Smile: How Young Charlie Chaplin Taught the World to Laugh (and Cry) - Hardcover

Golio, Gary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763697613 ISBN 13: 9780763697617

Publisher: Candlewick, 2019

Synopsis

An award-winning author and a Caldecott Medalist take a creative look at the early life of comedic genius Charlie Chaplin.

Once there was a little slip of a boy who roamed the streets of London, hungry for life (and maybe a bit of bread). His dad long gone and his actress mother ailing, five-year-old Charlie found himself onstage one day taking his mum’s place, singing and drawing laughs amid a shower of coins. There were times in the poorhouse and times spent sitting in the window at home with Mum, making up funny stories about passersby. And when Charlie described a wobbly old man he saw in baggy clothes, with turned-out feet and a crooked cane, his mother found it sad, but Charlie knew that funny and sad go hand in hand. With a lyrical text and exquisite collage imagery, Gary Golio and Ed Young interpret Charlie Chaplin’s path from his childhood through his beginnings in silent film and the creation of his iconic Little Tramp. Keen-eyed readers will notice a silhouette of the Little Tramp throughout the book that becomes animated with a flip of the pages. An afterword fills in facts about the beloved performer who became one of the most famous entertainers of all time.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Golio is the author of Bird & Diz, also illustrated by Ed Young. He has written several best-selling and award-winning picture-book biographies, including Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow, When Bob Met Woody, and Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey. Gary Golio lives in Hudson Valley, New York.

Ed Young  (1931-2023) was the illustrator of more than one hundred books for children, many of which he also wrote. Among them is the Caldecott Medal winner Lon Po Po, which he both wrote and illustrated, as well as Bird & Diz and Smile: How Young Charlie Chaplin Taught the World to Laugh (and Cry), both by Gary Golio. Ed Young's artwork was inspired by the philosophy of Chinese painting.

Reviews

Gr 1–5—The duo that illuminated musicians Bird and Diz present the backstory of an internationally acclaimed silent film star, director, and composer. Golio has wisely selected moments from Chaplin's 19th-century London childhood that are laden with sensory components or emotional connections: "Laughing children with colored balloons / A flower seller with his jingly cart and horse…." Scaffolding the heights and depths of life with an absent actor father and a musical mother whose illness led to the poorhouse, the author traces experiences Charlie and his brother absorbed before becoming vaudevillians themselves (the book concludes before adult complexities arise). Throughout pratfalls with troupes in England and America, the siblings and their audiences discerned that "Laughter and Tears were brothers, too." Young's inventive, mixed-media collages play with this duality by balancing subdued scenes with bursts of joyous color. The penultimate spread depicts the tramp costume, freshly fashioned for cinema, stretching diagonally across the gutter—a brown shadow emerging from a patchwork canopy snipped from previous scenes. It echoes the burlap crowd from Chaplin's earliest street dances and prepares readers for the final iconic photograph. Thoughtful design presents the blank verse rendered in white on black—or the reverse—paying homage to the subject's filmmaking, as does the tramp silhouette on the base of each recto that animates when flipped. VERDICT Adults will appreciate the informative and creative approach, as well as the afterword, bibliography, and textual nod to the titular lyrics. Children will cheer for the class clown's success.—Wendy Lukehart, District of Columbia Public Library

Edition details

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0763697613
• ISBN 13: 9780763697617
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Young Ed
• Number of pages: 48