‘A Bale of Turtles’: Playing with words and pictures

What, you might ask, is a richness of ravens? It's a bunch of ravens, a noun of assembly, one of many that former teacher Lee Clancey has collected over the years.

And while most of us know about a colony of ants or bats, it's a safe bet few of us have heard of a skulk of foxes, a gam of whales or a smack of jellyfish. How about a sloth of bears, a descent of woodpeckers, a bale of turtles?

You'll find all those, and more, in Clancey's new book, 'A Bale of Turtles.”

Nouns of assembly, it turns out, date to the late Middle Ages, created by hunters thinking of words that reflected, in some way, a distinguishing feature of the animals they were watching. Hence, we have tidings of magpies, a sloth of bears, a parliament of owls.

Mary Rothermel, Clancey's sister and a Seattle artist, created 15 charming, full-color paintings to illustrate the rhyming text.

The paintings, to be displayed in a Seattle gallery in December, are top-notch art, and each one contains a little joke, a reward for the careful observer. You'll find one of the whales has a lunch box, one dive-bomber bat has goggles and neck scarf, the 'drift of hogs” are drifting on a drifting raft. A swing floats above the turtle pond, with a splash beneath. Who was in that swing, do you think?

Together, the words and pictures make for clever, whimsical reading, viewing and discussing, fun for the youngsters and their adult readers, too.