Canada used to be a place where children’s writers disappeared. A book or two would be published, full of promise, and then the writer would vanish into utter darkness. I have a little shelf of these waif-like singletons, Slipper Hbr. by Yvonne Wilson and Henry and the Cow Problem by Iona Whishaw. This shelf used to include a wise and funny 1990 picture book by Roslyn Schwartz called Rose and Dorothy. Then in 1999 Schwartz reappeared with a pair of small square books featuring the immediately captivating Mole Sisters. This fall sees the fifth and sixth adventures of the Mole Sisters: The Mole Sisters and the Blue Egg and The Mole Sisters and the Moonlit Night.

Schwartz is a minimalist. The Mole Sisters are grey and pink and have a sturdy upside-down comma shape. They don’t bend much. They have pencil dot eyes and very little in the way of mouths. They move in tandem symmetry without individual names or personalities. The pastel illustrations are gentle and in a limited palette. The plots are spare. In The Moonlit Night the sisters wish themselves to the moon and then they wish themselves home. How can these books be so funny and satisfying?

One answer is that Schwartz is a master of the theatricality of the picture book form, the drama of the turning page. In The Moonlit Night, when the sisters see a shooting star they make a wish. They touch snouts. We zoom in for a close-up. “Mmmm …” says the text. What is their wish? We turn the page – more ellipses, more suspense: “… mmmmm …” as the sisters begin to whirl. Facing page: “MWAH – it worked!” A wonderful sound and the sisters look ecstatic in their new setting, but what worked? Turn the page. The mystery is solved, in words and picture: “We’re on the moon.” Pause, exhale, grin, and squeeze the kid on your lap. Next time, you’ll go “MWAH” together.

The other reason these books expand with each reading is that their themes are big and important. The Blue Egg begins with a quest. “The mole sisters were looking for something. But what? ‘We don’t know,’ they said.” They find a hollow tree, a bird’s nest, and a blue egg. What they discover, and so do we, is that they are searching for the joy of flight. The text, however, says nothing of this: it says things like “WHOOOOOOOSH” and “PLONK!” Only the pictures reveal how the sisters discover and achieve their goal. The Mole Sisters are unfailingly optimistic, eager, and confident. They are my new role models.

We no longer make writers disappear. In a season that includes new books by Julie Johnston, Michael Bedard, and Brian Doyle, we are assured of real bodies of work. Things look brighter for first-time children’s authors like adult short-fiction writer Madeleine Thien and animation artist Joe Chang, who have collaborated in The Chinese Violin. Originally a wordless National Film Board short, this story has been given a text by Thien for its book incarnation.

It is a classic newcomer story. Lin Lin and her father emigrate from China to Vancouver. Lin Lin is homesick and disoriented. What comforts them both is the music the father makes on his erhu (sensibly just called a Chinese violin in the text). Its sounds remind them of home and, as Lin Lin becomes a competent player herself, it becomes a way of communicating and making friends.

The challenge of adapting the film to book form must have been to capture the music. The book design assists greatly in this transition. Chang’s angular, almost uneasy, line is complemented by the calligraphic-style typeface. The pages are full of movement and rhythm as we change perspective, from a wide skyline portrayal of Vancouver to a nose-to-nose close-up with Lin Lin. For her part Thien creates a sense of music through imagery. She establishes images of flying and soaring, with birds, butterflies, airplanes, and dreams. She also weaves in threads of work and play, beginning with the opening line: “Lin Lin used to play on a grassy hill in her small village in China.” (We don’t know if this is child’s play or playing the violin.) Thien’s text creates sound effects. Some of the strangeness of Vancouver lies in its soundscape. “Hollering seagulls dipped across the sky. The noises of the cars and people and a new language swept over Lin Lin like an ocean.”

This book will have particular interest for Vancouverites as a fresh yet familiar portrait of our city, but of course it is the fundamental Canadian story as well – arrivals and encounters, fear and anticipation, memory and new experience.