Debi Gliori

This review appears on my blog: Seasons South and North:

Debi Gliori is one of the illustrators and authors I most admire, for she seems to write her stories from the heart and to give great whimsy to her drawings. This bright book is true to her style, with its story one of concern to us all and its illustrations full of charm.

Many books warn of the problems of global warming, pollution, and overpopulation, and I have written often about how to help children to cope with this frightening show more knowledge. Ms. Gliori has chosen to tell the story not with ungrateful people who mindlessly destroy the environment that sustains them. She tells the story with dragons.

In rhyming couplets, she tells of dragons that overproduce, hatching from spotted eggs. It is orange and purple and pink dragons that cover the earth with roads and houses and leave trash in the rivers. She skips round the complicated explanation of the warming of the atmosphere by having it be caused by too many dragons breathing too much fire....and Santa is left in a pink pool where the North Pole once was.

Gradually, all of the colours are sucked out of the illustrations as all of the life is sucked out of the planet, and the dragons are a lonely species. Realizing their fate as the last animals leave, they call out for help. "OK, start by not chopping down trees," they are told, and so start the recommendations -- so simple, really -- that lead to the return of life, colour and health for all.

As a gentle and not frightening way for young children to learn about the subject, this book is among the best, and Bloomsbury is to be commended for publishing it. It will bring discussion, including the most difficult question of all : if we know what we are to do to end the terrible effects of pollution, and we are teaching our children to do it, why are their elders not doing as they recommend?

Indeed, why are we not? show less

With a delightful rhyming text that is meant to both entertain and reassure - "Then should the oceans roar and rise / and dark clouds race across the skies / I'd hold you tight and close and warm / and keep you safe all through the storm. / If thunder tore the night in two / and lightning played at peekaBOO, / we'd watch the storm pass overheard, / then curl up safe and snug in bed." - and colorful watercolor and ink illustrations in her trademark style, Debi Gliori's Stormy Weather is a show more charming bedtime book, ideally suited for soothing childhood fears, when the weather outside is stormy.

The creator of No Matter What - one of my all-time favorite reassurance tales - Gliori triumphs again in this lovely follow up, which seems to feature the same foxy parent-child duo. I simply adore Gliori's artwork, which somehow manages to be entirely cute - I loved all the images of parent animals enfolding their offspring in protective embraces - without ever being precious. The color palette she uses work is deep, and the overall effect of the illustrations enchanting - paired with the reassuring narrative, this book is a winner! show less

Scots children's author and illustrator Debi Gliori - best known for her series of adorable picture-books featuring Mr. Bear, and for her series of spooky middle-grade fantasies about the Strega-Borgia family, which began with Pure Dead Magic - also happens to be the author of my all-time favorite reassurance tale, No Matter What. When Small, a little fox who feels "grim and grumpy," wrecks the living room, Large knows something is wrong, and a back-and-forth exchange begins, with Small show more posing a series of questions: Would Large still love her, if she were a bear? What about a squishy bug? The answer, of course, is always that Large will love her, "no matter what!"

Like so many books of its kind, from Guess How Much I Love You to Love You Forever, this is a story meant to reassure young children, to teach them that parental love is unconditional, and won't be withdrawn because they make a mistake, move away, or grow up. Unlike some of these other titles, however, Gliori's No Matter What is deliberately vague, when it comes to the gender of both parent and child - no pronouns, other than "you" are used in the text, and the illustrations are inconclusive - meaning that it can be interpreted in a variety of ways: as a mother-son, a mother-daughter, father-son, or father-daughter story, depending. The rhyming text itself is simple and sweet, making for a good read-aloud, and the adorable illustrations are colorful and appealing. All in all, it's a winner, and one I highly recommend to anyone looking for this type of story. show less

This eco- message book was a little surprising to me, since I'd anticipated something more along the lines of, "what happens when you have a dragon in your house". Instead, "dragons" are a giant metaphor for humans, gobbling up resources, and ravaging the world. For that, I'd say it was a friendly intro to the concept of environmentalism, climate change, etc.