My Two Blankets.

By Irena Kobald and illustrated by Freya Blackwood. Published by Little Hare, Hardie Grant Egmont, 2014.

Cartwheel by name and by nature is the young protagonist who flees her war-ravaged country to a new one, taking with her a beloved blanket.

In her new surroundings after having fled her home from war, Cartwheel is overwhelmed by the stark differences between her old country and new one. She describes the people, the food, the animals, the plants, and the wind as strange. Using an analogy of feeling under a cold waterfall to describe her isolation, she finds refuge in her blanket of warm reds and orange to contrast against the unfamiliar environment of cool blues, greys and green. Here, her clothing, words and identity are fused with her old blanket, enveloping her with its protection and familiar comfort.

After some chance exchanges with another young girl at the local park, Cartwheel begins to experience hope, yet her underlying feelings of helplessness remain as she cannot communicate these to her newfound friend, ‘I wanted to tell her how glad I was that we were friends. But I didn’t know how.’ Kobald uses language as the mechanism to define Cartwheels’ identity and humanity, where her lonely feelings under a cold waterfall persist.

Through these encounters, the girl from the park shares words with Cartwheel in the form of paper origami birds, and through repetition, Cartwheel slowly begins to understand them. She constructs new narratives to illustrate her experiences by sewing another blanket that becomes just as warm and as rich as her old one.

This book, the winner of Best Picture Book of the year in 2015 by the Childrens Book Council of Australia, thoughtfully uses two contrasting blankets to illustrate two cultures Cartwheel finds comfort within, and another where she weaves new stories from. Using symbolic scripts of joy on playground swings, to the origami birds that represent words and expression, to the act of cartwheeling itself to which her name derives from, My Two Blankets poignantly captures the essence of displacement, identity, acceptance and freedom.

Mr Tiger Goes Wild.

By Peter Brown. Published by Macmillan Children’s Books, 2014

In a dreary city governed by expectative norms, anthropomorphic jungle animals masquerade in formality, where a discontented tiger dares to be different.

In the city, ‘everyone was perfectly fine with the way things were...everyone but Mr Tiger.’ When all the animals go about their daily existence with their eyes closed in ignorance, Mr Tiger stares directly and blankly at the viewer showing his honesty and boredom in a world of ‘proper’. He knows instinctually, that something is not quite right. Pleasantries are meaningless, and stifling dress code and behaviour resemble something out of regency England. Elephants, Rhinos and Tigers share traditional afternoon tea served in fine china, where after acknowledging his restlessness, Mr Tiger concludes almost unconsciously that he just wants to be...wild.

As a thought, he decides to walk on all fours - and away from stunned onlookers where he immediately feels better. He threatens conformity with his antics and becomes ‘wilder and wilder’ where he finally exposes all of his glorious stripes before an outraged community. In this gesture, a bit of a ‘Mr-Tiger-gives-the-middle-finger,’ he willingly banishes himself to the wilderness to go ‘completely wild’. Here, he discovers the awe of nature and his own capabilities. Now, no longer denying his instincts, he discovers freedom and true expression. 

Despite these reflective and exhilarating adventures, Mr Tiger becomes lonely where upon returning to the city, he notices that things have changed. It appears that others have followed in his ‘paw-steps’ in search of their own wild ways.

This beautifully illustrated book uses a combination of traditional and modern illustrative techniques where colour and wordless pages highlight the contrast between Mr Tiger as an individual who is featured vividly in yellow and orange throughout, alongside his sepia-toned city neighbours, and the two different settings he ‘finds’ himself in; the city and its grey monotony, contrasted with the lush wilderness. Peter Brown manages to provoke thoughts around repression, difference and self-acceptance in a surprisingly lighthearted way.