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.

Spectacles

 written and illustrated by Ellen Raskin 
Atheneum  1976   

When a girl named Iris begins mistaking the fantastical for everyday items an eye exam is on order in a picture book by the author of The Westing Game...

Iris starts out by telling the reader that she didn't always wear glasses, but then one day a dragon showed up at her door.  Then came the pygmy nuthatch, the Indian, the chestnut mare. What Iris saw were the general shapes of different things that would come together to create something her brain could make sense of. The dragon, for example, turned out to be her Aunt Fanny standing against a tree, a house, and a trail that made the whole look more menacing by the sum of its parts. Finally, Iris goes to the eye doctor who gives her the bad news: she needs glasses. Iris fights all of her options when they are described by color and shape, but when her mother re-frames the question – "Would you like to look older or younger, sweeter or smarter, like a scholar or a movie star..." – Iris is instantly more interested in glasses. In the end Iris is happier wearing her spectacles but still takes them off once in a while for a glimpse at the spectacles she used to see.

Spreads feature Iris on the left side in a line drawing with what she sees done up in pointillist shading against a solid color, followed in the next spread by the same arrangement but this time with the scene clearly delineated and in full color. Ignoring that many of the things Iris sees would hardly remain stationary enough for her to hold these shapes, to say nothing of items like a TV which she couldn't have confused, there is still a bit of squinty-eyed whimsy at the way Iris approaches life. Too young perhaps to realize she's having eyesight problems (it happened to me in third grade so I can relate) she is fairly good-natured about the whole experience until she finds she has to wear glasses.

The concept has been done since, by Suzy Lee in particular, and perhaps before Raskin did it, but for a thirty-five year old it doesn't feel too dated or stodgy. Change "Native American" for "Indian" and I think it would be fine. 

There is something very 1960s mod in her style of illustration, and very approachable. In fact, what initially startled me was that it was small for a picture book. At just under 6 x 8 inches – one-fourth the size of many picture books today – the book's intimacy draws in a reader's attention. Almost as if the book had been designed with a nearsighted reader in mind. But it raises an interested question today as many publishers point out the high cost of producing picture books: why not simply make them smaller? Not every book needs to e lap-sized, and an argument can be made for picture books to be manageable for younger readers. Just a thought.

I only discovered this week that Raskin was also an illustrator and began her career (as many illustrators do) working on other's books before writing and illustrating her own. In fact, she is responsible for the iconic woodcut illustrations for the New Directions edition of A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, a book I've owned and replaced without ever making the connection. A quick Google search for Ellen Raskin illustrations yields a number of surprises, including book covers I have seen before including adult titles like A Passage to India and a Nathaniel West collection.

The Crow

(A Not-So-Scary Story)
written and illustrated by
Alison Paul
Houghton Mifflin 2007

I am of two distinct minds about this picture book.

1. Interesting idea, flawed execution.
2. Not every recent illustration graduate from art school deserves to have their final project published.

No, I don't have evidence of this last statement being true in this case, or in the many others I have seen lately. I have noticed a greater deal of picture books by first time authors who have recently graduated and am wondering if this is a trend of laziness on the part of publishers and editors. Thirty years ago, I'm sad to say, illustration for picture books was not seen as the highest aspiration for illustration majors in art school; advertising and editorial art was the brass ring. But as computers have radically changed the thinking and approach of illustration -- in addition to advancing the ability to publish rich, full-color illustration -- so has the idea that a picture book is somehow lower or more rarefied a place for the illustrator.

I also can't help but think that illustrators might be falling into the same trap many amateur writers fall into, believing that writing a picture book requires little to no study of the form. After all, it's only for children, right? Get the illustrations down, tack on a story, done.

This is a heavy rap to be laying down on this book, but the gut feels what it feels. And as I read The Crow I couldn't help but wonder if this was Paul's senior thesis project snatched up by a young editor looking to build a stable, hoping this would pan out.

It's a take on E.A. Poe's "The Raven" wherein a child wakes up to find a crow sitting on a branch outside their window. As the narrative unfolds the child imagines the crow as a king on his throne, a thief in the night, a powerful wizard, each with its own wordless spread that re-pictures the scene with the imagined one. In the right hands this would be clever but here it exists only as a clever idea.

There are places where the illustrated collage work appears sloppy, the layered effect not achieving a suggested depth, the whole looking like a hastily produced dummy of a book promising greater execution in the future. Children might not be able to see the differences between the good and the mediocre but that doesn't give adults the permission to ignore quality.

Edwardo, The Horriblest Boy in the Whole World

by John Burningham
Knopf 2007

Here's a picture book with a troubling message at the end that may, in fact, not be for children at all but for adults.

Edwardo is a boy. Like some troublesome boys he makes messes, is noisy, acts aggressive. When he makes noise he is the noisiest boy in the world. Or so says an adult. And when he makes a mess he is the messiest boy in the world. So says another adult. And when he acts out, clutters his room, pulls a prank there is an adult nearby to tell Edwardo that he is the ultimate in whatever bad behavior he produces.

Then he kicks a flower pot out of aggression and an adult remarks that he is good with growing things and he becomes a gardener. And when Edwardo tosses a bucket of water on a dog he is seen by an adult as being good with animals and becomes a pet groom. And when he pushes another boy, instead of being seen as an aggressor, he is a hero for moving the downed boy out of the way of a falling object.

All of this makes for great commentary on how children behave when they are labeled except that none of the "good" things Edwardo is recognized for is intentional. The boy is not transformed into the best boy in the world wide world as the text would suggest, only that the majority of opinion has been changed. So there's your lesson. A boy can be a terror, a bully, a slob but as long as he gets positive reinforcement everything will be okay.

Except for the fact that that kind of thinking doesn't work.

A child who is praised as being creative for, say, setting toys on fire gets the message that perhaps the same would happen when setting the neighbors cat on fire. I will grant that adults far too often are quick to pronounce children as being something as definitive as the worst child in the world over simple things, and that a life of such constant labeling ruins a child's self esteem, but the opposite approach does not right the wrongs. To overlook bad behavior and reinforce it through reverse psychology allows for the continuation of the bad behavior to the point where it becomes uncorrectable.

No, sir, no, ma'am, I don't like it.

I think adults might get the message, but the ones who really need to get the message -- those who can only offer criticism to children -- are unlikely to actually get the message, so I'm at a loss for who this book is best suited for. Perhaps if Edwardo were being scolded by other children we'd get to see a message about perception and labeling in a way that would allow for dialog among younger children who are just ripe for understanding these lessons. Otherwise I think this is a miss.

I also have to mention the artwork, a ragged almost sketchy style of line that seems far from Burningham's earlier work that either speaks to his advanced age or a lack of concern. In page after page Edwardo's features and proportions change sufficiently enough that the character is nearly unrecognizable as the Edwardo that came before. There is a fine line between the charm of the naive -- the work of Edward Lear, for example -- and the work of an otherwise accomplished illustrator. I guess I just found the whole package off-putting.

Today and Today

Haiku by Kobayashi Issa
Selected and illustrated by G. Brian Karas
Scholastic Press 2007

Drawing from many translations of haiku from the 18th century Japanese poet, these illustrated little gems celebrate the small moments found in nature. The book is divided into four seasons with each spread dedicated to one or two haiku. Some of the illustrations are straightforward in their representation while others add a delicate layer of mystery or texture to the poem.

One poem in particular captured both the essence of the poem and reinterpreted it in a way I might not have considered were I only reading text.

Calm, indifferent
As if nothing's transpired --
The goose, the willow.

Having read that what would you imagine for an illustration? A goose and a willow, naturally, but calm in the face of what, indifferent to what goings on?

The illustration for the poem takes place in the fall, two children looking out the window at a goose by a small pond near a willow. But the building's only marking is a red and white sign, the symbol of a hospital or an infirmary. What really has transpired here? I could spend whole days imagining scenarios, a whole world of stories opened up by the marriage of word and image.

Karas' illustrations are composed on textured papers and directly onto wood panels that showcase their grain, maintaining their link with nature, celebrating nature in the spirit of haiku. The book shows a great deal of care without feeling precious, simple and sweet without the taint of manufacture. Of course the idea that a slick, commercially produced book appears to have simply created itself is an illusion, just as the simplicity of haiku is an illusion for it contains the ability to startle and focus our attention in a few short syllables.

Indeed, as if nothing has transpired. Yet it has.

Mail Order Ninja

Volume 1
Written by Joshua Elder
Illustrated by Erich Owen
Tokyopop 2006

I'm going to be up front about this so you can read this post through whatever prism you prefer: I don't get Japanese manga, or manga-style comics, or anime.

I say this at my own peril as I have come face-to-face with people who would have extracted a pound of my flesh for even daring criticize manga comics. I say this knowing that manga is a billion dollar industry and, as we all know from living in a capitalist republic, billions of dollars cannot be wrong.

That said, I still venture into the worlds of anime and manga with great hope that I have yet to discover gold, that I just haven't found the proper vehicle to awaken my senses, that I have just been plain wrong in my thinking for a very long time.

I also venture into the world of manga because I have two girls in the house, ages 8 and 10, who are discovering the joys of the graphic novel as a nice supplement to their steady reading diet. Please note, that the mention of graphic novels in the previous sentence should not be construed to mean that I beleive or accept manga as graphic novels. I don't. Graphic novels and manga are as different to one another as soap operas are to theatre; just because they use the same dramatic language does not mean they are interchangeable. My use of the term graphic novel to describe my girls' current reading trend is a shortcut meaning "graphically sequential story-telling media". A bit long winded, doncha think?

I checked out Mail Order Ninja because I was searching for something suitable for my third grade girl that wasn't merely comic strip adventures, something a little more substantive than the Babymouse books (which she gobbled in a single sitting, all of them) but not quite The Baby-Sitter's Club or Time Warp Trio or even Goosebumps. (And why these particular adaptations from publishers? Is there really little else out there to adapt at this age level?) I had come across a review of Mail Order Ninja over at Big A little a a while back and was curious. More than curious, really, as Kelly's review spoke of a level of humor and adventure my girls have been craving of late (James Bond and Indiana Jones movies in particular). Bullies and ninja and stuck-up rich girls and everything. Sounded swell.

First I had to get over my gag reflex. It's a visceral thing that happens when I see the big-headed kids with supersized eyes that is the manga style. This angularity of style has never sat well with me, and has never felt either "random" or "whimsical" as the literal translation of the word manga. That done, I settled in and read about Timmy MacAllister and his mail order ninja. After the obligatory opening action scene with black and white ninjas (very subtle: the roles of good and evil are reversed in color!) we meet Timmy, his soccer mom, distracted dad and conniving evil little sister. Just as quickly it's off to school where the local bully and his underlings have set up a toll booth for extracting and tormenting their prey. After a brief exchange where Timmy's sister sells him out for a cut of the profits it's on to school where we meet Felicity Huntington, the aforementioned stuck-up rich girl with her suck-up minions and fashionista name-dropping of Armani and Versacci and...

That's when I had to stop. Not for good, just to take a gut check. If this were a regular book with ninja and extreme bullies and stuck-up rich kids all made out of cardboard would I continue reading? Certainly if I was reading straight text I doubt the all the characters would be described as having large, adorable heads, with glassy eyes and (for the girls) model thin bodies with model perfect wardrobes to match. This for me is the first problem with graphic storytelling, the idealized forms that send shorthand messages about body image to young readers. This is much easier to get around with anthropomorphic images because no one is going to hold their image of a house pet or farm animal up to the images of a comic drawing. But with young minds already bombarded with television and magazine images of what is popular, cool and "ideal" I don't know if we can just gloss over the representations as "just a comic book" any more than we'd overlook stereotypes in traditional fiction because it's supposed to be humorous.

Text offers the reader an opportunity to put themselves into the book, into the minds of characters and settings. With graphic storytelling the viewer or reader is always on the outside. Even in POV representations there's always the sense of just visiting and never the problem of getting lost in the story or the emotion. The lack of realism within the drawings doesn't allow you to forget that you're looking at drawings. Even the most fantastic CGI effects in a movie, equally man made in every respect, has the ability to mimic reality to the point where grown adults can't tell the difference. That really can't be said with graphic novels, even less so with manga.

I soldiered on, trying to put the rest of the story into context with what I would have wanted to read as a fifth grader and with what I would want my girls to read. I tried to reconcile my discomfort with these manga kids seeking their nerd revenge through martial arts and the fact that my own girls don't see anything like this level of bullying or fashion consciousness in their daily lives. Reading Mail Order Ninja my girls aren't any more likely to understand Armani than they do the sexual innuendos of Bond films, so why am I more hesitant to let them read this lightweight book than I am to cave to their movie hunger?

In the end, yes, it's because I do hold books to a higher standard. Not that a book can't entertain or be lightweight in subject, because I certainly don't feel like everything one reads should be Literature with a capital L. But if we're looking at the current phenomenon of the graphic novel -- and all the comic books, manga and strip collections that are lumped into the same category these days -- and we're going to legitimize them with awards for younger readers then I think we need to slow down, learn the language of graphic storytelling, and not give books a pass because they amuse us to the extent that we don't notice how substandard they may be as literature.

Yak yak yak. I sound like a cranky old man. I'm going to leave Mail Order Ninja out on the kitchen table and see if either of my girls pick it up and read it. And if they read it I'll see if they like it enough to seek out part two.

And I'd be surprised if they do, on either count.

Remy Charlip

This is Remy.
He was born on this day in 1929. I met him when I was a boy, sometime around when he would have been 40 years old, around the age he was in this picture.

I don't fully remember the circumstances, the time or place, it's all part of the dreaminess of childhood. It was a large room, filled with kids, and this free-spirited man who must have come across like a whirlwind. Could it have been at the L.A. County Museum of Fine Art? Perhaps. The space had the large, open feeling of an empty gallery, but more finished and refined than a dance studio or performance space. There was music and singing and dancing, all of it very unconventional. Imaginary Dances, I believe he called them. We were kids, we didn't care what they were called, we just did our little interpretive wriggling and posturing and had a lot of fun.

He wrote and illustrated children's books as well. One of my favorites was a hodge podge collection of illustrated jokes, poems, puns, songs and other playful amalgamations of word and image. It was called Arm in Arm and is, occasionally, still available.

Another book of his that was a favorite is the kind of book that has seeped deeply into the subconscious of many people I have met. Strangely, while many are familiar with the book -- and the sort of word game it engenders between budding wordsmiths and their parents -- few can name it's author. Perhaps you are familiar with Fortunately.

Fortunately, Ned was invited to a surprise party.
Unfortunately, the party was a thousand miles away.
Fortunately, a friend loaned Ned an airplane.
Unfortunately, the motor exploded.
Fortunately, there was a parachute in the airplane.
Unfortunately, there was a hole in the parachute....

Once I got the rhythm of this in my head as a child I could never let it go. For the rest of my days, whenever I heard someone make a declarative statement beginning with either the word fortunately or unfortunately I would find myself (often in my own head, for my own amusement) countering with a humorous rejoinder. And I have heard the call and response of parent and child making up their own fortunately/unfortunately dialog so I know I'm not the only one.

He wrote and illustrated many other books. The circular playfulness of I Love You. The silhouetted gothic of Mother, Mother, I Feel Sick; Send for the Doctor, Quick, Quick, Quick. The gentle care in illustrating the lesson of Margaret Wise Brown's The Dead Bird. The anonymous beasty of Four Fur Feet. They endure because they reach into a vast well of understatement that promotes and celebrates the power and beauty of a child-like imagination. They bare the unmistakable mark of a poet choreographer whose fondness for sharing his exuberance with children was evident in all he did.

Remy suffered a stroke a few years back and has been slowly on the mend. Before the stroke he finished work on a children's book called A Perfect Day to be released in May of this year by HarperCollins. The summary of the book:

A parent and child spend a perfect day together, from sunrise to nightfall.

Though I'm sure it's an accurate summation, somehow I doubt it's as simple as all that.