richard scarry's best lowly worm book ever

by Richard Scarry (mostly)
Golden Books  2014

A recently discovered Scarry manuscript is unearthed... and out pops Lowly Worm!

Weird-but-true, and totally irrelevant, anecdote about a Richard Scary book. Once while working in the bookstore a woman came in, furious, to return one of those cute little critter books because of its "gratuitous use of meat." Specifically, she was offended by a picture of a pig in a hot air balloon in which the balloon was in the shape of (or perhaps in some loopy sort of logic was actually) a giant sausage.

It's not hard to get off on weird tangents like this with Richard Scarry because his books, with their anthropomorphic animals and vehicles can be, at times... odd. Garbage trucks with toothy mouths painted on their backsides like they're about to gobble garbage furiously. A rasher of mice riding around inside a roadster made from a single pencil, implying either rather tiny mice or enormous pencils...

And in this most recent title, loosely following a day in the life of beloved Lowly Worm, there is a page simply titles "This is me" where Worm is drawn the size of a garden snake with all his accoutrement's laid out and labeled around him. That he has a head the size of a kitten, an eye as big as a grape, with a foot-shaped tail isn't as alarming as the fact that he's naked save for his underpant (singular) wrapped around his middle like a diaper. That's when you realize that Richard Scarry spent some time seriously considering Lowly Worm's attire. There's a trouser (again singular, as pants are plural for us bipeds), a shirt collar, a bow tie, and a shoe. A shoe for a worm that, in Scarry's word, often stands upright. From there anything goes.

All the Scarry cast of characters are here. The cat family, including Huckle, the pigs and bears and bunnies, all of them doing the things people do. This day-in-the-life was recently discovered by Scarry's son who finished the artwork in his father's signature style. It feels both old and new, and in a way it truly is both. It's a throwback to the timelessness that makes classics feel like they've always been there.

But if, like that one customer on mine, you find gratuitous meat a problem, you might want to skip this one. The page where Worm collects eggs for Farmer Cat for their breakfast might cause fits of apoplexy. Kids, on the other hand, will love it.

A Little Book of Sloth

by Lucy Cooke
Margaret K. McElderry Books 2013

This non-fiction book, ostensibly for kids, should forever change the synonym for sloth from "lazy" to "cute."

Many decades ago when I first learned about sloths and their sloth-like behavior they seemed to me a perfect insult. Calling someone a slug was up there but there was nothing that rolled off the tongue quite like "move it, you sloth!" All I knew of sloths were that they were slow, tree-dwelling, and, uh, slow.

But how slow? I couldn't tell you. And when you think of something as 'slow' there's also that connotation that they might not be as quick-witted as other creatures as well, but was that true of the sloth? I also assumed that the reason they were green was because they were too lazy to groom themselves, but it turns out that there's a very good reason NOT to groom away that algae in their fur.

Who knew?

I know now, and I think many adults will learn quite a bit from this book as they read it to their little ones.

There is a place called Slothville in Costa Rica that is a sanctuary for orphaned and injured sloths. As pictures from this book reveal, even a creature that looks like a cross between a kitten, a piglet and a hedgehog that's been stretched out can be awfully cute. They appear to be the most mellow of jungle creatures, sleeping 70% of their lives away (though no one knows how long that lifespan really is), chowing down on green beans and hibiscus flowers, and hugging, hugging, hugging.

Oh, and I now know that a full-speed they top out at fifteen feet per minute.

And the images make this book. Cooke's fondness for sloths is equally matched by their cute-overload behavior. Hugging stuffed animals, hugging each other, their odd (and equally slow) bathroom routines, and three words that really ought to become a catchphrase for something: bucket of sloth.

Sloths for the win!

The Rain Puddle

by Adelaide Holl   
pictures by Roger Duvoisin
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard 1965

The barnyard is once again astir when the little red hen convinces the other animals that a puddle contains their drowned doppelgangers!

Coming across a puddle a plump hen catches sight of her reflection and assumes that another bird has fallen and needs rescuing. One by one the hen convinces the cow, sheep, pig, turkey, horse and others that their reflections are others who have fallen in. And as they rush about trying to find help the puddle dries up and they all assume the trapped animals were freed and part of the melee. Once it is over only an owl sitting on a branch above it all chuckles to himself.

Falling squarely in the tradition of dumb animals who apparently drink water to survive but cannot fathom their own reflection without resorting to illogical panic, the one upside of this book are the illustrations by Duvoisin. The use of the blank white page to serve as the puddle, drawn from a high, almost flat plane, is simplicity at its most brilliant. He's taken the artist's ability to see that the water doesn't need to be represented, only the reflection, and in that the white highlight and forced perspective are best represented by white space. It's almost zen, this absence-as-presence, and really the only reason to read this book.


Aw, that sounded harsh. I don't mean to imply that the story itself is entirely without merit, except that if it were more traditionally rendered there is little to distinguish it from countless other similar fables. With the reflections beneath a translucent blue water – as we might imagine water to be represented in a traditional illustration – we lose the power of the negative space and the sense of how brilliant and realistic the reflections are for the animals. The simple eloquence of the illustrations compensates for the busy cut-a-cuts! gobble-obble-obbles! mooo-mooos! and oink-oinks! cluttering the text.

Perhaps okay for lap-sitters if you run across a copy at the library, but a must for illustrators looking to learn at the feet of a master.

I Want My Hat Back

by Jon Klassen
Candlewick  2011

Bear has lost his hat, have you seen it?

They say that in this day of limited attention spans (and I'm talking about adults, not kids) shorter is better when it comes to picture books. I have a theory about this, but let me talk about the book first.

Bear has lost his hat. It is red and pointy. He asks various animals if they have seen it but they have not. Depressed, Bear despairs of ever seeing his beloved hat again until Deer asks him what it looked like. As he describes it both Bear and the astute reader will realize they have seen the hat before, atop the head of Rabbit who, when queried, was suspiciously nervous in his response. Bear retraces his steps back to Rabbit, calls him out as a liar and...

Well, now, this is interesting. We normally see talking animals in picture books as human stand-ins. They talk and we accept it as a fantasy world because in a book anything is possible. What we don't expect when animals behave as humans is to see them revert to their animal ways suddenly. This becomes the twist as Bear is next seen sitting where Rabbit once sat, wearing his hat finally, making the same sort of nervous pronouncements about not knowing where Rabbit went to. In his denial he even goes so far as to spell out what has happened between the page turns: Bear has eaten Rabbit out of anger.

Whew!

This is funny?

Yes.

It's funny because it is unexpected and yet totally natural at the same time. Like the punchline to a joke (and it bears a resemblance to the story of the wide-mouthed frog, if you know that one), the expectation is that Bear will find his hat and that there might be some tension in the resolution but certainly the law of nature never seems to come into view because, up to this moment, it hasn't been there at all. Like an unexpurgated fairy tale there are consequences and despite how we humans might resolve such issues in the wild things are handled much differently. Hello, kiddo, the animal world isn't all fluffy and cute!

Now, about those short-attention-span adults (a short rant)...

When an adult enters a book store looking for something for a child – whether their own or as a gift – the last thing they want to do is read. That's been my experience at least. "I'm looking for something for my five year old niece/granddaughter/son, something good and not too long." When it comes to picture books what this tends to mean is that they are looking for something they (the adult) won't tire of on multiple reads but is short enough to not turn a book at bedtime into a lengthy routine. You wouldn't think it would be hard to sell an adult on George and Martha but... "You mean to tell me there are FIVE stories in here?!"

So here's how it used to go. Adult walks in, has a child in mind, a type of book, and preferably something new because the kid is eating up books faster than they can check them out from the library (never mind that the reason they have to check out so many is because they are all so slight of text). These adults expect you to put three to five books in their hand from which they will make a selection within five minutes. Like an impatient child they will flip through the pages and make a judgment about the art first. If the art doesn't appeal, out it goes, the end, pfft! Next comes the story. Most of the time they will flip through the pages and read as if they are skimming for difficult or objectionable words – they can't possibly comprehend what the story is about. If it looks "wordy" after a couple of pages they may, unashamedly, turn as ask "What's this one about." If it cannot be summarized in a sentence of fifteen words or less out it goes. At that point whatever is left, if there is more than one book, simply comes down to a recommendation by the bookseller. If I wanted to push a particular book all I had to say was cute and it was chosen.

This push for shorter books – five years ago 500 words or less was the goal, today it's closer to 300 or less – makes titles like I Want My Hat Back more popular despite their being slight on text. And while it is possible to write shorter books it isn't easy to do well, much less create something that might one day survive as a classic. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed I Want My Hat Back for the same reasons I liked Kevin Sherry's I'm The Biggest Thing In The Ocean: both books had a simple premise with an unexpected twist ending that made me laugh. And both books will make some (but not all) like-minded kids laugh. But despite landing on the New York Times list of Best Illustrated books for 2011 I hardly see I Want My Hat Back becoming the sort of book that kindles nostalgia or endures to become a classic.

Where's Walrus

by Steven Savage
Scholastic 2011

After escaping from the zoo a Walrus find "ingenious" ways to remain hidden in plain sight from the zookeeper. Complete with "twist" ending!

I have to call this one the way I see it: It's Where's Waldo meets Goodnight Gorilla. Also: this is a board book disguised as a picture book.

One afternoon while the zookeeper naps nearby a Walrus, in what looks like an above ground swimming pool, simply waddles out the gates of the zoo and into the big city. In scene by wordless scene the Walrus hides in plain sight by blending in. Here he is a statue in the fountain. There he is a fireman working a hose. It often takes little more than a hat and a few props to elude the zookeeper, who besides working at one of the poorest designed zoos in the world is clearly a dolt himself. Finally the Walrus hides at a diving competition (performing a "twist," if you will, off the high dive) where he is not only spotted by the zookeeper but wins a gold medal. This gives the zookeeper an idea and in the end Walrus has a new and more humane pool with a diving board to perform for the public.


Obviously, younger pre-readers are going to enjoy pointing out where the Walrus is on every page while laughing at the buffoon of a zookeeper for missing him. The simplified graphics on a picture book-size page seem like a waste; their flat tones and bold shapes would not only reduce well to a smaller sized board book they might actually look better for not taking up so much space.

As for the "twist" at the end, where Walrus's diving feats impress the zookeeper and provide him with a new home, well, that sort of speaks to why Walrus ran away in the first place. The story isn't just about a mischevious Walrus, it's about an animal in a pool so small that it has no way to entertain itself and must go in search of fun elsewhere. It not only answers the unasked question "Why did the Walrus escape from the zoo?" but underscores one of the larger issues surrounding the idea of capturing wild animals in the first place; is a zoo really the most humane way to appreciate wild animals? In the end Walrus isn't just a captured animal, he's an exploited one, putting on shows to draw people to the zoo.

Overthinking the book, am I? With a cute concept and easy-to-scan illustrations it can be easy to miss the imagery presented to young readers matter-of-factly. The treatment of animals in zoos and aquariums varies, and even where animals are well treated there is still the idea of our presenting animals in faux environments under the guise of their being educational. Many a time I've been to a zoo and seen a depressed animal in an enclosure – if you can read emotions in humans you can do it in animals equally well – and overheard parents tells young ones "Oh, they're just tired from running around all morning" or something equally dismissive. Go to the big cat house during feeding time and hear those lions and tigers roar with such ferocity that the sound penetrates your body and you appreciate the bars that separate you while at the same time realize that, perhaps, this is not the way things should be.

So despite my misgivings about the casual representation of zoos to small children, I think the book is fine for what it is. I don't know why this didn't go straight-to-board-book because I have a hard time understanding the justification for its size. If it were a truly Where's Waldo situation where you had to pour over the details of a page for hours to find the hidden elements I would understand it. As it is, Walrus is large, impossible to miss, and the humor of the zookeeper not finding him wears thin even for the few pages that it takes place in the story.

Erroll

by Hannah Shaw
Knopf 2010

You expect me to believe that if a kid found a live rodent in his snack food that he'd befriend it until his mother told him to get rid of it? Seriously?

Sometimes I think I take picture books a little too seriously, a little too literally. Sometimes I forget that I have put on my picture book kid hat, a hat that sometimes sits casually on my head at a goofy angle and sometime sits tight and low and uncomfortable. It's a hat I sometimes forget I'm wearing, and at other times I toss with anger and disgust. And sometimes, when what I'm reading really puzzles me, I scratch my head and the picture book hat falls off.

The book opens with a boy named Bob finding a squirrel in his package of nuts. When the squirrel speaks in surprise, and introduces himself as Erroll, Bob figures he must be special and immediately does what he can to make Erroll comfortable in his new home. Bob does spend half a second trying to imagine how Erroll might have ended up in the package, but beyond that he's willing to accept this animal visit like a toy surprise inside his breakfast cereal.

Now, to be honest, I can partly relate. When I was in kindergarten I asked if I could create a squirrel home in the closet under the stairs that was underused. I promised to find a tree and build a nice home for it but was stumped by the questions I was asked when I was being humored: How would the squirrel get sunlight? What would it do during the day while I was at school? Where, living in a city and having never ever seen a squirrel in my life, did I plan to get a live squirrel from? Details, details. Clearly my mom wasn't buying the right kind of nuts from the store.

Eventually the squirrel causes enough havoc that mom forces Bob to release Erroll to the wild (and presumably she then goes in search of a lawyer to sue the manufacturer for nearly giving her kid rabies) leaving us with the twist at the end: What's inside the Chewy Crunchy Monkey Munchy breakfast cereal box? Whoa! You mean to tell me live animals inside packaged food are so common in this picture book world that it happens all the time! Quick! More legislation and food regulators! Think of the children, and create more jobs for the sagging economy at the same time!

Sorry, the picture book hat fell off again. I wish I could see past the casual animal-in-food-for-children element and find some sort of goofy fun in this picture book, but I can't. I can't even get into the illustrations as they are fussy and crowded with unnecessary details, occasionally with colors close to those of the main characters, making it difficult to know where to focus your eye on the page. It isn't an I Spy so much as a Where's Waldo situation, only in this case it's Where's Erroll and that's a problem.

Final nail: A little kid saying the name Erroll sounds a bit like "error," which maybe isn't far from the mark.

Sisters & Brothers

Sibling Relationships in the Animal World
by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
Houghton Mifflin 2008

I learn more from picture books than I probably did back in high school. Of course, I have a different perspective on what interests me than when I was younger, and kid books are pretty much all I read these days so I'm probably not learning as much as I could.

Still.

Did you know that armadillos give birth to four young, either all male or all female, each an exact clone of the other? I can't say I did, and that would make for an interesting relationship if you were raised along side three exact copies of yourself. More weirder than being identical twins.

Turkeys, on the other hand, hang around with mom for a year and then the ladies go off to mate while the brothers stay together in a band. Dudes, it's like some guys I went to school with! I guess they were turkeys of a sort.

Then there are the naked mole rats. Okay, they are practically blind and live in these huge burrows underground, that I knew. What I didn't know was that each colony has a single mom -- sort of like a queen bee -- and that when they meet each other in a narrow passage way they have to sniff one another to determine who has seniority, because the eldest gets to climb over the youngest.

And then finally, a puzzle piece I didn't realize was missing in a story I conceived long ago. New Mexico Whiptail Lizards are all female. There are no males. That just blows my mind.

I think this is the first time I can remember where the text upstaged Jenkins cut paper illustrations. Or perhaps I've just gotten so used to his work that it no longer surprises and delights the way it used to. That doesn't make it bad, it's just become as familiar as Eric Carle's style in it's sameness.

By using sibling relationships to explore these unique animal families, Page and Jenkins supply a lot of great information in a clean, easy to understand style that is obviously engaging enough for an adult but readily accessible to young readers.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some Whiptail Lizards to research.

Pssst!

by Adam Rex
Harcourt 2007

I get it now. I wasn't sure before when I first came across Adam Rex's Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich last year but after seeing this there's no doubt in my mind:

Adam Rex is making picture books for adults.

Sure, they can be enjoyed on certain levels by kids but the reality is that there's just too much packed into his illustrations for these to be for children. I wonder if his publishers and editors have figured it out. I bet the art department has and they're just keeping it to themselves.

A girl goes the the zoo and one by one different animals call her over for a little private chat. "Psst! Can you get me some tires?" the gorilla asks. "Why?" Isolated panel of a tire swing, the tire ripped from the rope. The girl promises to try. Next exhibit the bats want flashlights, not for them but for the hippo that they share a cave with. The peccary wants trash cans for all their trash. The penguins want paint because they can't stand all the white of their exhibit space. The sloths need helmets because they're falling out of trees and landing on their heads. Reasonable requests all.

Finally the animals give her money to make the various purchases ("The peacock collected the coins from the fountains.") and she's off to the hardware and supply store across the street from the zoo where everything beginning with the letter T is on sale for half off. Too bad she doesn't need a tiki or timber.

Each of the pages where the girl converses with the animals is presented like a one-page panel comic, buffered with spread where the girl is making her way around the zoo. It's in the spreads -- done in a pencil-draft style compared to the full color of the conversations -- where Rex includes lots of strange little details that might not register with younger readers. First a fawn and later a rhino are shown free-wheeling around the zoo in clear plastic balls. Trash cans topped with animal heads suggest a place to put trash in their mouth but later a panda-headed can is labeled "bamboo" and a tiger-head can is labeled "steak". Near the bat cave an elderly gentleman in a Batman suit is sitting, most likely the original 1930's Batman retired to the edges of the zoo.

It's the punchline of the book that sold me on the idea that there was a different audience for this book than the one I assumed. Once the animals have what they need the girl hopes their all happy and goes about her way. Turn the page and you see what they've done with their new toys: they've built an Ed "Big Daddy" Roth hot rod circa 1966 to ride around the zoo at night.
















(For the kids out there who don't know who Ed "Big Daddy" Roth is and what grew out of the mid-1960's hot rod culture)

Do I believe there are books out there that children and adults can enjoy together, conceived as a piece of mutual entertainment much the same way that Pixar includes jokes and sight gags for the captive adult audience? Yes. Do I think that Pssst! is equally enjoyable to young and old with each getting different things from it? Naturally.

But I still maintain that I think Adam Rex is putting one over on the publishers.

Grimmoire 10: Riffraff

A word or two before the proceedings take place. First, while I have been keeping up with my Grimm-a-Day reading I haven't been as on top of things regarding my posts. This week I'm going to try for a little catch-up posting so it may get a little thick around mid-week.

Second, I really appreciate the shout-outs coming from other corners of the kidlit blogosphere, specifically Jules and Eisha at 7Imp, Brooke at The Brookeshelf, and Monica over at Educating Alice for their encouragement, support and generally pointing some of you this direction. Of all the things I wasn't doing to get attention, this project of mine to read all the Grimm stories seems to have hit a nerve and now I have the added impetus to not let it wane.

Now, how about a little "Riffraff."

This tale could easily be titled "Ruffians" or "Rogues" or "Scoundrels" and features Chickens in the title role. Yes, Renegade Chickens on the loose!

A mean-spirited Roster and a Hen get it in their heads to go up the hill and eat all the ripe nuts before Squirrel can hide them away for winter. Yes, instead of stealing them they just eat them all. And because of that they're too bloated to move.

Rooster's brilliant idea is to use the nutshells to build a carriage. When Hen realizes she's supposed to pull it she refuses. When Duck comes along and realizes the Chickens have eaten all the nuts (wait, weren't those Squirrel's nuts? Is Duck as bad as the Chickens, only slower?) he's furious. Rooster insists Duck pull him and his Hen, engaging him in a cockfight (which he naturally wins) to determine who's pulling whom.

With Duck hitched to the nutshell carriage the crew pick up a Needle and a Pin alongside the road who have had too much to drink.

A Needle and Pin. Drunk. This is another of those fine instances where the Grimm tales feature inanimate objects that just make my head spin sometimes, especially when they're hitching a ride roadside from a Duck pulling a pair of Chickens in a carriage made of nutshell. They say reality is stranger than fiction, but you can't say that around the Brothers Grimm.

It's getting late. The party of five decides to stop at an inn. The Chickens sweet talk the Innkeeper into letting them all stay the night with the promise of handing over a Duck egg and a Chicken egg in the morning. Ah, so nice to be able to trade off potential offspring in exchange for a night at the inn. But if that isn't a shock, in the morning the Chickens wake up before everyone else and eat the eggs themselves and ditch the shells in the fire! Then they take the still-passed-out Needle and place it in the innkeeper's towel, place the Pin in the seat of the Innkeeper's chair, and ditch without paying.

These Chickens is Bad to the Bone.

Duck wakes up, realizes he's been ditched, and before he can get hit with the bill hightails it for the river and floats home on his own.

The Innkeeper wakes up and washes his face and... you cringe at the horror before it happens as he reaches for his towel. His face gouged, his inn empty, he goes for the comfort of his pipe but as he reaches for an ember to light his pipe... the eggshells explode into his face! It's all too much, he needs a seat but... yup, right on the Pin.

The. End.

That's right. The Chickens get away and the Innkeeper is left with the lesson not to trust talking cannibalistic animals. Who knows what becomes of the Needle and Pin. I think this is the first instance in the Grimm tales (though I doubt it will be the last) where it seems like it's building up to a moral lesson and it doesn't. The Innkeeper does nothing wrong -- unless you count the trusting of farm animals wrong -- and is punished for his efforts.

It's gems like this that make me wonder about how these stories were told, and when, and to whom and how they played with an audience. Was this something a bunch of guys came up with at the inn one soggy night to kill the time and it became sort of the village joke story that everyone told and had a good laugh at? Was there some sun-baked farmer who, after 18 hours of back-breaking labor, hunkered down along side the bed of his scruffy young children and, by the light of a candle making him look like the Crypt Keeper, did he hiss out this bedtime tale to wig out his children?

And what happened to those kids when they grew up?