On the Merry-Go-Round

Ted McGee is an associate professor of English at St. Jerome’s
College, University of Waterloo.

On the Merry-Go-Round, a poem by bp Nichol elegantly illustrated by
Simon Ng, is a lovely picture book for young children.

Nichol’s poem is a lullaby with deliberate rhythms and predictable
rhymes, but what makes it distinctive is its imaginative force. The
merry-go-round animals—silent all—take the child “to the edge of
the sky,” “to the moon” and back, “to the edge of the night.”
The silence of the animals is crucial, for it encourages the
child/listener to quiet down and to enter into the exciting realm of
sleep: “On the Merry-Go-Round / if I make no sound / I’m the dog in
his race / and the deer in her leap / and the horse that I’ll ride
into sleep, / and the horse that I’ll ride into sleep.”

Ng’s subtly colored and gracefully stylized illustrations deepen and
enrich Nichol’s simple poem. Increasingly giving prominence to the
little girl of the poem, the sequence of pictures constitutes a gesture
of love (which is, of course, an emotion that helps a child settle down
into sleep). Early on, the figure of the little girl is dwarfed by the
huge animals of the merry-go-round as they transport her on high. In the
illustrations of the last stanza (quoted above), not only does the
little girl dominate the frame but so too do activities that she
delights in: running, skipping, riding a bicycle “with no hands.”
And in the final picture, her sleeping body gives shape to the imaginary
landscape that her bed has become. As the lullaby reaches its
conclusion, the affirmation of the child reaches its peak.

All in all, this is a splendid piece of collaboration between poet and
artist.