Picture books are novels in miniature - with the extra bonus of being novels with pictures. Assessing their merits becomes, therefore, a matter involving both their literary and artistic dimension: what is the nature of the story they have to tell and how does the artwork not merely `'illustrate " it but extend it, in effect creating its own narrative? In a genre which is increasingly sophisticated and competitive, the standards demanded by these interlacing criteria are increasingly rising and, if the titles reviewed here are any indication, being increasingly met.
Amy Hest's Mabel Dancing (Walker, £9.99 in UK) is, on the surface, no more than the story of a little girl who steals out of bed to join in her parents' dancing party downstairs. But this is to say nothing of the poetry in the telling or of the subtle and economical evocation of the child's social background. Even more significantly, such a summary neglects Christine Davenier's gloriously swirling illustrations, whether their fluidity is mimicking the rhythm of the dance or their dreaminess brilliantly catching the contentment of fulfilled childhood longing.
Coincidentally, it is dance which lies also at the heart of Swine Lake (Harper Collins, £10.99 in UK), with words by James Marshall and illustrations by Maurice Sendak. Here, however, in a story which sees a wolf's bloodthirsty intentions totally subdued by the combined power of music and ballet, the tone of telling is altogether more adult. Its colloquial sharpness finds its match in the satirical caricatures of Sendak's wild things (human and otherwise), full of intertextual reference: how many young smart alecs will appreciate the allusion to "Melville's masterpiece Pierre "?
The potential of illustration to transcend the mere words of a text is powerfully realised in Anthony Browne's paintings for Annalena McAfee's The Visitors Who Came To Stay (Walker, £9.99 in UK). On this story of a young girl who eventually comes to terms with her father's new girlfriend and her practical joker of a son the artwork imposes a multi-layered social commentary, expressed in a versatile selection of details and styles. The cumulative effect is of landscapes where nothing is ever quite what it seems, where disturbing nuances hide round every corner.
Responsible for both text and illustration in The Wonderful Journey (Red Fox, £4.99 in UK), Paul Geraghty adds richly to a well established picture book tradition of portraying loss and separation. In this example, a young boy's enchantment with an African grandmother's stories of her distant upbringing is the prelude to her eventual final journey: the balance between poignancy and sentimentality is well judged. But it is the art here, especially in its contrasting of the exotic flora and fauna of grandma's memories with the boy's immediate industrial environment, which has the stronger narrative.
The twin motifs of memory and immigrant journeys also dominate Carole Lexa Schaefer's The Copper Tin Cup (Walker, £9.99 in UK), crystallised here in the family heirloom of the title. Its passage from generation to generation is traced in the richly detailed textures of Stan Fellows's pictures, in which its various owners are endowed not merely with their shared initials but also with their shared attributes of warmth, generosity and humanity. Words tell but art illuminates: see the travellers' faces on the double-page-spread depicting "the long sea journey to the family's new home."
In Roger McGough's The Kite & Caitlin (Red Fox, £4.99 in UK), illustrated by John Prater, the theme of childhood death is addressed with remarkable tact and imagination. For its young heroine and her much loved kite there is just time for one final exhilarating trip across the world's mountain-tops until the `'earth is just a pebble at the foot of the Great Mountain of light . . ." The lyricism of the prose, juxtaposed with Prater's ethereal worlds, undercuts the story's pain, without in any way diminishing its sadness.
Focusing on an elderly man's death and on the way in which the younger members of his family learn to accept their loss, Trish Cooke's The Grandad Tree (Walker, £9.99 in UK) is a less original, though no less touching, story than McGough's. Its structure is based on generational and seasonal change, a strategy providing its illustrator, Sharon Wilson, with the opportunity to move, literally and figuratively, from spring to winter. Her delicately blurred pictures catch the essential fragility of life's cycle, while testifying to its snatched moments of joy, fulfilment and hope.
Largely free of such serious considerations, Jane Simmons's Daisy and the Beastie (O'Brien, £5.50) settles instead for a search by Daisy the duck for the `'beastie " she has first encountered in grandpa's story: the text here is honed to minimalist level, but magnificently surrounded by page after page of full colour farmyard life and vigour. It's a real treat for young children and all who read to them.
Robert Dunbar lectures in English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Dublin