Four more micro reviews of rare, great and unique children’s books from around the world, courtesy of One Potato.net
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I don’t remember more than a dozen or so picture books from my own childhood, and indeed that may have been all there ever were in the rotation. The best picture books are designed to be read over and over: sure, we know what happens in the end, but we still can’t believe how we got there.
Now, in this age of picture book plenty, with titles available from Norway to New Zealand, from yesterday and fifty years ago, used and new, for as little as a penny plus the cost of delivery, it can be tempting to want to briefly visit every one of these far-flung destinations, and yet I think it is also possible to rely upon the same small collection and come out all right. Maybe better than all right. Curious. Independent. With a sense of humor undeterred by reflexive pieties, and an attention span worthy of our position in the evolutionary chain. Both beloved in our little corner of the larger cosmic story, and determined to want to clear out a couple of those corners by ourselves.
There are no Greatest Books, only ones you would personally rescue from a flood. Here are one reader’s suggestions
Amos & Boris by William Steig (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1971)
We’ve heard this sort of fable before, of the very small, the very large, and the cooperation between them, still more than any other creator of talking foxes and disappearing rabbits and flying frogs and even mice setting out on round-the-world voyages, Steig never talks down to his readers, and the result is a story as loving as it is lovable. You get the feeling this author even relishes the widgets and infinitesimal protocols of ship-building. Your attention may wander, but his never does. That is affection. Here’s Amos (here’s Steig): “A little speck of living thing in the vast living universe, he felt thoroughly akin to it all. Overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of everything…”
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Who Needs Donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty
(1973, reintroduced in 2003 by Random House)
Originally published in 1973, this is the existential story of a little boy following his dreams to the big city, a sad old homeless woman shrieking about love, and a wild bull escaping from a pet store, yet it’s the pictures which finally astonish: of flying elephants, and faucets where door handles are supposed to be, and horse-headed birds blowing saxophones with trees growing out of them. There are thousands and thousands of donuts here also, no one exactly like the other, indeed these drawings offer loving (if sometimes exhausting) testimonial of a certain homemade decade that most of us do our best to forget – and too bad. The street signs alone would take an average reader months to completely appreciate. A monumental achievement. And a funny little yarn.
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The Wild Boy by Mordicai Gerstein (Sunburst Books, [FSG] 1998)
Ambivalent but true. Victor, the wild child, was captured—or he was rescued—in the Aveyron district of Southern France in 1800, and his assimilation was an arduous, eventful, and not altogether successful experiment. This luminous account finally asks more questions than it answers (“I wonder what he sees… I wonder what he feels. I wonder….” thinks the doctor who is treating him), and it’s all the more surprising for its incomprehension, no matter how many times you have reached the final page. A great neglected history by the author and illustrator Mordicai Gerstein (The Man Who Walked Between the Towers) who is at his best elaborating—and sometimes debunking—such legends.
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McFig and McFly, A Tale of Jealousy, Revenge and Death (with a Happy Ending) by Henrik Drescher (Candlewick, 2008)
The daredevil writer and illustrator (of Hubert the Pudge, a Vegetarian Tale among other oddities) tells the story of neighboring Scotsmen caught up in a very grown-up (and foretellingly ruinous) battle of architecture. The buildings themselves (complete with bungee-jumping platforms and fishbone-and-garbage-can weather vanes) are hypnotic to look at, and their builders, though tragically deluded, come off as otherwise decent and sympathetic: two guys who just got carried away. Folktales can feel kind of skeletal sometimes for all of their timelessness. This reads like a classic, living and breathing and funny, as entertaining as it is wise.
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Check out Jay’s first micro review of Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney (Viking Books, 1982)
—series photo by DarrelBirkett/Flickr
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I’d like to nominate “Biography of a Grizzly” as a forgotten classic for you folks to review. It’s not for very young children, but it’s not really aimed at adults either. It’s certainly enjoyable at a adult level, though. Just don’t read it expecting a happy ending. 🙂