Mrs. Biddlebox is struggling... struggling to stay positive and struggling to get noticed. First published by HarperCollins with a wild and abstract- primarily black and white- cover showing Mrs. Biddlebox wrestling with a bad day, the book quickly went out of print, even though it won some awards. Reissued by Harcourt a few years later with a new, blue, more traditional cover and a subtitle, Mrs. Biddlebox is still not well known. Which is too bad.
The story is relatively simple - a woman wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and makes a great effort to become positive. The rhyme is great with some wonderfully quirky images that reflect a different take on being positive. "She rolled the sky like carpeting." Mrs. Biddlebox is determined to wack that bad day and the energy is great. Linda Smith wrote the text while battling cancer and died before it was published. Though it is not a depressing book, it does have an emotional intensity that is unusual in picture books.
But the illustrations make this story! I'm not always a fan of Marla Frazee. I often find her work overly done and self-conscious, but I love these illustrations. They are loose and humourous and detailed and abstract all at the same time. I don't know if she was inspired by Smith's metaphors or just wanted to loosen up, but I'd love to see her do more in this style. For those who feel that the concepts and illustrations are too abstract for children, please give it a try. I've read this to many classes of all ages and immediately gotten multiple stories of how to "beat the blues".
Don't underestimate children!
- Mrs. Biddlebox , Her bad day and what she did about it.
- Harcourt Children's Books (October 1, 2007)
- ISBN-10: 0152063498
- ISBN-13: 978-0152063498
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