Teaching kids their letters, numbers, shapes, and colors is easy. I’ve seen how quickly my young nephew latched onto these concepts and can recognize and name them in his sleep. Other concepts are much harder to teach, such as time. What we are doing and when we are doing it can be difficult to understand when we’re young and don’t know about schedules and routines.
Author John Bray has come up with a clever and effective way of explaining time with his book, The End. This book talks about beginnings and endings in terms of kids’ daily routines and activities. By relating it to their everyday lives, they are able to learn about how and when we spend our time. Below is my review of The End followed by an interview with the author.
The End plot summary
The End literally starts with the words “the end,” a phrase most commonly used when a story is over. The omniscient narrator goes on to explain that while the book has just begun, whatever activity the reader was doing had to end in order to begin reading the book.
The story goes on to point out all of the other times that things begin and end in a day, such as eating meals, playing, and eventually, how the end of something leads to big changes, like going to school. Kids tend to hate when things end. And this book helps to show them that endings can be fun, just as things end without you realizing it in order to make room for something new or better. And if it leads to something not so great, that too will end, and you will go on to a new beginning which might be better.
The message
The End shares a positive, upbeat, yet realistic message about change. It makes us aware of beginnings and endings, how we tend to transition from the ending to the beginning of something new all the time, and how small or large those changes can be.
I love how Bray incorporates small, relatable activities into the book in order to make his points. It uses concrete examples for a somewhat abstract idea in a clever explanation of an important topic. All of this leads to the idea of going to school, one of the first major life events that we experience. And in showing how we are used to making little changes in our everyday life, it has prepared us to make big changes going forward.
The illustrations
This book came to me in a large, hardback copy with a busy, colorful image printed on the dust jacket. It teases the beautiful interior illustrations by Josh Cleland featuring a cute little girl with a large head and stick figure body who exhibits cute and funny facial expressions that match the situation she’s currently in. Her love of dinosaurs is sure to be a hit with young readers, something that doesn’t factor into the text but will surely be noticed by young readers as they stare at the illustrations on each page.
The drawings are full of playful movement and intricate details such as blanket forts, colorful socks, and adventurous play spots, such as bike trails and wooden boats. My favorite page features the little girl sitting in the middle of her blanket fort looking bored with her cat because she’s stuck in the middle, and the only cure is to end the game so that she can begin a new one.
My recommendation
The End is an excellent book about beginnings and endings and teaching kids how time works and how change is more routine than we think. It’s the perfect book to read at the beginning of a school year, particularly to kindergarteners who might be nervous about beginning their school career. Each page contains just a sentence or two that makes it fast-paced, yet clear and thought-provoking. And it’s one that I’ll be showing to kids in my life to help them learn about change, endings, and new beginnings.
My rating
An interview with John Bray and Josh Cleland
Author John Bray
How did you come up with the idea for The End?
The original inspiration was a line from a Semisonic song, “Closing Time,” that came out when I was in high school: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” I liked that connection between endings and beginnings and, when that line found its way back into my brain much later in life, I realized that the relationship between endings and beginnings is pretty intangible.
It’s tough for a lot of people — children and adults — to grasp, especially when the ending in question is difficult. So, I decided to write into that concept and see where it would take me.
What do you want young readers to take away from your book?
This is always a difficult question because everyone will approach this book from a different place, and the takeaway will be a little different for everyone. Maybe it’s the idea that they can think about endings in a different way. Maybe it’s something funny on one of the pages that gives them an idea. Maybe it’s something the main character does that helps them feel seen in the book.
I always find it sad to finish a book and feel indifferent about it, so I guess, more than anything else, I want young readers to take something away from the experience of reading The End. To have their mind wander back to the story or an idea it sparked.
Do you have a favorite page or a favorite activity that takes place in the book?
There’s one spread in particular, right in the middle, where the main character is looking a little bored despite being surrounded by a rather impressive blanket fort. Josh Cleland did a great job creating an expansive scene for this spread — a fort that seems infinite — but my favorite part about the whole thing is the main character’s very underwhelmed expression. It’s perfect.
How did you feel about starting school as a kid?
When I was very young, 1st and 2nd grade, I dreaded going everyday and routinely cried. My parents, who remain as encouraging and supportive now as they were then, incentivised going by giving me a small prize (a Micro Machine, which is basically a very, very small matchbox car) after each day. Slowly, that tapered to each week and eventually went away entirely.
Still, I didn’t enjoy school until 3rd grade and that was entirely because of my teacher, Marla Martinson. I don’t know that I was ever really an eager student, but she made me realize that school didn’t have to be dreadful.
It says in your bio that you like to draw. If drawing was your career, what would you most like to work on?
Graphic novels! My brain naturally segments and compartmentalizes ideas and that makes me think working in graphic novels would be fun. Little, individual windows looking into a larger world and story.
What’s next for you?
More picture books. I plan to keep writing them until I run out of ideas. I hope that never happens, but I suppose anything is possible. And, though it’s too soon to tell where it will go, I also have a middle grade manuscript in process.
An interview with Josh Cleland
What was the biggest challenge illustrating this book?
The most challenging part of this book also made it the most fun! This book is very conceptual, so the challenge was finding a unique way of supporting the concept visually while also making it fun and accessible to kids. The text already does this, but my job is to support that and take it further. Through storyboarding, sketching, and revisions, we crafted a visual story showing our character leaving school for the summer, having fun, and then returning only to meet a new friend.
What elements from the text were the most useful in creating the illustrations?
There are several activities in the text that I used to build the illustrative story around—eating lunch, searching for socks, building a fort. When storyboarding I started with these small activities and expanded from there.
Is the little girl character based off of a real kid that you know?
I think the girl is a combination of my three nieces and nephew. In fact the book is dedicated to the four of them.
How did you come up with the dinosaur details that are peppered throughout the illustrations?
One thing I love about illustrating picture books is visual character development. The clothes a character wears, their socks, bedroom, ice cream bowls—all of these details help round out the character. As for dinosaurs, I love drawing dinosaurs, and I know kids love dinosaurs. So, I went with it :).
Near the end of the book, our character meets a new friend who is into unicorns and has a pet dog, so it was fun to blend these two interest groups into a beautiful new friendship (cat/dinosaurs, dog/unicorns). “The Beginning” of new interests.
When did the idea for the cat come into play?
Whenever possible I like adding a secondary character to help provide visual commentary to what’s going on. This can be a dog, cat, bird, etc… I found the sketch of this cat buried in my sketchbook and thought it would be a good fit.
Do you have a favorite illustration in the book?
I really had a blast illustrating the extremely long living room blanket fort. You get to see most of the fort in a middle spread, and I think that’s my favorite (at the moment).
Author links
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Author John Bray
Author Josh Cleland
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This book sounds adorable. What a great idea! Nice review, Laura!
Thanks! It’s a really cute picture book.
We love that the book begins with The End. That’s so clever.
Yes, it feels like a Dr. Seuss book where normalcy is turned on its head.