13 Days of Halloween: The Monster's Monster

by Patrick McDonnell 
Little, Brown 2012 

Three little monsters decide to create a much bigger monster who, it turns out, teaches them that you don't HAVE to be a monster, just because you're a monster.  

Horned Grouch, hairy Grump, and two-headed Doom 'n' Gloom live in a castle atop a hill where their antics cause the villagers no end of fear. They smash and bash things, get upset over nothing, and their ten favorite words are all 'no.' One day they set out to Frankenstein themselves an ultimate monster but things don't go as plan when Monster turns out to be full of politeness and child-like wonder. Oh, the horror! as Monster teaches them to say Thank You (actually "Dank You" sounding like the late Alex Karras playing Mongo in a Mel Brooks movie), brings them powdered donuts to share, and takes them to the beach to watch the sunrise. Turns out all the little monsters needed was a good role model. 

There's something disarmingly cute about this. While thin on character development and motive there seems to be at the core a message about an accepted loss of civility. Or maybe a larger idea about transcending who we think by being shown what we can become. Or maybe it's just a twist on the Frankenstein narrative that suggests our collective "creations" can be larger and better than individual selves.

Or sometimes, a story about monsters is just a story about monsters.

McDonnell's art is breezy and cute in his typical style, though lacking the finer subtleties found in Me, Jane where character expressions on a stuffed animal did as much storytelling as the text. Here, the illustrations are all surface, leaving no real memorable images in their wake as the pages turn. That, coupled with the slight text, makes The Monster's Monster read like a light between-meal snack; more of a rice cracker than a cookie, and essentially calorie-free.

Still, for little monsters who might want a Halloween treat that isn't too scary, this would suffice.

Me... Jane

by Patrick McDonnell  
Little Brown  2011  

A picture book biography that's more picture book than biography. And that's not a bad thing.  

A little girl named Jane is given a stuffed chimpanzee which she names Jubilee. She treasure Jubilee and takes him with her wherever her boundless curiosity leads. Together they climb trees and observe chickens and take a full interest in all the natural sciences a girl can explore in her own yard. Through the books she reads she dreams of far away places and helping animals in the jungles. And at the end of the day when she tucks Jubilee into bed with her she dreams all these things, and when she wakes up she is Dr. Jane Goodall, living among the primates of Africa, her dream come true.  

While there are biographies for all ages I would propose that the trickiest is the picture book biography. There is an old tradition of birth-to-death biography that attempts to use childhood as a sort of blueprint for explaining how events shaped the subject as an adult but this isn't without problems. Occasionally a subject's life doesn't have a cohesive progression where life elements can be tied together to tell a story. This will lead to a loose buffet of events that forward a narrative agenda but do disservice to the overall accuracy. Another approach is to appeal to the younger reader through telling the subject's story of who they were as young people, assuming a reader will automatically be more interested in the character of the subject by seeing them as youngsters. The problem with this slice-of-life approach is that the facts need to be molded to match the perception of the adult as a subject. A middle grade biography of Ben Franklin might include his industry, his bent toward invention, and the cruelty he experienced as a journeyman working for his older brother while neatly skirting the issue of his being a runaway or attempting to steal his best friend's girl because these muddy our preconceptions of how a founding father should have behaved.  

Huh, how did I get all the way up here on this soap box?

In Me... Jane what we get, technically, is a slice-of-life biography of a girl who loves zoology. McDonnell captures Jane's carefree childhood in a way that is free of period detail which makes it feel universal. There are subtle clues that Jane's story reflects back to an older time – broken text (Old Bookman?) printed over faint images from the 19th and early 20th century books Jane would have read – but the effect is almost too subtle to register. It give the story a different feel but not necessarily a sense of events taking place at an earlier time. This isn't really a problem, just not as effective as I think it was intended.

In the end the two things I'm going to take away from this book will be McDonnell's depiction of Jubilee and the ending where the story jumps from young Jane going to bed to dream and the reality of her dream come true. There is a certain talent required to make a stuffed animal come to life in a drawing which I don't think every artist or illustrator can do. I don't know if this will somehow revoke my MFA but Winnie the Pooh and all his friends always looks to me like a diorama of paper doll cutouts. I don't care how old you are, if you want to buy into the stuffed animal as a living, breathing creature then you have to find a way to convey that sense of life while remaining true to the nature of an expressionless doll. I've always loved, for example, how Bill Waterson managed to draw Calvin's companion Hobbes as both a lifeless toy and a vibrant tiger. Waterson's conceit was that we could see both the adult and the child's view of Hobbes, how that tiger knew when to play possum and how to deliver a punchline when no one else was around to hear it. McDonnell, on the other hand, finds ways to pose Jubilee that he appears to exhibit expressions and life without defying the physical laws that make up a stuffed chimp. Jubilee's permanent smile can appear focused, inquisitive, and expressive simply by the way he is placed within the scene. He becomes more than a companion, he becomes a reflection of Jane's innocence and wonder, and is really a brilliant little detail I think a lot of young illustrators could learn from.  

The ending, the jump from young Jane to contemporary Jane, wakes us from her illustrated childhood to a full color photo which, in doing, wakes us from the dreamtime of Jane's childhood dream into a "dreams come true" reality. It's an effective, judicious use of a single photo to underscore the link between childhood and adulthood without belaboring the point. In doing so McDonnell also manages to take a slice-of-life biography and turn it, with two flips of a page, into a near-full-life story by simply suggesting that the details between point A and B are inconsequential. And they are, as they should be, to a picture book audience.  

Although I'm late to the party on this review, I understand now why people were abuzz when this came out.

Shark vs. Train

by Chris Barton   
illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld
Little, Brown  2010 

It's the Superman vs. Batman argument of the toy box, people!  Who will win?  

Two boys run for their toy box, each extracting their power toy of choice, one a shark the other a train.  Grrr!  Chgrrrr-chug!  Who will win?  Depends on whether they on land or sea, in hot air balloons or roasting marshmallows.  And while initially one gains clear advantage over the other as the story goes on Shark and Train find themselves increasingly in situations where neither would win; playing hide-and-seek, for example, or playing video games without imposable thumbs. In the end a call to lunch ends the play and an escalation of the rivalry that might have spelled doom for both if not for divine intervention.

For those looking to study picture books, who want a good example of word and picture interaction, Shark vs. Train makes a solid study.  The concept is established in a single spread where the two boys run to the toy box and choose their "competitors," while the rest of the book explores the contest, complete with reversals and a a seemingly unwinnable climax that is as natural as it is obvious.  It's true to play, to boys, to the notion of competition, the absurdity of childhood thinking, and does so in under 125 words.  And it does all this in visuals which fully flesh out the story. This is how picture books work best, when their story language is as simple as the reader's reading vocabulary but the visuals match their far-more-advanced verbal vocabulary.  

On a technical level I would love to know how much information beyond the text Barton indicated, but in the end it has nothing to do with the final product. Boys (and some fathers, if they're honest) who enjoyed the braggadocio of I'm The Biggest Thing in the Ocean will certainly enjoy and recognize the same "truth" of this sort of competition. The winner is the reader who gets to use their imagination to invent more scenarios once the book is over.   

Children Make Terrible Pets

by Peter Brown 
Little, Brown & Co.  2010 

A bear finds a boy and brings him home, only to discover the truth in the book's title. 

In the storytelling industry (publishing, theatre, film) there is an undue amount of emphasis placed in promoting the idea of the "high concept" story.  The high concept is easily grasped in under 25 words (under 10 if you're really good) that is open to quite a bit of action with variations on a theme. It speaks to the universal but contains a fresh twist, gives us a hero with a big problem that, in the end, is solved to the satisfaction of our expectations (i.e. generally a happy ending). High concept stories give us a hero to root for, though not necessarily one we can identify with completely. High concept permeates storytelling media because, simply, it makes money. 

In children's books, though, high concept can be an iffy proposition. In order to be universal the story needs to be simplified, and the younger the audience the simpler the concept.  The twist has to be easily comprehended, the main character's problem not too big, the ending easily guessed or at least instantly obvious once revealed.  The best example I can think of at the moment is I'm the Biggest Thing In the Ocean by Kevin Sherry.  A simple boast as concept, repeated with humorous variation, a twist, and an ending that serves as a punchline. It taps into what is universal (kids boasting) and twists at a point where the main character (a squid) makes a sudden realization that flips his world upside down, but leaves us with his undaunted spirit in an unexpected-but-true-to-character ending. 

This sounds like a lot of hoo-ha for a picture book, but when I finally sat down to read Children Make Terrible Pets I found myself turning the last page and feeling... empty.  I spent the next couple of days thinking "And...?" without being able to put my finger on it.  That was when I realized the problem was in the concept, and that not all high concept ideas, no matter how charmingly executed, work. 

Lucy the bear is in the woods when she detects a boy hiding in the bushes nearby.  The boys squeaks, she finds him adorable, and instantly drags him home with the old twist on the "Look what I found, can I keep him, huh, huh, can I keep him?!" Mama bear of course recognizes in an instant what is the title of the book but proceeds with the "Okay, but you're responsible for him" line.  The concept is the twist on the found pet, leaving us to see how it plays out with roles reversed.  Naturally, they go as bad as expected, and Lucy must return the boy to the "wild," to his family at their house at the edge of the woods.  

There is a coda, a little twist ending, right after Lucy finally agrees with her mother that children make terrible pets.  Turn the page and Lucy is ecstatic to find an elephant standing before her, the implication being that perhaps elephants make better pets. 

Huh? 

It's a punchline, and its dissonance plays with a reader's expectations, but it doesn't fit.  A child recognizing that one animal doesn't work as a pet might naturally want to find another animal that does, one that doesn't have the same problems as the previous pet. But the humor in the concept hinged on a reversal, so in order for the twist end to work we'd need to see a double-reversal.  In theory a bear wanting an elephant as a pet could be that reversal but instead it reads as absurdity.  It would be as if reading a story about a boy who wanted a porcupine as a pet, realizing it isn't a good one, and then bringing home a space alien instead.  The lesson of what made for a terrible pet, and the reversal of he human-animal expectation, is reduced to surrealism for the sake of humor. Lucy hasn't learned a lesson, she's only learned how to set up a punchline, or rather how to set up an infinite punchline because clearly she will be able to repeat this story with every creature imaginable. 

It's easy to see why this book was published.  It is well illustrated, contains a high concept that is easy to grasp by the title (thus no need to worry about how to sell it), and playfully twists a young picture book reader's expectations.  But it's got no third act, as they say, nothing really shows character growth or fundamentally changes our understanding of what's come before.  It will certainly occupy a reader's time in a benign sort of way but it is difficult to imagine it sustaining interest over multiple readings.  This is the one down side to high concept. It doesn't reward return visits, it doesn't sustain a reader indefinitely.  For that a story needs to offer something more.

The Boy Who Could Enter Paintings

 by Herb Valen 
illustrated by Susan Perl  
Little, Brown and Company  1968 

A boy discovers he can literally jump into paintings and interact with the people there, but his ability all mysteriously vanishes just as he's about to enter school...

Edward has grown big and strong, and can hop around on a single leg all the time without getting tired.  he spends his cold winter days in his artist-father's studio watching him paint lavish jungle scenes and his studies of famous paintings.  Then one day when his father is making tea Edward hops close to one of the paintings and discovers that he can actually jump into them.

Without telling his father of his new ability, he accompanies his father to the modern art museum when Edward continues to jump into a Goya and a Seurat, interacting with the other children in the paintings who find his appearance curious but, as kids do, accept him without question in their play.  

Then a curious thing happens.  Edward's father announces that Edward will soon be entering school and, in an final attempt to hop into his father's painting, takes a giant leap... and crashes through the solid plane of the canvas.  The joy of imagination and carefree childhood gone, his father implores him to stop hopping around, and like a good boy he stops hopping, leaving his innocence behind.  

Wow.  Talk about a harsh lesson in conformity! 

I came to this book because of the illustrator, Susan Perl.  During my childhood she was known to me primarily as the illustrator to a bunch of magazine ads for Health-tex clothing.  The ads centered around the kinds of questions kids ask – "Why is the sky blue?" "Why are some people fat and some people skinny?" – with straightforward answers that kids could understand, a fairly clever campaign for showing how a clothing company "gets" what kids are about.  Too bad one of those questions wasn't "What happens when a book tries to take away my childhood innocence?" 

Perl's style is probably best described as textural, in that she uses the same width of line to outline and contour as well shade.  They are like a cross between woodcuts and felt tipped pen illustrations and have an odd warmth to them.  Sometimes when I see her work I imagine this is what the children of an Edward Gorey drawing and a Mercer Mayer drawing would look like, if illustrations could mate and reproduce.  

As for the story, I have a hard time understanding what people were thinking about children's books in the 60s sometimes.  Was this meant to be read to younger readers as a story of comfort that childhood ends at the dawn of school, and that it's perfectly natural to "grow up" out of thinking you can hop around all day and into works of art?  Or was this intended for an emerging reader with a longing for the "simpler days" of their pre-school days, having now learned to read and wishing they were back in those days when one could simply escape into a painting?  I can't tell if this is a cynical message written by an artist about the dangers of compromising one's dreams or a celebration of childhood whimsy.  

I think this is one of those situations where the illustrations outclass the original story.

America Dreaming

How Youth Changed America in the 60's
Laban Carrick Hill
Little Brown 2007

Finally. Now we're getting somewhere.

In an amazingly clear and concise 175 pages or so the history and influence of the Boomer generation is laid out for a young adult audience. Starting with the post-war population boom and suburban expansion, the book focuses on the various key elements and movements that brought about the most sweeping changes in the way America and Americans defined themselves, for better or worse, and how young adults were at the forefront.

The opening chapter sets the stage as 1950's Americans flooded to the pre-fab development communities of Levittown, as television and rock-and-roll took the cultural stage, as the Cold War began to heat up. Then chapter by chapter another piece to the puzzle is added -- the race for space, the Kennedy Camelot including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Beatles and psychedelia and free love, the Civil Rights Movement. All tried and true subjects, but what makes this fascinating are the chapters on the Black Power Movement (including the full text of the Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Plan), the Chicano and Native American movements, the radical anti-war protests (not just Kent State but the Weathermen), the feminists and, as the boomers reached the 1970's, the gay rights movement with a bit of coverage on the Stonewall riots. Hill doesn't shy away from messier topics like drugs or abortion rights, covering the material in an even-handed tone that gives readers a chance to draw their own conclusions and make their own connections.

The chapters move in a mostly forward progression but thy also stand alone in examining their subjects. History isn't presented here as a liner parade of facts and dates and places, but as ideas shaped by time and place, growing organically out of what came before without the tidiness or need for perfect order. Chaotic times call for a different narrative. The book flows at it's own pace, to its internal rhythms. Readers might be surprised to learn just how politically and socially radical their parent's and grandparent's once were. If nothing more, the material gives plenty of ammunition for conversations about what things were like "back in the day."

Presentation goes a long way. The book's larger size -- approximately 10 by 12 inches -- allow for large blocks of text to be accompanied by full-page images and sidebars filled with details and tidbits. Archival photos and period ephemera make this a triumph for the designers as well; the book feels fresh without veering into forced hipness, even if the subject matter is a few decades older than its intended audience. It also makes the book half as many pages as if presented as straight text, making it feel more accessible.

My only quibble, and it is minor, is that the book really is more of a portrait of the boomer generation than a pure examination of the 1960's. At the end of the book there is a year-by-year summary of major events that starts in 1946 and ends at 1975, pretty much the formative years of the boomer generation. I doubt that anyone is really ready to present the boomers as a worthy subject of study for middle grade and young adult, but that's essentially what the 60's are about. That aside, this really is a fine introductory study for the third quarter of the 20th century.

Now we need something exactly like this for the final quarter to explain how the gen-x generation brought us to where we are today.

Miracle Wimp

Erik P. Kraft
Little, Brown 2007

This is the story of Tom Mayo, nickname Miracle Wimp. Sixteen years old, further down on the pecking order, working his way through the vicissitudes of social life in high school. Should have been in Computer Animation, wound up in wood shop.

Where is this story going? Good question. Page by page there's a new vignettes, each no longer than a page or two, another little window into Miracle Wimp's life. Somewhat linear, bits and pieces of a story thread pop up. Easy to pick up and put down. Easy to abandon. Perfectly enjoyable, easily forgettable.

Two thirds of the way through Tom grows a bit of a spine. Things actually seem to be coming together. Is Kraft going to knot all these little bits into a massive gabbeh of lush storytelling? The kid's got some better friends, a kinda-sorta girlfriend, a small cache of cool. It's coming into the home stretch, down to the wire...

Nope, that's it. Book over.

Fair enough, it does pick up steam in the last half and seems to pull itself out of being just a collection of random-seeming vignettes, but coming on the heels of finishing the first two Wimpy Kid books I have some questions. Do teen age boys really want to read about nerds and the socially maladjusted hosers (here referred to as Donkeys and bolos) they deal with every day at school? If you had to go through all this in middle school would you still be interested it in high school? Is this really the only way to capture teen boys who don't want to delve into fantasy? Is the best we can offer them in terms of realistic fiction that isn't the cold world of The Chocolate War?

Yes, the bits ring true, the totally awkwardness is palpable, but on a lot of levels I can't help wonder if this book wouldn't track better with a certain sector of the male adult population. Guys who were there once, who came out of it okay, and can look back and laugh.

I laughed a couple times, but it was the hit-or-miss laughter of watching stand-up. That's no coincidence; Kraft does stand-up comedy and that's the exact rhythm of this book. Jab, jab, jab, punchline. Smirk, smirk, smirk, laugh. Ponder, muse, laugh, use the bathroom, answer the phone, take a nap, grab a snack, pick up the book, open it randomly, read.

Literature for a short attention spans that...

What? Huh? Was I saying something?