The Patchwork Bike by Maxine Beneba Clarke

I also hope this book makes its way into school libraries everywhere. (There is, for instance, “BLM” for Black Lives Matter painted on the bark license plate the kids place on the bike.) There is also a closing author’s note from the illustrator, in which he explains the political significance of many of the choices he makes in the book. All they see in it is possibility and fun.” … The girl and the boys in the story love their patchwork bike just as much as a kid with a brand-new, expensive BMX bike might love theirs - or maybe even more. I hope this book gets into schools and libraries so that kids from all socioeconomic backgrounds can have access to it. “Poverty is in some ways universal, though the landscape of the book is third-world poverty. The inspiration for the story evidently comes from a piece in a short story collection from Clarke, called Foreign Soil. The kids, while on the bike, are untouchable, and Rudd’s streaks of acrylic paints in these moments make that clear. As if we’re seeing it from the mother’s perspective, we see a blurry wall of motion in shades of blues and reds. His depictions of the siblings zooming by on their bike are kinetic wonders. The art note on the copyright page indicates this is recycled cardboard, which is important, given that the characters in the book used recycled parts to create this bike they so enjoy.) Rudd captures textures and shadows with great effect. (We can often see the markings of the cardboard boxes - arrows, numbers, tape, etc.

Rudd illustrates this story via acrylics on cardboard in spacious, uncluttered spreads. “But the best thing of all in our village is me and my brothers’ bike.” The “best thing of all in our village,” the girl tells us, “is me and my brothers’ bike.” It is, as the title says, a patchwork bike made of spare parts - tin-can handles, wood-cut wheels, branches for handlebars, and the like. First published in Australia and New Zealand in 2016, this is the story of a young girl, her “crazy brothers,” their “fed-up mum,” and their desert “mud-for-walls” home in a third-world country. I’ve a bit of art today from Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The Patchwork Bike (Candlewick, September 2018), illustrated by Van Thanh Rudd. (Click to enlarge spread, which is sans text)

The Patchwork Bike by Maxine Beneba Clarke