The Day the Cow Sneezed

by James Flora
Harcourt, Brace & World 1957
reprinted by Enchanted Lion 2010

Noted Mid-century Modern illustrator tells a shaggy dog story. Not all illustrators are meant to be seen and heard.

"I bet your cow never sneezed a hole in the schoolhouse wall," begins The Day the Cow Sneezed, and truth be told, the cow in the story didn't either. Through a chain reaction like Rube Goldberg on steroids, the cow's sneeze precipitates a series of events that leads to a number of animals on progressively larger runaway vehicles doing much mayhem to country, town, school, zoo, and carnival rides. And when it was all over, and the world neatly set to right almost as quickly as it had been destroyed, little Fletcher (the boy whose neglect allowed the cow to catch a cold in the first place) is dragged off to the barn by his ear for a little good old-fashioned country discipline by Papa.

But you know what, forget the story. Don't even read it. It's a cumulative story that builds one preposterous whopper on top of another simply to provide Flora a canvas on which to draw this wild anarchy. It's like putting up with a few minutes of boring movie expository in order to get to the explosions. I really don't have a problem sometimes with dropping the whole set-up and starting with the second act in medias res.

Without the story – whose text is a tad tedious – the story makes a perfect madcap storyboard for a cartoon. It isn't sophisticated, but it isn't really much different from any other children's book in the mid 1950s, and the bold shapes and colors Flora employs show us just how tame most attempts at a retro style really are these days.  

His influence at the time is nothing to be, ahem, sneezed at either. As the graphic designer for Columbia Records in the 40s and 50s Flora's work is iconically linked with hundreds of jazz recordings. It's a style you can recognize by sight, one that many hip parents back in the day might have been drawn to without even realizing the connection.

Having said that, it is understandable that the text might fall a little flat. Many great illustrators are able to convey good stories through images without really being able to do the same thing with text. Paul Rand was a genius of graphic design – logos for IBM, ABC, and UPS among others – but no matter how visually modern or stunning, few would call his Little 1 a great children's book. I'm not about to attempt to tar every graphic designer with the same brush and say none of them should write, but there are many, today even, who design and illustrate books they should not be writing themselves. I think sometimes illustrators are giving a pass because they can visually wow an editor that perhaps might intimidate them or make them fear they might lose a good book by suggesting that perhaps they should stick to pictures. It's hard to know for certain, and I admit I may be shooting in the dark here, but I do tend to find that the better picture books come from teams and not individuals.

Now watch, the next dozen books or so I read will completely prove me wrong.

Harry and Horsie

by Katie Van Camp
pictures by Lincoln Agnew
Balzer+Bray / HarperCollins 2009

Here we have the promise of some truly bold retro graphics marred by a weak text with the faint whiff of celebrity, second-hand by-association celebrity at that.

Late at night, while she should be sleeping, Harry sneaks out of bed and grabs his Bubble Blooper down, a 50s space gun that shoots large bloopy bubbles. The bubble are large an sturdy enough to pick up toys from Harry's room and send them airborne. But when a bubble takes Harry's stuffed Horsie it's superhero Harry on his rocket into deep space for a rescue.

The star here isn't Harry but the art, that look like a cross between block prints four-color offset comics. Seriously, if I could, there are a few pages in here I'd love to own prints of and have framed. They certainly don't suffer from a lack of 264 digital color process, with bold blue-black outlines and deft use of spot color.

The story? Eh.

Van Camp holds the distinction of being the former nanny of a boy named Harry who really does have a Horsie and happens to be the son of Late Night impresario David Letterman. Yeah, that's the second-hand celebrity connection. The story itself is fairly light – typical hero-to-the-rescue night-journey stuff – with no real peril, no real growth involved. It isn't necessarily a bad story, but the art is much stronger that the text and that only highlights the disparity.

Little Louie Takes Off

written and illustrated by Toby Morrison
Walker Books 2007

Little Louie is a bird who hasn't yet learned to fly, though not for lack of trying. It isn't that flight scares him, he just hasn't got the knack of it. And he loves to sit and watch all the planes fly around in the sky. When it comes time for his family to migrate poor Louie still hasn't learned how to fly and he is forced to take a plane and meet up with his family later.

But taking the plane means Louie arrives before the rest of his flock and for those few days he's on his own and lonely. One day while waiting his ticket for his return flight blows off the roof of the building where he is staying. Panicked, he jumps after it, suddenly realizing that he can fly. The ticket lands in the enclosure of a penguin who Louie quickly befriends.

Louie meets up with his family who are happy to see him, and that he's learned to fly. When it comes time to return home Louie passes his return ticket on to his new friend so that she may finally know what it means to fly.

Everything old is new again, and this time it's a very 1950's feeling book. It isn't only the Continental blues and pastel reds and sleek streamline moderne lines of Morrison's illustrations but in the story, the easy-leisure pace of the story that doesn't feel forced or obvious. Where other books I've seen have tried to capture the feel of the mid-century picture book I had to keep checking to make sure I wasn't looking at a reprint with this one. If I were giving awards for Most Retro-Looking Picture Book (seeing as everyone has an award these days, why not create yet another?) I'd have to say it would be a tie between this and Cherry the Pig.

I'm really crossing my fingers and hoping this is a trend -- and a trend picked up by talented artists and writers and not a trend picked up and hammered into submission by publishers or arrogant graphic designers who don't understand story -- because I think there is a lot to be said for the old storytelling ways, the old picture books, which makes them classic and evergreen. I am seeing dozens of new picture books and so few that seem able to rise about their self-conscious gooey-ness, their animal cuteness or smarmy graphic superiority. Modern stories can be told, and new graphic approaches are welcome, but so much out there feels tired right out of the box, so many dead trees in hardbound limbo waiting for the grim pulper. Really, is it any wonder picture book sales are soft when there are so many flaccid offerings?

But not this one, no sir, no ma'am.