Here's a book that was a big hit in the Horn Book office from the start, so I feel lucky to get to write about it here. It's told by a soon-to-be six-year-old (perhaps; or perhaps by multiple children) anticipating a birthday. Julie Fogliano's verse in all lower-case letters and minimal punctuation demands to be read with verve.

when's my birthday?
where's my birthday?
how many days until
my birthday?

This would be a great read-aloud, but I'd really love to hear it get the rap/freestyle treatment we've been seeing recently online. (My favorite is Ludacris performing Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney.) This text is so full of repetition and internal rhymes that it's hard NOT to hear it that way.

But the Caldecott is not for the text or read-aloud-ability, but for the book as a whole, concentrating on the visual experience. So let's look at Christian Robinson's art and the somewhat unconventional design.

The art builds on the implicit sense of anticipation and impatience, turns the volume up to eleven, and adds hyperbole. Robinson punctuates his familiar cut-and-painted paper collage with photos of real food (at the party) and real string (wrapping a present). At six years old, I'm guessing none of us were patient people. Being told that your birthday would arrive "soon" was so aggravating. We all knew that "soon" could be any amount of time at all, including stretches that seemed interminable. That upcoming birthday loomed large in our futures, and Robinson shows various children dwarfed by the most important birthday party props: presents, cake, and balloons. The various children seen throughout the book are joined by a few animals (a giraffe, a fish in a bowl, and elephants). As the Big Day draws closer, we see them wearing birthday hats and bringing presents, and finally sitting around a table under streamers.  

After reading through this book a few times, I started looking for repeated characters and hidden narratives, expecting to find a few visual subplots. When the final spread failed to show every character seen previously at the same party, I wondered if I'd found a flaw in the book. But I think I was trying to make this book experience into something it wasn't meant to be. It's not a neat and tidy book, but a raucous and episodic glimpse at the importance of birthdays and the difficult process of waiting and waiting for one's own birthday to arrive. It's full of joy and excitement, too. Every face has dot eyes and and a big U-shaped smiling mouth.

I like the way Robinson mixes it up with very limited color on some spreads, sometimes single-color solid figures on a white background and other times white cut-out figures on a solid colored background. These palette changes add to the intensity as the pages turn, waiting for the final moment we all know is coming. By book's end, every child will be thinking about his/her own birthday, and just after story's end but before the (birthday-candle) endpapers, we see "When's Your Birthday?" along with a list of the months and a grid of numbers one to thirty-one.


The most distinctive design feature is the book's tall, thin shape (echoed in those candles on the endpapers). When it's open, the spreads are almost square. When a book's trim is unusual, I look for a reason. If it's just extra-large in order to get more attention in a bookstore, that's not a good enough reason. The odd shape of this book felt right to me, but it took a while to figure out why.

A horizontal book makes sense for a story about a journey. You need all that space to show a left-to-right progression. If a wide book reveals a story that covers a long time period, then the opposite makes sense for a book about the frustrations of waiting for something to happen. When's My Birthday? is narrated by a child who wants time to pass as quickly as possible. Where horizontal books prompt slow page-turns, vertical books call for rapid page-turns.

I have one last observation before handing this off to all of you. The cover type treatment is just about perfect. The simple sans serif bold title has been given an unusually generous amout of kerning (space between letters). It's a lot like the type and kerning used on highway signs. Have you ever noticed how widely-spaced those letters are? They do that because it makes the words easier to read when you are driving at higher speeds. The same treatment on a book cover can signal speed, too.

A lot of you will be driving later this week for the Thanksgiving holiday. Take note of the extra-wide kerning on your road signs. And if you get stuck in traffic, just imagine how much more frustrating that slow passage of time would feel if you were five or six and waiting for your birthday to arrive.



 

Read the starred Horn Book Magazine review of When's My Birthday?