QUEBEC, I LOVE YOU
By
Japanese-born Miyuki Tanobe now lives in Quebec, and this is an album of her urban-primitivist paintings of working-class Montreal and Quebec. Her red brick and gray stone row houses spill over with people--bringing home the Christmas tree, posing for a first Communion photo, playing hockey on the street, dancing on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, etc. The pictures have enough social/narrative interest to catch young eyes, but the parallel columns of French and English text which fill facing or alternate double-pages not only look dead but read flat as well. Mere descriptions of the scenes, they are thumpingly simple, often redundant, but not especially geared to children--or especially original. (The young men hanging around the corner grocery, ""a hive of activity,"" are ""busy watching the pretty girls go by."") Artistically as well as geographically, this is a long way from Kurelek's evocation of another Canadian milieu, but the pictures could add considerable human interest to a geography class unit.