Liberating Youthful Spirits
By Stefan Kanfer
When he was asked about his audience, C.S. Lewis, author of the classic Narnia tales, refused to comment on the "difficult relations between child and parent or child and teacher." An author, he thought, "as a mere author, is outside all that. He is not even an uncle. He is a freeman, like the postman, the butcher, and the dog next door." This year, eleven outstanding books seem to have been composed by liberated spirits, outside the family but intensely interested in it. If the dog next door met any one of them, it would surely set its tail in wildly enthusiastic motion.
The days of the young are numbered, usually with boring arithmetic drills. Bert Kitchen enlivens those routines by granting the digits wit and style. From one to ten, and then in larger leaps, Animal Numbers (Dial; $11.95) presents fauna with their offspring: a kangaroo and one joey, for example; a swan and two cygnets; a setter and ten puppies. A visit to this overflowing menagerie adds up to swift and painless math (and biology) lessons.
The Caslon Players are not actors; they are letters. The name of the troupe refers to their typography. As for the play, it consists of cavorting onstage in this year's most original alphabet book, The Z Was Zapped (Houghton Mifflin; $15.95). Chris Van Allsburg's narrative grants each performer an alliterative role: the D was nearly Drowned, the I was nicely Iced, the Y was Yanked away. His mastery of pencil and graphite dust humanizes the characters and lends them an air of drama, as if they were about to receive major parts in the theater of words, paragraphs and books.
Once numbers and letters lead lives of their own, colors cannot be far behind. And, indeed, they provide the supporting company of Peter Sis' Rainbow Rhino (Knopf; $11.95). Birds of primary hue -- red, yellow and blue -- lure their behemoth friend through poppy fields and banana groves searching for tranquillity. It will surprise no one that they find it back in their own back veld. Happily, the simpleminded text is augmented with whimsical drawings that show a mature eye and a youthful awe.
The jungle also occupies William Steig, who, at 80, has found the source of eternal juvenilia. The proof is in his 21st children's book, The Zabajaba Jungle (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $13.95). The author-illustrator enters the imagination of Leonard, a small rover who cuts his way through underbrush populated with beaky toucans and blue-bottomed mandrills. After a series of hilarious escapades, the boy encounters the most unexpected creatures of all: his mother and father. They look relieved to see him, and why not? What are young explorers for except to rescue grownups?
Animals dominate the fantasies of children, but no one is sure what occupies the minds of animals. Tejima, a Japanese artist, offers one surmise in Fox's Dream (Philomel; $13.95). The furry protagonist is pictured in stark, evocative woodcuts as he prowls through wintry forests. His dream reveals that warm-blooded creatures differ more in style than substance. Like any sensible human, the quick brown fox longs for sunshine, warm days and someone to play with.
Dayal Kaur Khalsa introduces a more familiar animal in I Want a Dog (Potter; $10.95). An eager young girl named May has only one wish, a canine of her own. "When you're older," replies an elder, and the highly colored tale begins. May carries a slice of salami, and gets trailed by ten potential pets who just happen to follow her home. The answer is no. Desperately, she goes everywhere with a roller skate on a leash, to prove that she is capable of caring for something besides herself. Along the way, she learns a double moral: the value of patience and of parents. Aesop never said it better.
Another domestic mammal has the lead in Michael Patrick Hearn's The Porcelain Cat (Little, Brown; $12.95). A medieval sorcerer wants to bring a feline statue to life. For that he needs an ingredient not sold in stores: basilisk blood. Out goes his assistant, a boy destined to encounter a witch and a centaur before he brings about the ironic ending. Hearn has obviously been spending time with the Greek myths, but his narrative is modernized with paintings by Leo and Diane Dillon, who know a few enchantments of their own.
Mordicai Gerstein is even more exotic in The Mountains of Tibet (Harper & Row; $11.95). A woodcutter plans to travel the world, but he finds that he has grown old without ever leaving home. Yet when he dies, no tragedy attends his passing. A voice informs his spirit, "You may become part of the endless universe some call heaven, or you may live another life." He makes a delightful choice. Reincarnation would not seem a promising basis for a children's book, but Gerstein's fluid text and swirling, imaginative paintings are filled with light and reassurance. This is a work that will have many lives.
Fans of Poet Robert W. Service know that despite the title, The Cremation of Sam McGee (Greenwillow; $13) is comic art. Some 80 years after the poem was composed, Painter Ted Harrison has complemented the work with bold and antic landscapes of the Yukon in the days of the gold rush. McGee, frozen over, demands, "I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains." His listener agrees, only to find a surprise when he opens the furnace door. Sam is inside, burbling, "Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm." A one-joke poem; still, how many jokes -- or verses -- have lasted for almost a century?
Even Bugs Bunny has to hop aside when Brer Rabbit comes by. The big-eared varmint has been a folk hero since early slave days, and his sly outwitting of bullies and bosses is history disguised in fur and interpreted by the victims. Jump Again! (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; $14.95) demonstrates that a classic offers something fresh to each generation. This time it is Van Dyke Parks' riotous retelling and Barry Moser's elegant watercolors. Beneath the new surface, of course, the hero is instantly familiar, once again outmaneuvering Brer Fox, Weasel and Bear, winning the paw of Miss Molly and proving graphically that when trouble comes, "There's always a way, if not two."
Exurbanites, among others, know the only permanent thing is change. Alice and Martin Provensen serve a child-size portion of that wisdom in Shaker Lane (Viking; $14.95). Into the old Shaker country of abandoned farms come the first of the home builders. A sleepy village is born. In time it gives way to county developers. Where once there were bulls there are now bulldozers, and in their wake come tract housing, aboveground swimming pools and backyard basketball courts. One holdout remains, surviving on his houseboat, a poignant reminder of the rural past. The Provensens' flat, colorful paintings are nostalgic for the old times without putting down the present. They imply that however the land alters, one basic need endures: a good place for children to play, read and dream.