TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121189/12118900.066

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 7.2 KB | 141 lines

                                                                                BOOKS, Page 100

Of Cats, Myths and Pizza


Vivid volumes celebrate children's imagination

By Stefan Kanfer


    Susan Sontag once defined books as "funny little portable
pieces of thought." It is an apt description of this year's
outstanding works for children. All twelve selected are
thoughtful, small and funny in both senses of the word: odd and
risible.

    One winter morning, Will's mother and father inform him
that his favorite fauna, the woolly mammoth, is extinct. But the
boy knows better. Squinting his eyes, he manages to conjure up
the prehistoric past, complete with saber-toothed tigers, early
versions of horses, warthogs and, of course, the elephant's
tusky ancestor. In Will's Mammoth (Putnam; $14.95), Stephen
Gammell augments Rafe Martin's whimsical text with celebrations
of early mammals, snow and that greatest of all time machines,
a child's imagination.

    Behemoths are not an exclusive of the dinosaur era. Some of
them can still be spotted spouting in the oceans of the world.
Seymour Simon's nonfiction Whales (Crowell; $14.95) follows
their astonishing life cycle as the babies drink 100 gal. of
milk a day, breathe through a hole in the top of their heads,
learn to dive a mile deep, and eventually become so immense that
their tongues can weigh as much as a full-grown elephant. The
leviathans seem fantastic, but 20 detailed photographs of the
endangered species show that big is beautiful -- and actual.

    Scaly, furry and feathered creatures speak for themselves
in Turtle in July (Macmillan; $13.95). Marilyn Singer's
liberated verses suggest bodily rhythms (Deer Mouse: "get enough
to last/ get enough to store/ get more"; Beavers: "You guard/
I pack/ I dig/ You stack"; Dragonfly: "Look/ skim/ there/ snap/
eat/ Repeat"). Meanwhile, Jerry Pinkney's watercolors furnish
the shades and tints of four seasons and 15 highly articulate
animals.

    By contrast, The Heartaches of a French Cat (Godine;
$14.95) features a mute cast of felines. Author and illustrator
Barbara McClintock places her 19th century tale onstage, where
everything is expressed through the dramatic pose and the
pregnant paws. Minette is pursued by the rakish Count Bisquet
and the worthy Lionel. In the end she spurns them both to write
her scandalous memoir, which becomes an overnight success. If
there is any justice, so will this comic biography.

    Nancy Ekholm Burkert's luminous accompaniments to the
stories of Hans Christian Andersen and Edward Lear are classics
of the genre. The French legend of Valentine & Orson (Farrar,
Straus & Giroux; $16.95) further enhances her reputation. Twins
are separated at birth; one is raised by a king in a court, the
other by a bear in a forest. The boys meet as antagonists, but
after a series of picaresque adventures, become reunited and
rewarded. This too is staged as a drama, enacted by rhyming
players who evoke the best of Ingmar Bergman, Walt Disney and
the artist-adapter herself.

    An older story enlivens Theseus and the Minotaur (McElderry
Books; $13.95). In Crete, seven men and seven maidens were
regularly sacrificed to a monster who was half man, half bull.
Young Theseus refused to go along with tradition and tracked
the dreaded Minotaur to the center of his labyrinth, with
results that have been chronicled for two millenniums. In this
latest retelling, Warwick Hutton finds a dual use for his pen:
to provide a lucid translation, and to produce a series of
colorful and poignant sketches. They underline Joseph Campbell's
characterization of the Greek myth as a fusion of "innocence and
majesty."

    Not all myths are ancient. Only a few decades ago, Mrs.
Pelligrino left Italy to visit friends in New York City. There
she plunged into depression. No one had heard of her favorite
food, a dish made of dough, tomatoes, cheese, garlic and pepper.
In an attempt to please her, some sympathetic children gathered
the ingredients, lighted the oven . . . and that was How Pizza
Came to Queens (Potter; $13.95). Dayal Kaur Khalsa serves a
slice of history with exactly the right blend of drawings, text,
spice and whimsy.

    Food is also the centerpiece of Olson's Meat Pies (R&S;
$12.95). A bookkeeper absconds with a baker's savings. In order
to stay in business, the impoverished Olson compromises his
product. First he includes an assortment of leftovers, then
pieces of laundry and, finally, a series of outlandish premiums.
Disaster beckons until the bookkeeper contritely reappears, loot
in hand. Good taste returns, and so do the customers. But
everyone remains nostalgic for the exotic days when watches and
earrings and little windup monkeys appeared in the pies. This
is the child's version of a screwball comedy, with script by
Peter Cohen and special effects by Olof Landstrom.

    Because of a typographical error, says Jack Prelutsky, the
Poems of A. Nonny Mouse (Knopf; $12.95) have been mistakenly
attributed to "Anonymous." To correct this misfortune, he
anthologizes some 70 of her immortal rhymes, including "Algy
met a bear,/ A bear met Algy,/ The bear was bulgy,/ The bulge
was Algy"; "Way down South,/ Where bananas grow,/ A grasshopper
stepped on an elephant's toe./ The elephant said with tears in
his eyes,/ `Pick on somebody your own size'"; and "The firefly
is a funny bug,/ He hasn't any mind./ He blunders all the way
through life/ With his headlight on behind." Henrik Drescher's
loony drawings validate Prelutsky's conclusion: Ms. "Mouse was
. . . more clever than one might expect from a creature with no
chin, sparse fur, and a long thin tail."

    "Ladybugs strut and toads sashay,/ moths and mantises wing
their way,/ snap-turtles swing and grasshoppers sway." The
Bug-a-Wug Cricket Band is in town, and the six-legged sidemen
are setting the summer night afire, particularly banjoist
Nicholas Cricket (Harper & Row; $12.89). Joyce Maxner's lilting
text is full of mood music, and William Joyce amplifies it with
paintings that seem to vibrate with the irresistible beat of
bluegrass.

    The unanswerable questions of children are treated with
dignity and humor in Does God Have a Big Toe? (Harper & Row;
$14.95). Marc Gellman, a rabbi, patiently retells Bible stories
from a youthful view: Noah said to his friend, "You know, Jabal,
this might be a very good time for you to take those swimming
lessons you have been talking about for so long." Adam and his
wife, Moses and his tablets, Joseph and his coat -- all are here
with their moral testaments, made even easier to apprehend with
Oscar de Mejo's eloquent landscapes of Eden and afterward.

    In this abbreviated version, A Christmas Carol (Viking
Penguin; $14.95) is presented as "A Changing Picture and
Lift-the-Flap Book." Thanks to Kareen Taylerson's ingenious
designs, young readers can move a lever and create a banquet,
make Jacob Marley materialize out of the air and, finally,
reprieve Ebenezer Scrooge. But Charles Dickens' famous ending
is unillustrated -- and rightly so. Its wish is worth a thousand
pictures: "It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep
Christmas well. May that be said of all of us!"