posted on 20 Oct 2019

Oscar Seeks A Friend by Pawel Pawlak

Polish author and illustrator Pawel Pawlak’s picture story, Oscar Seeks A Friend, has been brought to us by Lantana Publishing in a translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. It’s a charming and rather gentle story about friendship and the pleasures of discovering other people’s lives and realities but at first sight you might not expect it.

Why? Well, just take a look at the front cover. Oscar is a rather unappealing young skeleton in a pair of red shorts who looks very glum. And, being a skeleton is not his only problem:

“It’s hard for a small, ugly skeleton to make friends. And with a tooth missing, I looked so dreadful that I thought I’d never, ever have anyone to play with except Tag.”

Tag, of course, is his dog and that’s also a skeleton!

It might seem odd to be overly concerned about the loss of a tooth if you’re a skeleton in the first place but when he meets an ordinary young girl who has also lost a tooth, they find themselves bonding.

The young girl is burying her tooth as a way of ensuring her greatest wish comes true – she wants to find a friend more than anything in the world. Oscar wants the tooth to replace his lost one so he wont look so frightful and might also find a friend. Both have their wish fulfilled when they reach out to each other and share their respective worlds.

What lifts the simple story out of the normal is the artwork and the beautiful production values. The use of mixed media illustration – the use of collage gives the pictures a sense of three-dimensional texture and is both simple and subtle. The depiction of Oscar’s world relies heavily on the contrasts of black and white while the world of the little girl is full of rainbow colours with plenty of white, light backgrounds. Contrasting pages alternate until Oscar enters the girl’s world of meadows, grass, rainbows and sunshine when the pages burst with colour and double page spreads show the new friends romping on beaches and in fields. When we enter Oscar’s world dark colours dominate in the parks and libraries.

Plenty of thought has gone into the production and presentation of the book and the hardback cover has a pleasingly tactile finish. I’m pretty sure plenty of children will be thrilled by the slightly macabre Oscar and his world. The message that it’s not what you look like but what’s in your heart that counts when it comes to finding friends is one worth emphasising in the age of social media profiles.

And given the time of year, this would be a great storybook gift for Halloween

 

Terry Potter

October 2019

(Click on any image to view them in a slide show format)