13 Days of Halloween: Creepy Carrots

words by Aaron Reynolds 
pictures by Peter Brown  
Simon & Schuster 2012 

Jasper Rabbit loves carrots but they're starting to creep him out. Kids everywhere will cheer - they now have a real reason for hating carrots! They're creepy! But is there a deeper message here about the haves and the have-nots? 

Cute Little Jasper loves carrots, and how could he resist the temptation of Crackenhopper Field where they grow fat, crisp, and free? He can't. Then one day his little bunny ears twitch and he is sure he's being followed. Soon enough he is seeing creepy carrots everywhere he looks. The creepy carrots looking at him in the mirror? Those are orange-colored items on the edge of the bathtub. And in the closet? More orange carrot-shaped items.  

But after a week Jasper can't help but see those creepy carrots everywhere he looks. Finally Jasper hatches a plan and spends a Saturday enclosing Crackenhopper Field with a fence, surrounded by a moat full of alligators. There was no way any creepy carrot was ever going to escape and haunt Jasper again. 

And inside the fence the carrots rejoiced. Their plan had worked!  

It's easy to see this as Jasper's story – after all, he's the one being haunted at every turn – but the title of this (literally) dark picture book tells us who the story is really about. These poor, sentient carrots, passive in their existence, have had to deal with the horror of being yanked from the ground and consumed by a bunny with little concern than his own consumption. Is this a story of rabid consumerism? Perhaps, but then would that make the carrots the 99% who haunt in protest for their own rights to exist free of a predatory 1% who think nothing beyond the scope of their own desires.

Reading too much into a picture book again? Maybe the problem is we don't read deep enough.

As haunting as the carrots my be, they are merely creepy as an act of survival, and the ends justify the means as they find themselves in a gated community built on their behalf. That may seem workable for the moment, but how like the social welfare and housing programs of the past where well-intentioned governments (and some ill-intentioned ones as well) construct housing projects and artificial neighborhoods to protect the underclass.

Okay, okay, it's just a story about a rabbit haunted by carrots who are tired of watching kith and kin being eaten before their very carrot eyes. The illustrations in black, grey, and orange deliberately play off the Halloween theme of horror, a little trick-and-treat mixture of cute and creepy. The young'uns will eat it up, but not like carrots. More like candy corn I'd say.

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.