easy reader

by Astrid Lindgren
Translated by Florence Lamborn
published in Sweden in 1944
Viking Press edition 1950
160 pages


Pippi scared me when I was young. It had nothing to do with the books at all, and certainly nothing to do with some sort of threat to my prepubescent masculinity of this scrawny little Amazon, but it had everything to do with the 1960's movie based on the book.

Funny how memory is. I can see these images as part of my childhood vividly like they happened a few years ago, but I have to remind my kids that I first encountered Pippi back in the days before there were DVD's, before videos even, and in this case even before my family owned a color television. Even in that blue-green cathode haze Pippi held a strange power that made me watch with my face half turned away in fear. I knew girls like Pippi, girls that could womp a baseball better than I ever would and wouldn't think twice about jumping down an open manhole cover, but they didn't scare me like this.

Because Pippi was the first movie I ever saw dubbed into English.

How and why did they talk like that? Their mouths and the sounds they made didn't sync up and worse; The way they were dubbed, stilted and forced like bad community theatre thespians trying to read Shakespeare into whimsy, had me feeling there was an invisible presence in the room that had turned down the sound and was making up the dialog for all the characters as they went along. And because of all this I never read Pippi Longstocking until I was a full-grown adult and felt I could handle it subject without the fear of those early memories rushing to accost me.

How nice it was to finally get Pippi in her correct form, a spunky and precocious 10 year old with a pet monkey and a horse that lives on the front porch. She lives by her own rules and with total abandon and can foil crooks just as handily as Homer Price. That adults are dolts and can be outwitted by a wildchild like Pippi is cake for a young reader . That Pippi actually doesn't even care about any adult besides her father is the icing.

Lindgren -- in a fashion that must be a genre to itself by now -- originally wrote these tales for her own children. Writing to please children may seem obvious but many who try tend to fail because they impose their adult logic and adult world onto the proceedings. Logic alone is enough to kill a good story. Not that children don't long for and crave logic, because they do, but it's the logic they create that's important. When you think about what we do as developing humans, how we take raw data and information and learn to craft connecting ideas, thoughts into images into ideas into logic, the whole of it more impressive than anything we claim as adults. As adults we manipulate the hardware and the software of the brain to make sense of our world; As children we build the hardware and software from scratch and call it the world.

At the core of the Pippiverse are two innocents who serve as our grounding, Tommy and Anika. They provide the necessary balance that allows the Pippi books to endure because they counter the desire to "be good" with the twined desire to explore without rules. When challenged, even to the brink of hysterical danger, everything works out in the end because deep down Pippi has total unspoken faith that it will. I don't think it would take much to apply the lessons of Pippi into some warm-and-comfey self-help impulse item sitting on the counter at your local chain bookstore. Here's hoping no one thinks this is a good idea.

Many books for children feature troubled families and it's an odd comfort we find in seeing that others might have it worse than we readers do. I know I'm not the only person who felt like his family was severely disfunctional while viewing other equally disfunctional families as more "normal" than my own. That sense of "other" aside, what tripped me up while reading was that I didn't believe Pippi when she said her father, The Captain, would come home one day. I committed the adult sin of disbelieving a child. No matter how fictitious, I'm sure that as a child I would have taken Pippi at her word or at least given her the benefit of the doubt where my adult mind tried to force the story to conform to my own adult sense of what was "right". What a joy -- an honor, really -- to be bested by Pippi like all the other stubborn fools she's encountered.

The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
Scribner's 1952
140 pages



The Black Pearl
Scott O'Dell
Dell 1967
96 pages


In 7th grade I was asked to pick a title from among a list of Great American Literary Authors and write a report. I picked The Old Man and the Sea because it was the shortest.

These things matter when you're 13 years old and dubious about the merits of what adults call "good" and "classic" and "literature." The shorter the book the less time it will take to read it, which means the longer you can put it off, which means a shorter period of time to skim before the report, which means the less you have to write because, after all, it's the shortest book you could possibly read. "Sorry, my five page report came in at 3 and a half pages because it was a short book. Didn't you say it had been printed -- in its entirety -- in a single issue of Life magazine?"

What also mattered was that the book had been adapted into a movie starring Spencer Tracy, who my 7th grade English teacher truly adored, and I was hoping I could parlay that affection into some kind misty-eyed grade inflation. And when I announced my chosen title Ms. Beyers-Ott beamed and announced that she had planned to show that movie later in the term, and wouldn't it be interesting to see how my vision of the book compared to the film.

In the parlance of the time: Busted. Royal.

I tried, and I mean I really tried, to slog through those scant 140 pages, trying to find a reason to care about the old man and the sea, and the fish and the struggle, and the sharks and the old man's bloody hands. I remember propping my head up in the library as I struggled to maintain consciousness, even going so far as to risk what little cache of cool I had as a rebel by wearing my glasses in public to keep the words from blurring together. In the end I managed to retain the bare essence of the story but gain no insight, no thematic understanding, nothing but the most threadbare of summaries. When the time came for the film I put my head down on my desk, jacket over my head in embarrassment as I realized my complete failure as a young reader.

I say all of this in preface to The Black Pearl as I have come to believe that there is something lost in the teaching of classic literature, and much gained in letting young readers discover for themselves what is or should be a "classic" or even "literature." To be clear, I do believe in the need for a solid foundation in a shared literary tradition -- and one more inclusive than previously prescribed but nowhere near as rigid as the many Cultural Literacies out there -- but that the definition of that foundation should come from a collective space.

In the 4th grade my teacher, Mrs. White, took time every afternoon to read to us from the cannon of what has since become classic young literature -- Harriet the Spy, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- but at the time were merely good books for young audiences. One of those was Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins and it worked in well alongside our studies of California Mission history. What a strange world California once was, with sea hunting Native Americans and not a trace of Hollywood on the horizon! Though one could argue that in the time between 4th and 7th grade my sophistication should have been prepared for the Hemingways and Saroyans, the Hartes and Londons and Twains on the shelves I would have been better served with the substitution of The Black Pearl for that Crusty Old Man and his Ridiculous Sea.

Ramon Salazar is a boy on the cusp of manhood, the son of a wealthy Baja pearl fisherman whose fleet regularly brings in the biggest and the best. Impatient Ramon dreams of the days he can join the boats and dive for pearls, and ultimately win the approval of his father. In the meantime he learns the details of the business: the weighing and appraising of the pearls. Before he gets the chance he suffers personal and family insults from Sevillano, the fleet's braggart, and vows one day to get even by catching the Mother of all Pearls.

But first he must deal with The Manta Diablo, the largest Manta in the Vermillion Sea.

The themes of manhood and of proving oneself are played out against the local mythology of a two ton killer manta who guards the sea beds containing the largest black pearls around. Ramon must defy and outwit his father to obtain the Pearl of Heaven -- a 62 caret flawless black pearl -- despite the wise old Indian who warns him that the Manta Diablo will not rest until his pearl is returned. Ramon must also later steal the Pearl of Heaven away from the church (where it was deposited to bless the town's fleets) and return it to the sea but not before being forced into a confrontation with the Sevillano the Braggart who cannot stand his most precious lies being bested by a boy.

Every chapter in this slim book delivers a twist, a sort of reverse cliffhanger where you feel everything is resolved by the end of the chapter only to skitter sideways like a crab at the beginning of the next chapter. Near the end when O'Dell has to tie everything together it all starts to feel formula-fed, but really there's no other way to end the tale. Questions are left unanswered -- What will Ramon do now that the family business is destroyed? Will he admit to having stolen the Pearl of Heaven from the church? Will he even bother to tell the tale of what he's seen and done to his family? -- bit these are exactly the kind of questions young readers like to ask and answer for themselves. Perfect for five page book reports.

Meanwhile, over in Cuba, an unlucky old man goes out on his boat, farther than he's ever gone before, and catches the largest marlin in his life. He struggles to catch the fish, suffering all along, then lashes the boat and struggles to bring it to shore while sharks eat away at his prize the whole way. He returns to his hut and collapses, his unlucky streak ended, the last great haul of his 80+ years a skeletal testament to his skill and undying spirit. The end.

Okay, I've simplified unfairly. I was merely trying to recall my own interpretation from 7th grade. But honestly, what does a 13 year old boy know of an old man's struggles, of an old man's fall from grace with his community, what does a boy know of regaining a shimmer of former glory he has yet to taste? More, what does a young boy in and English class understand of the symbolism of an old novelist in a sea of hostile critics suffering to land one last chance at relevance? Only later -- beyond college even -- did I come to understand the disappointments of adults and the idea of a noble battle against hostile criticism. As a teen I would have been better served to work through the issues of becoming and developing my personal sense of self through books like The Black Pearl rather than wrestle with the demons of a classic novelist who shot himself rather than continue to live a life in futility. What kind of a message did they think they were sending us kids back then?!

Am I advocating the removal of classic literature from the classroom? Not anymore than I am suggesting that we replace these books with thy untested Harry Potter series. My own initiation into the adult world of literature happened when I discovered a collection of Vonnegut short stories hidden in the garage. My dad had hidden this and some other books he felt were just a bit too mature for me and my younger siblings to read. My teachers -- bless them -- raised an eye at my reading Vonnegut during free time but said nothing more. They certainly didn't call out the morality police to have my frog-marched out of school, and for that they deserve praise. That initial act of forbidding sent me running to the adult section of the public library more than any introduction to classic literature in a classroom. Given how teens tend to run contrary to adult desires perhaps the best course is to give them more relevant (to them) literature and suggest they avoid certain classics.

Then again, if Ms. Beyers-Ott had given me The Black Pearl to write a paper about, instead of letting me hang myself on Hemingway, perhaps I'd have performed just as poorly. Perhaps instead of championing Scott O'Dell's coming-of-age tale set in La Paz I'd bemoan having not been introduced to Hemingway's Old Man at a young age.

There's just no pleasing some kids.

Bath-time Boots
FSG 1997
16 pages
(board book)


Me and My Cat?
FSG 1999
26 pages




The Comic Adventures of Boots
FSG 2002
32 pages



If I had one wish for a new release in children's publishing it would be a thick graphic novel of the continuing adventures of Kitamura's cats. Nothing less than 150 pages will do. I am serious.

Utilizing a simple watercolor-fill drawing style, bordering on cartoon, Kitamura delves into the world of Boots and his friends that could only come from someone who has lived with and knows the ways cats. They aren't always cute, they aren't always smart or dignified, and quite often in their attempts to remain aloof and autonomous they manage to land themselves in bigger trouble than they had hoped to avoid.
Bath-time Boots is a board book that mirrors the childhood game of avoid-the-bath. Boots spends the entire time desperately looking for hiding spaces that cannot save him until, in a final act of desperation, he jumps straight into a tub full of water as a last-ditch effort. Nothing too sophisticated, just a simple observation of a cat's hatred for the bath and the propensity for trying to put themselves into places they obviously cannot fit. Cats in sinks? I rest my case.

With Me and My Cat? Kitamura expands on the idea of trading places when a witch enters and switches the brains of Boots' friend Leonardo and his boy owner. When the boy-in-the-cat watches himself eat out of a cat dish and get pushed off to school he decides to make the most of it by trying the life of a cat. He jumps on the furniture and knocks things over. He explores the neighborhood from atop a wall and discovers just how unfriendly the neighborhood cats are toward one another. Then, back at home, he watches as the cat-in-boy sits with that crazy cat expression on his face licking himself clean. The doctor is called and the prescription is rest. That night the witch comes back to correct her mistake and Leonardo and the boy are back to normal.

What isn't as apparent in the first two books becomes clear in The Comic Adventures of Boots when Kitamura opens the door wide into the fully developed world of Boots and his friends. While boots is the star, Leonardo is also along, as are the bully cats from before who now have names like Vincent and Pablo and Hokusai. And where the earlier books would simply illustrate their stores, here they are practically animated as they stroll along with upwards of a dozen panels per page. In three separate tales (plus three single-page silent catering and endpapers that are practically flip books) Boots manages to outsmart the other cats (almost) to get his special warm place on a wall, befriends a duck who saves his life and teaches him to swim, and enlists the other cats in an elaborate game of charades which is far more clever than any dozens of comics I've seen aimed at kids.

Sight gags worthy of silent films of Buster Keaton, colorfully rendered are that is deceptive in it's simplicity, and a revealing look into the secret world we always knew cats inhabited. More like this, please.

written and illustrated by
William Pene du Bois
1938, new illustrations 1960
The Viking Press, 100 pages

Having been enchanted with The Twenty-One Balloons, and having accidentally discovered The Magic Finger, I searched out other books by du Bois in my local library. While the story of The 3 Policemen stuck me as rather dull even in those pre-adolescent days I was still able to appreciate du Bois' idea of inventing an island, with a perfect economy, no crime and people with little else to do but enjoy life.

Farbe Island (according to du Bois) was founded by fisherfolk who stumbled upon an uncharted paradise. Perfect fishing and abundant flora and fauna, it appeared to have been built and abandoned as a small Caribbean resort just waiting for new tenants. The people fish and live in such harmony that the three policemen who protect and defend the island have little else to do besides pay dominoes all day and design new uniforms. That they look identical is mere coincidence: after several generations all the islands inhabitants have probably come to resemble their common ancestors.

The policemen are aided by young Bottsford, a child of circus aerialists who left him behind after landing on the island by accident themselves. Why and how they left -- and more importantly, why they left young Bottsford behind -- is not discussed. Bottsford polishes the buttons and shoes of the policemen, tends to their bicycles, and manages to dispense the logic and strategy the policemen can't seem to find on their own.

When the island is menaced by a sea monster that takes the fisherfolk's nets the inept policemen -- who have never previously been called on to do anything before -- set out to solve the mystery. Bottsford does all the heavy lifting in the planning department and the policemen get the credit when they discover that the island's mayor has brought the mechanical sea serpent home from abroad as a gift to help his people relax. No it doesn't really make much sense. Such is the nature of whimsy.

The hook for me -- when I was a boy and even now -- was the cross section drawing of the sea serpent. A giant mattress-slide down it's back leads to a pool. Observation decks appear to be place not just above the water but beneath the waterline as well. An indoor gym and a well-stocked meat locker hint at the luxury of a hotel, the kind of a place where your every whim is catered to. But then, the whole idea of a perfect island paradise was enough to make me pull out paper and a pencil and begin sketching. I'm sure my version of a sea serpent ship was much better as it contained things I felt missing from du Bois' plan. A go-cart race track would have made a nice improvement, as would a library full of beanbag chairs and free soda machines.

While unremarkable in story an execution -- actually, a bit tedious at spots -- it does feed into the fantasy that exists even in adults to invent a perfect hideaway. I have no less than three of these in my adult head at any given point, and the added bonus of their being on an island would just be icing on the cake. More remarkable to me is that this book still manages to keep its place on the library shelves. Clearly there must be something in this nearly 70 year old book that keeps kids pulling it off the shelves, it can't all be about "the guy who wrote The Twenty-One Balloons..."

Or maybe it's just oldsters like me who keep trolling for a glimpse into our pasts.

by Carl Sandburg
illustrated by Maud and Miska Petersham
1922 Harcourt

Poet Sandburg was called to create these stories to amuse his own children, and in doing gave birth to a kind of American fairy tale centered on the ways and manners of the prairie folk at the early part of the 20th Century.

The stories all take place in Rootabaga Country, a place at the edge of the grasslands far from the city, where the railroad tracks zigzag and villages float with the wind. Real life hardscrabble folk with names like Rags Habakuk and Blixie Bimber run up against talking blue foxes and mystical corn fairies, and inanimate objects like skyscrapers have a railroad train for a child. Sandburg the egalitarian gives a beggar like Potato Face Blind Man the same wisdom and dignity as he gives Fire the Goat who knows the secrets of the shadows that walk along the horizon during a sunrise. Throughout, the poet's ear for country vernacular is infused with choice invented words of his own that beg to be read aloud to children who will understand them as they do "adult" words they have never heard before, simply through context.

What is immediately striking about these stories is how much resonance they hold with Baum's Oz books. But where Baum removed his wholesome heroine from her American soil for a land only reached by balloon or tornado, Sandburg offers us a place just off the edge of the map that one can purchase a ticket for... after selling all your worldly good first, however. And the wiggly line-drawn illustrations by the Petershams convey both the era and a sense of whimsy. Baum and Sandburg's tales are cut from the same country cloth and it's a shame that Sandburg's tales seem to have not garnered an equal popularity.

Rooted in the heartland of America they speak with a folksy cadence, centering on the daily events of life or dwelling in a mythical world as imagined by a farm hand two or three generations removed from city life. Innocence walks arm-in-arm with wisdom as youngsters explain the world to their adult uncles and the blind man pities those who have sight but cannot (or will not) see.

The fantastic is celebrated in these tales much the same as they are in Lewis Carroll's works and with equal success. Composed for children they retain the same appeal in their nonsense while giving children an alternate view of the world that is no less real than the one they confront on a daily basis. I only wish I'd come across these stories when I was younger and could truly appreciate them.

Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls
poems selected by William Cole
illustrated by Tomi Ungerer
World Publishing 1964
(1977 edition illustrated by
Shel Silverstein)
124 pages




Here's a little time bomb of a memory, lodged deep in my brain, springing forth like a cheerful bird on a breezy cool day when I'm lollygagging:

Nothing to do?
Nothing to do?
Put some mustard in your shoe...

For years I was certain that Shel Silverstein penned the line (and the rest of the poem to go with it) but was unable to locate it in all the usual places (Where the Sidewalk Ends, Falling Up, &c.) Then while researching various poetry collections I stumbled onto this title and the title alone seemed to send up some kind of a warning. Once found (and read) whole dusty corners of my brain came alive. And some interesting questions as well.

Cole, who in his day worked for publishers Viking and Simon and Schuster and the Saturday Review magazine, collected themed books of poetry for children that spanned at least three decades. Collecting humorous verse from throughout the 20th Century Cole's books covered everything from the cautionary to the absurd and also the sublime to the ribald. Earlier collections in particular contain poems and images that might do more than nudge the edges of political correctness and raise a few eyebrows. The continuation of the poem mentioned above -- credited to a certain Shelly Silverstien -- continues:

Fill your pockets full of soot,
Drive a nail into your foot,
Put some sugar in your hair,
Leave your toys upon the stairs,
Smear some jelly on the latch,
Eat some mud and strike a match,
Draw a picture on the wall,
Roll some marbles down the hall,
Put some ink in daddy's cap--
Now go upstairs and take a nap.

Having satisfied one itch in the brain I was suddenly met with several more, these in the names of the illustrations. Tomi Ungerer's line drawings have the playful spirit of the book's title... and then some. There is nothing in the poem that accompanies the following illustration to explain the look of the girls face:















And yet, there it is.

Father with a cat-o-nine tails and his little Electra smirking at his attempt to be stearn with her. It puzzled me then, it amuses me now, and it's no wonder this edition is no longer in print.

For Silverstein fans this collection contains the original, slightly different version of "Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout" and a poem with some simple instructions to children on how to make a prank phone call. Not to suggest the book is all perversion and subversion, there are poems in here by A.A. Milne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ogden Nash and even Longfellow to round things out.

I look back on reading this as a child and don't feel I was in any way corrupted or had my delicate sensibilities compromised by the outrageousness contained in this collection. In fact, I think we do children a greater disservice today by sanitizing their world to the point where they stop believing we have their best interests at heart. They live in this world with us, and if we have to carve out time to discuss terrorism and famine and war and he dangers of strangers then I think we can trust them to take humorous verse in the spirit which it was once offered -- as a gift, from adults to children, to let them know that it's okay to laugh.

by Larry Gonick
185 pages
Carus Publishing 2005


Gonick, better known for his Cartoon History of the Universe books, adapts cartoon characters from Smithsonian's kid's magazine Muse into a full-length story. In the magazine this collection of muses -- archetypes of cultural figures from around the world -- live in a cartoon universe that is just a county over from Krazy Kat's Cononino and make for light entertainment.

Here, I'm sad to report, I didn't make it past the first chapter, barely to page 10. I suppose I was expecting some of Gonick's clever comic pacing to carry through to his prose but instead what I encountered was a herky-jerky wordiness that forced me to read sentences over and over. I tried reading through and found myself going back and starting over a total of three times just to make sure I wasn't having a bad day, week, month. It just didn't work for me, sometimes that happens.

I'm happy to see on the various author and magazine fan sites that kids really dug the book, found the characters both compelling and true to their natures, one even going so far as to compare it with the work of Terry Pratchett. I couldn't help thinking that it would have made for a much better graphic novel, with the details in the drawings instead of drawn out in text.

More proof that not everything for kids can be enjoyed by adults.

What If You -- Follow the Lone Cry
What If Books #2
By Laurie B. Clifford
Regal Books, 1983
97 pages

Another take on the Choose Your Own Adventure type
of books aimed at reluctant or low-interest readers, this time from a Christian
publisher.  

You are "Bubba", the middle-school son of globe- trotting parents whose
adventures take them deep into National Geographic country, this time in the
Yukon.  As with similar books, there is a basic two- to three-page premise and
then several forks in the road buy way of narrative choices that lead you flipping
pages toward one of the books 26 possible endings.

After a childhood of being dragged around the world his parents have finally
bought a house and stayed put for two years.  Bubba feels he's old enough to
stay behind while his parents go off on their next adventure but the conflict
tugging at him concerns is younger sister who sees Bubba as her emotional
anchor.  Through the various storylines Bubba is equally torn between making
the right choices and in choosing friends over family.

It's clear from the language used that the author of this book either has no
children and learned everything they know about pre-teen behavior from
watching television, or they are truly out-of-touch with their own children and
believe they are hipper than they really are.  That the ideal lead-in to a summer
hanging out with friends is described as "working our bods off all year so we can
pork out" at the local pizzeria should have turned off all but the most sheltered
of readers.

The Christian message is found mostly in the types of choices the reader gets to
make, and reinforces the idea that presumably good choices lead to happiness and
bad choices lead to death.  I kid you not.  Of the 26 endings here, 6 end in physical
pain or family misfortune, 6 are unsatisfying non-endings that leave you feeling like
you've wasted your time, and 12 lead to death for the Bubba including (with their
corresponding "message"):
Death by over-eating 3 pizzas and downing a pitcher of soda (gluttony)
Death by cobra in the cargo hold of a plane (disobedience)
Death by gold mine cave-in (greed)
Death by black widow spider bite (deception to alleviate guilt)
Death by plaster body cast (deception)
Death by drowning (arrogance, selfishness)
Death by falling off Mt. Everest (desire, covetousness)
Death by lying in the road to get run over (more deception), and my favorite
Death by having ones heart pierced with a lightning bolt by the spirit of
dream-killers and bleeding to death in bed at night. (guilt)
Ignoring the obvious messages about what a good, moral Christian would choose in
any situation, to say nothing of the bizarre endings, is a very subtle message
about what kind of a family this is and what sort of redemption is available to
Bubba.  It's hard to gloss over the very Oedipal flashback where Bubba helps
his mother deliver his younger sister in the jungles of the Philippines during a
monsoon, but it's easy to miss the message that parents like Bubba's are
doomed to misfortune 75% of the time in these adventures because they allow
their son the make (or have raised him to make) bad choices.  In fact, if they
remained a proper family rooted in one place, raising obedient children,
giving the youngest the emotional sustenance she requires so that she doesn't
rely on her brother to fill the void,  none of this would have happened.

It doesn't seem too miscalculated a jump to suggest that these books weren't
entirely aimed at the loyal Christian child but as missionary propaganda, adventure
tales meant to cull wayward sheep from their heathen (liberal?) flocks and lead
them to salvation.

Maybe that's all too much to read into a sub-par middle-school book series from
the 1980's that stalled out after four titles, found at a library sale for a quarter.  Oh,
and as for the title, the lone cry is another lonely outcast child, this one stuck in the
Yukon with her treasure-mad mountain of an uncle.  If you get far enough along
to find out who and what the lone cry is you'll wish you'd stayed behind and died a
painful death-by-root canal.

By Robert McCloskey
Viking Press edition 1943
149 pages

There's this place called Centerburg which has always appeared just off the map
from our collective unconsciousness.  It's a past where the town fathers and other
leading citizens gather at the barber shop while they let their children mind
the diner and bring petty criminals to justice at the end of a gun.  It's where
ten year old boys could take the family cart and mare into town on their own, or
tame a skunk for a pet with just a little milk, an innocent place where the idea
of factory produced homes is welcomed progress and a contest to see which old
codger owns the largest ball of string is prime entertainment for a week.  And
at the center of it all, whether witness or participant, is Homer Price.

As one of Robert McCloskey's rare forages outside the realm of the picture book
(Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal), Homer Price takes the form of
fanciful memoir, the kind of stories written of a young man's fancied retelling
of his Ohio home town.  Naturally Centerburg doesn't exist, but plenty of
Midwest towns like it did exist in the early part of the 20th century and it
breathes a homespun charm not unlike a Frank Capra film or a Thornton Wilder play.

Reading this in the late 1960's there was still a sense that these small towns
still existed, not yet gobbled up by the big cities.  I had no doubts that just
outside of Los Angeles there were dozens of these Centerburg's dotting the
landscape at the edges of the desert and the foothills of the Sierra's.  More
exciting was the prospect that out there, somewhere, a man was in need of a ten
year old boy to mind the diner while the donut machine ran amok pumping out
thousands of the golden cake rings begging to be eaten.  That a
boy could tame a wild animal made perfect sense to me as I explained to my
parents how (but not why) I could keep a pet squirrel in the closet under the
stairs.  Never mind that: we lived in a city and rarely saw squirrels; that the
closet had no light in it; that the only nuts I was able to gather for it were
from eucalyptus trees.  All that mattered to me was that if Homer Price could do
it, so could I.

The collection of stories in Homer Price are homespun and sly at times, with
only one real dud in the bunch.  McCloskey's attempt to modernize The Pied Piper
of Hamlin almost threatens to destroy everything leading up to it, but the final
story regains sure footing and brings together every major character from
previous stories to a grand finale.

Rereading it I can't help but wonder about the black people of Centerburg, only
hinted at in these stores.  They appear twice, when a poor boy finds a diamond bracelet
in a donut (and is rewarded with $100) and in the town celebration
when theBaptist choir sings out a sort of folk-blues commentary on the
town's history. It is both an accurate and sad reflection of the times
that towns like Centerburg existed, and that the poor and minority
communities lived on the outskirts and peripheries. I wouldn't doom
this book to the type of drubbing that Twain's boyhood tales receive
but it would be nice to get an inner city version of Homer Price to
balance things out, perhaps a Harlem-based version of the 30's and 40's
that celebrated the same spirit of boyhood adventure minus any sort of
social message or literary revisionism.

by Roald Dahl
illustrated by William Pene du Bois
41 pages Harper & Row 1966


This is a story of a girl with anger management issues, a story with a high sense of justice and a low tolerance for senseless violence, and the delightfully quirky world that Roald Dahl excelled at creating. The Magic Finger is a pushing, prodding, poke-in-the-eye, accusatory allegory to war via a pointed attack on thetradition of English sport hunting. In the right light, it could also be a call to vegetarianism, though I don't know that was Dahl's intent back in the mid-60's.



Our unnamed antagonist -- who'll I call Zak for reasons to be explained -- is the type of child who is a tempest beneath a barely calm surface. When humiliated by her teacher for spelling cat with a 'k' (and Twain has something to say about this) her boiling point is reached as fast as it takes to point her finger and turn the font of derision into a house pet. In the fantasy world of children's literature this casual power and transformation is presented as a natural occurrence, one in every classroom. Zak's abilities and her unwillingness to be trifled with are the point at which we jump to the real story.



Zak's neighbors, the Greggs, are a typical English hunting family proud to return from the fields with their kill, one duck a piece. The injustice of this sends Zak to seeing colors, and in her rainbow fury she turns her neighbors into duck-sized, bird-winged humanoids for the night. And because this universe needs balance (and the Gregg's need a lesson) their house is taken over with people-sized, human-armed ducks. As the humans are chased out and fired at with their own guns they quickly take to the trees and learn the obvious but valuable lesson of seeing the world from the eyes of the hunted. Come morning the world is set to rights and the Greggs set about atoning for their hunting sins while Zak goes of in search of another family that needs a lesson.



The joy I had discovering this shortly after it was first published left a lingering mark. In some ways I prefer this to Dahl's better-acknowledged classics James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in that it distills the lesson and entertains without unnecessary baggage.



Sadly, modern editions of this book no longer contain the original illustrations by du Bois, favoring instead more cartoony (and by adult standards less intense?) illustrations by Quintin Blake who has reillustrated all of Dahl's books currently in print. One of my favorite parts of the original is the doubled page that allows you to watch the school teacher turn into a cat. There is also a multi-page spread where Zak's fury changes color but are presented in black and white ink wash that may be the result of economics (color being more expensive to print) but force readers to translate colors to emotions in a way that is more internal (and less obvious) than a similar expression in Leo Lionni's Frederick.



As for Zak, unless you read the original edition you won't see a little girl wearing a sailor's hat with that name on it, pointing at the reader in an homage to James Montgomery Flagg's Uncle Sam posters of the early 20th century. This closing image appropriates the iconic military recruiting image and transforms it into an accusation addressed to the reader. Is Zak attempting to teach you a lesson for your unknown sins, or is she merely warning you to beware your actions. Written and illustrated early in the Vietnam conflict the message isn't overt in Dahl's text but du Bois illustration appears to draw a connection between the senselessness of sport hunting and mindlessness of war.

Perhaps it is time to re-release the original edition.

// posted by dlz @ 11:01 PM 0 comments