A Book by Mordicai Gerstein! - review

A Book by Mordicai Gerstein!

Check this cover. You know what this cover says to me, with its large generic title on a plain blue ground, with little storybook characters running pell-mell across it? It says, "NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!" It says we are leaving flatland, we are entering meta territory, we are going to be bombarded with slapstick and in-jokes and Mordicai Gerstein had just WAAAY too much fun making this book. Dude, it's like MAD Magazine up in there. Kids are gonna love it.

Chaver Gerstein starts the book by introducing the reader to the family that lives in the book: a mom, a dad, two kids and some pets. He explains that when the book is closed, it is night, and the family sleeps. But when we open the book to read it, the family wakes up, yawns, stretches, eats breakfast, and then each person goes off to live his or her story. Dad's a circus clown, Mom's a firefighter, Brother grows up to be an astronaut, and even the pets have plans for the day. But sister has no story, and goes off to look for one.

Spectacularly, all the illustrations are drawn from the reader's perspective - that is, we are looking down on the family around the breakfast table, which exists in a featureless ivory space, lit from a source somewhere over the reader's right shoulder. As if we are sitting at a drawing table. This effect is unbelievably cool when Mother Goose, whom the little girl has run into on her search for a story, explains the existence of Readers. "Look up," she says, and the kid's face turns up toward us with an expression of alarm. It's a terrific little mirror moment, and reminds the reader that he or she is a participant in the story, too.

The little girl samples all kinds of stories - fairy tales, mysteries, historical fiction ("too much work," she decides, and I agree), etc. before announcing to her family that her story is that of a "young girl who doesn't know what her story is, and so she writes her own story."

You can get pretty deep with this - the story is the search, and she creates her story by taking control of it... or rather, she takes control of her story by creating it. Mumblety humblety give it to the reading specialist at your school and she will sniffle at its power. But the rest of us will be giggling at the silly pirates and ducking as the comet goes whizzing by.

The detail and the color palette made me think of The Yellow Balloon. The action is as loose-limbed as Steve Kellogg. But the concept and perspective are pure Mordicai Gerstein. Highly recommended.

Comments

[AZ]

LOVE this book! One of the best of the year.