Letting Go

With Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler ties a relationship to the objects that have been meaningful to (at least) one of the parties involved. Maira Kalman animates those objects in her artwork so that they almost seem to take on the emotional life of the two people involved in this ill-fated romance. When Daniel Handler discussed the seeds for this project (with a gathering of teachers, librarians and reviewers), he said it began with Maira Kalman.

Handler and Kalman had collaborated on a picture book, 13 Words, and Handler asked Kalman what she’d like to work on next. She showed him paintings of ordinary objects that she’d done. If you look at her picture-book biography, Looking at Lincoln, that’s what she does there, too. She enters President Lincoln’s story through the stovepipe hat she spies in the park, the $5 bill on the table at the diner, then delves more deeply into the details of his life. Handler said that he tried to think of what makes ordinary objects seem a bit magical, and felt that “endowing them with significance because of a romance” would do it.

Min and Ed form a pie-in-the-sky connection—two people from opposite ends of the high school popularity scale who meet because the co-captain of the basketball team is hiding out after his team’s loss at a party hosted by the “arty” crowd. (Ed never uses that term to describe Min, she does; he simply calls her “different.”) But the tangible objects that give their connection meaning keep their interactions credible. The couple operates most smoothly outside the daily rhythms of high school life. When they try to pull each other into their individual orbits, trouble brews.

Ultimately, Min cannot change Ed. She brings out his best but she cannot keep his best. He would have to wish to change, and he either cannot or will not (we know not, because we only see Min’s side). Through Min’s eyes, we see that Ed tries, and perhaps even wants to sustain it, but he does not. And that is why they broke up.

With her “Dear John” letter, the basis of the entire text of the novel, Min describes the objects in the box that she is returning to Ed and replays the key moments of their relationship. Her letter and her returning of the objects allow Min to begin the process of letting go. She expects nothing back in return. She allows herself to reflect on the meaning Ed had for her, and the best parts of him that she brought to light, and why she couldn’t see then what she sees now. She’s very human and very healthy about it. By doing this physical and emotional housecleaning, she will be able to move on. Don’t we all wish we’d had a Min to guide us through high school?

Clues from the Past

In The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet, history holds the clues to an unsolved mystery. And what could be better for two modern teens with a sense of adventure than a puzzle that began generations ago? The author threads together elements of the French Resistance, two competing scientists, and children who disappeared--which no one in Paris wants to discuss.

In fact, it seems that 13-year-old Maya Davidson and her new friend Valko are the only ones who care about the unsolved mystery of the missing children. As Maya tries to help her “invisible” Cousin Louise locate the relative who “rescued” Louise as a child, Maya and Valko discover clues that point to a disturbing underlying cause for both Louise’s “invisibility” and the missing children.

Nesbet maps out plenty of paths for readers to follow if their curiosities get the better of them. What was the French Resistance? Who were these scientists (whom the author bases on actual men)? And along more abstract lines, is there a difference between people who appear to be invisible and people we ignore? How far would you go to be physically beautiful or handsome? What would you be willing to give up? What would it be like to live forever? To outlive your parents, your siblings, even your own children?

Nesbet raises all these questions and more. Very early in the book, Henri’s grandmother decides that the emotional pain of one of her sons betraying the other son is too great, so she embraces her mortality. She removes her bottle of earth from the cabinet and allows her natural aging process to run its course. She lives out her life (mostly to be there for young Henri), but she chooses not to live forever. This book is a terrific conversation starter with your children. What gives life meaning? If you could live forever, what do you think would begin to be less valuable to you? More valuable?

Pieces of a Picture

At the start of the New Year, I suppose it’s tradition to set goals one hopes to work on or reach by year’s end. One of my ongoing quests is to break down the Big Goal into smaller parts. Few do it better than Maira Kalman, and perhaps the best example is her book Looking at Lincoln.

As I mentioned in the review, the seeds of the book began with a blog that Kalman did for the New York Times. She started with her love of Abraham Lincoln, which led her to the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. On her blog, she shares pages from her notebooks, which brim with drawings and phrases and doodles in the margins culled from her research about the 16th president, as well as photo reproductions that she shares with readers.

It’s such a great example of how our interests can lead us down deep and winding paths. And as we wind our way down these paths, unexpected connections can occur. Kalman also shows us—if we compare the notebook doodles on her blog to the images in her picture book—how she selected the facts and images that made the greatest impact and refined them for her book. We see the amount of thought and discipline that went into her choices of what to include and what to leave out, and how those pieces of the picture add up to a three-dimensional portrait of a great leader and extraordinary human being. She captures Lincoln’s humor and sorrow, his joy and his pain.

And most of all, Kalman models the way she starts small, with details that interest her, and builds to the larger integrated whole. What a great way to approach any goal, whether it’s writing a book or building a house or running a marathon. We have to begin a little at a time, word by word, brick by brick, step by step.

Bedtime Buddies

How often have we walked in on a toddler who’s acting out a familiar scene? She might be showing a friend how to throw a ball using the same pointers you showed her, or explaining to her doll how to share with her friends (after receiving the same advice herself). Sleepyhead by Karma Wilson, illustrated by John Segal, encourages that same kind of role-playing—a tool that helps a child process his day and, in this case, to drift off to sleep.

We see the kitten hero instructing her teddy, Sleepyhead, to brush his teeth just as we presume her own parents instructed her to do. Then we watch her anticipate Sleepyhead’s stall tactics: “We’ve hugged our hugs…. You’ve drunk your drink.” Still, Sleepyhead asks for “one more.” It’s a gentle humor that arises from recognizing one’s own behavior and being able to laugh at oneself.

At the same time, the rhyme and the nursery-hued art (in the imagined scenes of the kitten carrying a drink in a boat to Sleepyhead as he rides on the back of a swordfish, or brings a book to the teddy high atop a giraffe) are soothing enough to have a lulling effect. And because the book, first published in 2006, is now in a board book edition, you may send it off with your toddler to naptime or bedtime. It’s durable enough to sleep on, drool on or be tossed across a crib.

Don’t be surprised if, when you check in on your toddler, you hear a quiet “Sleepyhead, Sleepyhead. Now close your eyes, my Sleepyhead” wafting from the nursery.

A Fresh Start

In Bluefish by Pat Schmatz, Travis has a complicated relationship with his grandfather, his sole guardian. He’s not excited about the fact that they had to move away from the creek where Travis found some peace of mind, and he misses his hound, Rosco. But it is a chance to start fresh. And to leave behind the nickname his peers had given him: “bluefish.”

The book opens with a good Samaritan act. Travis sees a stray shoe come flying past him while he’s at his locker. Shortly thereafter, a kid ambles by who’s missing one. Travis returns the shoe to the kid without a word and continues on his way. This earns him the respect of Bradley (the one-shoed kid) and also Velveeta, a silent witness. A friendship tenuously takes hold among the three. It’s sealed by a teacher, Mr. McQueen, with a knack for matching the right kid with the right book, and for offering the right comment at the right time. Travis has never known an adult like that, and Velveeta is sorely missing the one adult who had served that role in her life.

With the aid of this friendship and adult guide, both Travis and Velveeta find the courage to confide in one another. There’s a hint of attraction between them, but Schmatz keeps their connection platonic, exploring the full extent of what it means to be a true friend and confidante. Through their friendship, each transforms his and her self-image, and they begin to see in themselves the sense of possibility that they bring out in one another. Schmatz packs an emotional wallop in this brief novel.

A Need to Understand

The Greek gods have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. I loved their power and beauty, but also their weaknesses and petty jealousies, which made them seem more like us. Donna Jo Napoli, in her introduction to her Treasury of Greek Mythology: Classic Stories of Gods, Goddesses, Heroes and Monsters, illustrated by Christina Balit, puts it beautifully: “In reading the myths, we begin to understand that the ancient Greeks must have wanted more than just the big answers from their gods,” she writes. “They must have also wanted their gods to be a reflection that could help them understand themselves.”

Napoli went back to the oldest Greek sources for her myths, Hesiod and Homer. I got to interview her about her research recently, and she set me thinking about just how ancient these myths are. In fact, they’re so much a part of Western civilization that we make certain assumptions—Napoli was not exempt! She and artist Christina Balit had a point of disagreement about the half-bull, half-man Minotaur. Napoli believed that the Minotaur had a human torso on a bull’s body, but when Balit’s illustration of him arrived, she’d portrayed the Minotaur with a human body and a bull’s head. After Napoli went back to substantiate her view, she discovered that the oldest representations in art and sculpture convey the Minotaur as Balit had (you can see Balit's image of the Minotaur here).

It’s such a great example of how important that component is for us as readers, to be able to envision something in our own minds and “make it ours.” It’s why I’m so often disappointed in the movie version of events and characters from books, for which I’d already created my own images. Napoli could find no written reference about which way the Minotaur’s anatomy leans (only descriptions of a “half man, half bull”). The artists who made their ancient paintings and sculptures were the more readily available, with their bull’s head, man’s body depictions. With words alone, we can picture what makes sense to each of us individually as readers, but the job of painters and sculptors is to construct a physical representation of their vision.

For all of us, the seeds of that impulse come from a desire to understand the things we read about or experience in our everyday dealings. Very much like those ancient Greeks, trying to make sense of the events in their lives.

Finding the Fireworks

One of things I love most about Marla Frazee’s projects is the way she chooses them. “When I read a book to consider illustrating I don't want to fully understand it. I want to puzzle it out,” says Frazee. “I almost want to be afraid of it.” You can see just what she means when you look at her artwork for Stars by Mary Lyn Ray. The text is poetic and lyrical and closely observed, yet it does not include a set group of characters. Frazee found ways to connect the images and build relationships among characters so that you feel an emotional connection to them.

Frazee spoke at the Society of Illustrators in the same presentation as Stephen Savage (which I mentioned last week). She said the text of Stars reminded her of Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is to Dig, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Krauss, a former teacher, once said something along the lines of she hoped her students didn’t sue her for lifting their conversations verbatim and recording them in the book. Stars has that same loose, free-associative quality as Krauss’s book.

If you look at Frazee’s illustrations for All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon, and Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers, the same is true there, too. Frazee creates the narrative through line with her images. We recognize her characters from certain details—pigtails, a slouchy posture, striped onesies, overalls. Although they go unnamed, we feel as if we know them.

Marla Frazee’s Web site, in addition to showing a picture of her studio under an avocado tree (she's sitting on the porch of her studio with Rocket, above), gives all sorts of insights into her work. At the Society of Illustrators, she talked about how she starts with a series of single images. “Sometimes the way into a book is just that--just a way to get started. Like you tend to have polite conversation and then you click,” she said, adding that you have to give yourself permission to make mistakes.

She talked about painting with a tiny brush. It made me look anew at the spread of the yellow sky with its hundreds of dandelion seeds, and the winter scene veiled by snowflakes (“Of course each one had to be unique,” Frazee said with a laugh). Cecilia Yung, art director at Penguin Books for Young Readers, who helped organize the presentation, made this wonderful observation: “The starring character is the sky.” Going back through Stars after that, I thought about the sky’s many moods, and how it envelops the stars in all its incarnations—as celestial body, as the blossom shape that precedes the pumpkin, and as the shiny kind a child keeps in his pocket or gives to a friend to lift her spirits. And that fireworks finale merges the human- and nature-made creative forces into one. Brava!