Not quite a children’s book and not quite a graphic novel,
Sackville, NB, artist Lesley Johnson creates strange vignettes
illustrated in loose, fluid watercolours. Her themes range from a
persistent Santa who a suspicious boy won’t let into the house, to a
girl who ignores her family’s warnings that there’s a chicken on her
butt, to a lonely banana desperate to be eaten. The writhing, wide-eyed
banana is the weirdest and most captivating of the stories, where every
panel could be a standalone painting. Johnson’s stories bring to mind
the sort of childhood fantasies that sidestep the line between
daydreams and nightmares.
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2009.