Mirror

Jeannie Baker (author/illus)

Walker Books, Australia: 2010

ISBN: 9781406309140

Genres: picture book

Issues: cultural differences, family, tolerance

Any new book from Jeannie Baker, creator of Where The Forest Meets the Sea and Window is an event to be celebrated. But in Mirror, her latest release, Baker has set the bar even higher for both herself and those that follow.

A wordless text, Mirror is set in both Morocco, North Africa and Sydney, Australia. It is in fact two books, designed to be read simultaneously, one bound to the left side of the cover (Western reading style), and the other to the right (Eastern reading style). Each book follows the day's events in the lives of two small boys as they accompany their fathers about their business. Two apparently very different physical and social contexts, beliefs and traditions; yet here are two families who love and care for one another, two sets of parents who work hard to provide opportunities for their children.

Baker started this astonishing creation at a time when suspicion and prejudice were once again raising their ugly heads, incited by media speculation and apprehensive governments. Her sadness at the antagonism towards peoples she had found far more friendly and welcoming to a ‘stranger' in their land than her people were inspired Baker to demonstrate through her work that there is far more that unites us than divides us; that when looking in the face of a ‘stranger' we should remember that ‘inwardly we are so alike, it could be each other we see when we look in a mirror.'

Baker's collages have always been remarkable but in Mirror, which took five years to create, it is clear that as an artist she is constantly striving to improve her work. These are illustrations that invite the readers to pore over them, to appreciate the details that give the story its depth and insight. Designed to challenge preconceptions, to reposition reader attitudes towards the Other, the one who is different to them, Mirror seeks to bridge sociocultural divides and promote acceptance of differences.