Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois by Amy Novesky & illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault

13 May 201813 March 2025Leave a comment

By Maureen Tai, 13 May 2018

“Louise’s mother was her best friend. Deliberate…patient, soothing…subtle, indispensable…and as useful as an araignée (spider).”

Every mother leaves an imprint on her child. For French artist Louise Josephine Bourgeois (1911-2010), known best for her impressive metal sculptures of spiders, that imprint is achingly deep, lasting her entire life. Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois is a gorgeously illustrated non-fiction picture book that tells the moving story of a daughter’s love for her mother, and of the artist – and the art – that emerges from it. Continue reading →

Town Boy by Lat

10 May 201813 March 20251 Comment

By Maureen Tai, 10 May 2018

“And so…there we were – my family and I … beginning a new life in this new place. We have become town people…”

On this first day of a new era for my home country, it is fitting that I should pay tribute to one of my favourite comics from my youth. Malaysia’s much-loved cartoonist, Datuk Mohammad Nor Khalid (fondly referred to as Lat, short for bulat or round) wrote Town Boy almost three decades ago. It is an semi-autobiographical tale, set in the 1960’s, of a young Malay boy growing up in a small town.

It is my childhood too. And it is the childhood of several generations of Malaysians. Continue reading →

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

9 May 201813 March 20251 Comment

By Maureen Tai, 7 May 2018

“Ralph was eager, excited, curious, and impatient all at once. The emotion was so strong it made him forget his empty stomach. It was caused by those little cars, especially that motorcycle and the pb-pb-b-b-b sound the boy made. That sound seemed to satisfy something within Ralph, as if he had been waiting all his life to hear it.”

I was likely 11 or 12 when I first read The Mouse and the Motorcycle. A bit late to the ballgame. I still have my original Yearling copy, with the mouse mounted on the vehicle, whiskers back and tail tucked under and around his arm. The pages are yellowed and spotted with age and threaten, with each turn, to detach from the spine. I’m surprised none did back then, I read and re-read this book so often.

I adored Ralph – the mouse – and still do.

Continue reading →