Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor

Story and drawings by Mervyn Peake 
Originally published in Country Life magazine 1939
published in book form by Macmillian 1967
reprinted by Candlewick 2001

The Captain and his oddball crew settle in on an uncharted island where they encounter a creature the color of butter and then... do nothing?  

The good Captain is a bruiser who has run through his share of crew. His ship, The Black Tiger, has lost many a men to sharks and the plank leaving only five bizarre scallywags for company. One day they spot an uncharted island and go to investigate, finding among the unusual flora and fauna a pan-like creature the color of butter. "Just exactly the sort I've been wanting!" the Captain says cryptically. Entranced, the Captain quickly spends all his time looking at, doting on, dancing with, and generally hanging out with the Yellow Creature, so much so that the crew are reduced to doing little more than acting as servants or a bored audience. The Captain is so happy with his new life on the island that he finally decides to give up pirating for good. His crew (presumably with the ship) have long departed, and to this day the Captain and his Yellow Creature are there on their island, eating exotic fruit and watching the sun set and dancing hornpipes whenever they please.

he looked like this

It's near impossible to explain this picture book's weird vibe. Peake's illustration style in this book is like a whimsical version of the stuff Basil Wolverton was producing for MAD magazine in the 1950s. With exaggerated, elongated facial features and preposterously proportioned bodies, Captain Slaughterboard and his crew are beyond misfits, beyond human, perhaps only one evolutionary rung above the fantastical creatures of Edward Lear. In addition, Peake's handwritten text give the book the feel of a journal or an illustrated captain's log.



As for the story itself, my modern reader's brain wants to know a whole lot more about what Peake's intentions were. The Captain has clearly been running through men in search of something, seeking out some unknown something that has driven him at the expense of others. But then when he finds the Yellow Creature the effect is identical to that of falling into a blind, fawning love. The Creature's coy, almost fay expressions seem to acknowledge the Captain's stirrings and perhaps indicate the feelings are mutual.

Is this crazy? A story about a pirate captain at the end of his career finally deciding to retire on a remote, deserted island and setting up home with an exotic native?

l'après-midi d'un faune?

Alright, I'm going to set my adult goggles aside and try to look at this again. We've got a rough pirate captain driving what little of his crew he has to find some new thing, something never before seen or imagined. Finding the Yellow Creature and his island the Captain has finally found what he was looking for, but the crew comes to realize that this is not what they signed up for, and they depart. The crew sails off into the sunset (unseen, they simply disappear from the book half way through) and the Captain spends his sunset years happily in his island paradise. What's wrong with that?


By modern standards, what's wrong is that there's no real character development and little plot conflict to speak of. The Yellow Creature is an enigma. There's almost something menacing about his silence and manner, with facial expressions that can be read as innocent or seductive or duplicitous, and understanding his intentions might confuse younger readers.

Or maybe not. Kids don't question an owl and a pussycat sailing to far away lands and getting married by a pig, they don't think twice about forests full of bears who live in houses and sleep in beds and eat porridge, and pirates are simply cool.

Another curiosity no longer in print, though still available in libraries and worth a peek.

The Witch Who Wasn't

by Jane Yolen  
Illustrated by Arnold Roth  
Macmillan 1964  

At a convention for witches, sweet young Isabel doesn't think she has what it takes to win the Spelling Bee...  

I'll be honest, I checked this out from my library because of Arnold Roth. That and the hope that by checking out the one sole remaining copy of this book in my library system that it might survive another year's weeding.

At 700 years old, Isabel is a young witch (apparently witches only age one year for every one hundred they are alive), and is finally old enough to attend the witch convention. Only she isn't a very good witch when it comes to spells, she simply couldn't create anything evil. Her cauldron smelled of sugar and spice, her attempts to create snakes turned to cakes, bats became cats, and bugs became things one could hug. In short, Isabel was too nice to be a bad witch.

At the Witches' Convention when it came time for the spelling bee while the older, more experienced witches drew spells that conjured up horrible beasties all Isabel could manage was a tiny mouse. This, of course, was the most horrible thing of all, sending all the other witches jumping onto chairs and hiding behind each other until the thing could be taken away. That Isabel was different, and that made her extraordinary.

This is one of those old fashioned picture storybooks, a wordy tale that today would be turned into a book for young readers and not a picture book at all.  Not that the story doesn't lend itself to illustration only that "They" who decide such things have declared that picture book readers no longer have the patience for a book over 500 words (if that). And I'll grant, the story might benefit from some tightening, the character development could use a little more focus, but so what. There is little to the story as it is that feels like it's pushing 50 years old and Roth's illustrations are as delightfully demented as usual.

I understand there was a sequel, Isabel's Noel, but sadly that title seems to have fallen under a bad spell and made to disappear.

Johnathan Livingston Seagul

by Richard Back
photographs by Russel Munson
Macmillan 1970

Is this a book for children?

I received this book as a gift when I was a boy, I believe as a birthday present, possibly from a family friend who was also a librarian. I might have been twelve, the memory is hazy, but I didn't remember reading it.

So I read it.

Jonathan is a seagull unlike the others in that he would prefer to perfect and test the limits of flying over scrounging for food and fighting among the flock. His unique spirit and singular focus upsets the elders in the flock and as he reaches the physical limits of his speed diving experiments he is cast out of the flock.

Free of his societal constraints he flies off alone, only to be joined by two ethereal gulls who guide him to another place, a place where he will be understood and embraced.

"So this is heaven," Jonathan thinks, having found the home of gulls who have freed themselves of weight of the physical world. He meets another gull named Sullivan who becomes his flight instructor and guide, showing him the levels of perfection he had previously only dreamed of. Quickly Jonathan learns and surpasses his instructor to the point where he is introduced to the new flock's elder, a gull named Chiang. Chiang may be the eldest but he has so perfected his abilities that he can actually transport himself through time and space without flight, the ultimate in enlightenment. He takes on Jonathan as his pupil and in short order Jonathan has become a master in his own right.

Because he is still young and idealistic Jonathan decides that mastering flight isn't enough, that he hears a higher calling. Despite the confusion of his new flock he decides to return to the old world, to his old flock, and to show them the way and the light. The elders of his old flock are not impressed and insist that those who even speak with Jonathan will themselves be outcast. But Johnathan's message and abilities are too powerful and soon he has taken on disciples and begun to teach him what he knows. They even go so far as to call him the Son of the Great Gull. Once his followers have all the knowledge he could impart Jonathan turns the teaching over to them, to spread the word and continue to seek out a life without limits.

Wow. What a mess. Who gives this kind of a book to a boy, and what are they expecting from him when they give it?

I'm glad I never read it then, or abandoned it, or whatever I did to block it from my mind. The story is a mess of theologies, a veritable smorgasbord of free-wheeling 70's pop-psych and religious cherry-picking. Jonathan's aesthetic of flight-for-flight's-sake reads a bit like a zen novice attempting to reach nirvana the hard way. Shut out of society, he takes the mythological night journey to the shaman flock where he is given rudimentary training in preparation for (or as prerequisite to) meeting his master. The master finds Jonathan an eager student and puts him through his paces toward total enlightenment. But like Jesus learning at the feet of the Eastern ascetics he realizes that his people need to be guided from their darkness more than his own needs and returns to become their rabbi. In time he has gathered his disciples (including a lone female gull) and, his lessons finished, leaves them to explore the possibilities of an enlightened existence.

There's just enough ideas strewn throughout to suggest that Bach might have been trying to appease all crowds. Depending on the reader's personal philosophies one could find some sort of comfort in the message. The outsider as the ultimate insider, the spiritual found in the purity of action, the student becoming the master... all that was missing was a true Death and Resurrection Show to make the shaman's circle complete.

This was another one of those 25 cent library sale finds that also qualifies as a part of rebuilding my childhood library, which becomes my justification for dropping a quarter. I am forever in love with libraries for any number of reasons, but rebuilding my own childhood library from their detritus has been one of the best.

I'm glad I finally read this, and I am probably the right age for it now. Back when I was twelve I probably wrote it off as a stupid book about a seagull. I know it was a hugely popular book when it came out and that every household had an obligatory copy (ours sat next to some of my mom's collections of Rod McKuen poetry) I only wonder what it was about me that caused someone to think I would have enjoyed it.