having a fruitful conversation. (They both like to draw. They are both observant and funny.) There are picture books of all kinds on my “grown-up” shelf. Some I pilfered from my children. Some I bought for myself. Some are a little beyond me but I figure I’ll grow into them. Lately unaccompanied prose feels bereft to me. Perhaps it’s all the time I have spent in the company of my young sons, who believe a book without pictures is a travesty. (Why not just make a book without a binding, or page numbers?) In the belief that grownups need pictures too, I’ve assembled a selection of adult-friendly visual reads. **Kyo Maclear is a novelist and children’s author. She has two new books out this March: a novel, Stray Love (HarperCollins Canada) and Virginia Wolf (Kids Can Press.)
