The Skeleton Pirate

by David Lucas
Candlewick Press 2012

The unbeaten Skeleton Pirate who refuses to accept defeat is beaten not once but twice in this quirky picture book.

The Skeleton Pirate knows one thing: that he will never be beaten, and will fight to the, uh, death to prove it. But when a band of pirates chains him up and throws him over board... he still will not accept defeat. rescued by a Mermaid he is free for but a moment when they are both swallowed by a whale. Still refusing to accept his plight the Mermaid has a plan to help them get out of the whale, which succeeds, and sends them both sailing into a golden sunset on a gold-filled ship made of gold, where the Skeleton Pirate looks into those Mermaiden eyes and accepts he has finally been beaten... by love!

While the title might sound on the scary side, younger readers aren't going to be put off by the stylized Skeleton Pirate Lucas has created. Looking for all the world like he might actually be made of balsa wood, he's so far from reality that no child would even consider asking the really big "adult" questions like: Why does he only wear pants? and; "If he's a skeleton, isn't he already dead?" and; "Why is he so cranky?" In truth, I missed the biggest clue of all on the title page where the Skeleton Pirate appears to be emerging from the wreckage of his own ship. Not to read too deeply here, the Skeleton Pirate is a lost soul doing the only thing he knew how to do until something (or rather, someone) came along to show him the truth.

Love beats fighting, any day.

Lucas is very crafty in not letting the romance show up until the final image and gives up a goofy tale in the process. Lucas has a thing for whales, and the sea, and this time around his watercolor palate feels much bolder. I'm a fan.

The Robot and the Bluebird

by David Lucas
FSG 2008

Author David Lucas makes some pretty unusual books. The stories are like jigsaw puzzles of optical illusions: everything seems to be in place but the overall impression undulates in a way that makes you blink. If you've encountered Nutmeg or Whale or Halibut Jackson then you know what I'm talking about.

Unusual isn't a bad thing, though it sometimes can lead to head-scratching. No, just to be clear, I'd rather wade through more unusual picture books and try to sort out their logic any day rather than trip merrily down the same well-worn path many other books follow. In The Robot and the Bluebird we don't find the most original of themes -- a useless object/person finding new use/companionship in an unexpected encounter -- so much as a sort of quiet meditation on usefulness and appreciation.

Robot is introduced to us as having a broken heart. readers understand that what is broken are his internal mechanisms, but the story is built around the idea of what it means to have a heart in the emotional sense. Of course, when a thing is broken it is discarded, and so Robot is relegated to a garbage heap to rust our his days. One day a bluebird, late in migrating, chances to nest in Robot's chest, giving him the sensation of once again having a heart. Too tired to continue on it's way, Robot completes the bluebird's migration while carrying it along. Robot exhausts his last bit of energy while telling the bluebird that "you'll always have a place in my heart." Frozen forever, other birds come seeking refuge in and around Robot's remains.

This could so easily have gone corny, or ham-fisted, but somehow Lucas manages to pull it off. I can only attribute this to the watercolor illustrations that give the metal Robot its warmth and strength and delicacy. Some of these illustrations make me want to tear apart m copy of the book and frame them.

I almost think the book works without the story, without the words, as a sort of silent movie that had a narrative attached to it. It's a little thin on its own to simply have its words removed, but as with Where the Wild Things Are so much of the story is in the illustrations after the initial set-up. I think that with a little less words and a little more story this could have been a classic. As it is, it's very, very good.