Aunt Armadillo

Susan Anderson was a librarian with the Calgary Public Library.

Narrated by a small, school-age girl of perhaps seven or eight years, this picture book is basically the description of an odd but lovable relative, Aunt Armadillo, so named because of the two live armadillos that she constantly carries on top of her head.

The narrator spends her summers at Aunt Armadillo’s house, which is full of cases of birds and animals, strange plants, ostrich feathers, a harpsichord, and a multitude of books. Eating and sleeping whenever they like, Aunt Armadillo and her niece make frequent visits to the park, the library, or the zoo, where Auntie, with her neighbour Mr. Greene, often reads to the bears.

One day Aunt Armadillo is invited by a library to come and look after its collection of very old and special children’s books. She zooms off in her little green roadster, and the next picture depicts a library festooned with kites, an enormous fish tank, and a real banana tree complete with monkeys.

Robin Baird Lewis’s full-color illustrations, more detailed, certainly, than those in The Upside-down King of Minnikin, are the main attraction here, as story line is minimal. Her crowd scenes are reminiscent of Peter Spier’s work. Careful observers will notice the whimsical touches, such as the round road sign depicting an armadillo crossed out with a diagonal slash, and at the end of the story, the three armadillos sported on the head of the now hatless Mr. Greene.

I wonder if the author/illustrator is making a comment about children’s libraries — certainly none Iknow of could possibly be as exciting as Aunt Armadillo’s. She has also chosen to evoke a very definite feeling that Auntie is an English eccentric, tolerated in varying degrees by other inhabitants of an English village. She has taken a risk in departing from the Red is Best, Big or Little? format, and she has proved her versatility in doing so.