Black and White by Macaulay, David - 1990

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/near fine. First printing, folio size, 32 pp., no Caldecott Medal on the dust jacket. David Macaulay (b. 1946) was fascinated with machines and how they operated as a young child, making models and drawing illustrations of them. Many of his books display this fascination with their complexity made elegantly simple.

This story "appears to contain a number of stories that do not necessarily occur at the same time...[or] it may contain only one story...[or] four stories...[o]r four parts of a story" (n.b., from dust jacket flap). And while the title page helpfully presents a single title, "Black and White", immediately following is a double-spread second title page (or is it?) with four titles (or are they?): "Seeing Things", "Problem Parents", "A Waiting Game", and "Chaos"....

Macaulay won the 1991 Caldecott Medal for Illustration for this title, which is considered to be a prime example of a "postmodern picture book" with a metafictional structure. In her book "A Shimmer of Joy" Chris Loker notes "Macaulay's masterwork is a Rubik's cube of intriguing plot possibilities, coupled with four different styles of painterly art and an utterly unique approach to four-part page pacing..." (p. 260).

Truly a book which "intrigues and challenges readers of all ages." (ibid)

___DESCRIPTION: Grey paper-covered boards with a black linen cloth shelfback, white lettering stamped on the spine, debossed vignette of a holstein cow, cherry red endpapers, title page in black and red, each page with two horizontal sections creating four "story-lines" with every turn of the page all in full colour, full number line (first printing) on the copyright page (here at the back); folio size (12.25" by 8.25"), unpaginated with sixteen leaves. The dust jacket is unclipped with the original price of $14.95 on the flap, full-colour graphics on front and back panels, title in red on spine, summary of book on the front flap and short author bio on the back flap, the dust jacket does not have the Caldecott medallion.

___CONDITION: Volume fine, with clean boards, absolutely straight corners without rubbing, a strong, square text block with solid hinges, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; clean, crisp, and as new. The unclipped dust jacket is near fine, the colours deep and true, the spine is not sunned (the red lettering still bright); some light edgewear to the head of the spine and some toning where the jacket met the cloth spine, else fine.

___CITATION: Loker, "A Shimmer of Joy", pp. 260-261.

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