Fairy Tales and Fables

By Gyo Fujikawa

Gyo Fujikawa is a favorite childhood author and illustrator of mine.  My first memory of reading includes her book Oh What a Busy Day! Her illustration technique is so unique and different from anything else I have seen. Her love and respect of children and nature is present in all of her drawings. She uses both color and back and white illustrations in all of her books. Children appear round, cheerful, and expressive of their feelings. Fujikawa was  one of the first illustrators to include children of different nationalities and cultures in children's literature. Her earliest books (published in the early seventies) contained child diversity when most books portrayed children as white, middle class Americans.  I have always had such great respect for Fujikawa for this reason.

Like her other books, Fujikawa uses a soft and delicate style to make both her text and illustrations appeal and relate to children.  Most of her drawings contain nature (animals and plants) and objects familiar to children. Animals are used as realistic and imaginative characters. For example, butterflies, birds, rabbits, and mice often appear "in nature" within her drawings. The wolf in  Little Red Ridinghood appears as any wolf one would find in nature (rather than a walking and talking character in the tale).  On the other hand, in the tale Goldilocks and the Tree bears, the bears are wearing clothes and acting in "human-like" roles. This technique combines fantasy and reality to target the developing mind of a child.  The reader is exposed to the realistic norms of everyday life (Fujikawa uses illustration as instruction) while being comforted by the inclusion of imagination and fantasy.  

This book contains a "This book belongs to" page (which is present in all of Fujikawa's books and serves as another example of how she uses technique to relate and appeal to children) and a "Contents" page to quickly find the page number of a favorite fable or tale. The last page of the book contains a "The End" page that includes black and white illustrations of animals, children, and the characters from the fables "walking away" from the story. A clever technique used to "finalize" the ending. 

I cannot say enough good things about the author Gyo Fujikawa and her quality of literature. All of her books contain HOURS of exploration and inference for young children. I include all of her books in my classroom and will purchase duplicate copies of each when I have my own children.