Tomfoolery!

Sometimes you just know a book is your heart’s friend, before it’s more than a work in progress. Then– then you have to wait. Wait until you can hold it in your hands.

You may, possibly, end up sending messages to the illustrator every once in a while, exclaiming with joy and excitement over the beautiful samples of the art she’s posted and raving about the energetic lines and ceaseless energy on the page.

Sorry, Barbara. I may have gotten a little carried away.

When I did, actually, hold the review copy I was sent in my hands, I actually teared up from sheer happiness at having it, and with gratitude for being in a place where people actually send me books to look at.

I think that’s relevant to this book. Once upon a time, books for children to enjoy didn’t exist. Then came the story told in Balderdash!, also by Michelle Markel, with art by Nancy Carpenter. But it took still longer for books for children to be taken seriously by many, as literature and art (thank you, Caldecott), and it’s still a struggle. But here, in Tomfoolery!, by Michelle Markel and Barbara McClintock, the story of how picture books with vivid art, for delight and inspiration, started to jump off the pages and sweep us away.

How often do you read a picture book where something doesn’t quite click– a line of poetry doesn’t scan, a character does something out of character, a page turn feels abrupt or too slow, and when you mention it to another adult, they shrug and say, “I mean, you can get away with that in a book for kids,” and then you pick up the Norton Anthology of Important Literature that Leaves Out Sendak and smack them over the head with it? Perhaps that last bit is my fantasy but the number of times I’ve more or less been told to get over myself, it’s just books for kids and kids don’t know better–

When you think about it, I’m actually a very saint for patience; I haven’t once concussed anyone with a pretentious tome.

I’ve got my soapbox right here, so I’m going to climb it and say this loudly and clearly:

Children are whole human beings, just in a smaller size, and they have taste and will voice it.

They’re people and people like all kinds of books, of varying quality. And, in my not inconsiderable experience, the ones kids really go for, interact with, and, most importantly, return to and ask for repeatedly are books that take them seriously. Populate their rooms with excellent books, and you’ll both be happy; that mutual enjoyment is what encourages a love of books as books for years to come.

I feel particularly good, finally posting this review on the Spriggan’s third birthday, because I feel like he walked right out of one of the pages of this energetic, vivid, and vigorous book. This book is a testament to the joy and power of romping right by those who look down on children, and oh isn’t it good to leave those patronizing adults behind?– those who might, like Randolph Caldecott’s father, want to push children from fantasyland to working in a sensible bank when they grow up, get them to graduate from mere picture books to the next thing.

No! We know better, Michelle Markel, Barbara McClintock, Maurice Sendak, Randolph Caldecott– and you, my reader, and I, too. There is no graduating from a truly worthwhile picture book, from one worthy of the Caldecott Medal, named for Randolph Caldecott, whose story is so beautifully rendered, as much in art and design as in words, in this book.

Have you ever doodled in the margins? I did, scraps of dialogue and little scrolls based on manuscript illuminations. I bet you anything Barbara McClintock was (and is) a doodler, and I’m not sure whether Michelle Markel was an art doodler, but who wants to bet she was a word doodler? The page of Caldecott doodling donkey heads on bank stationery made me laugh– as I saw them leaping off the page, and young Caldecott tipping his hat and, quite literally, walking off the right side of the spread, then leaping over the page turn into London with his portfolio under his arm. There, in London, I spotted exactly where my Spriggan would be, watching the fiddler in the street as Caldecott strides into view… until, on the next page, I saw myself in Caldecott, huddled quiet in a chair, missing the countryside and wanting to be better at his craft.

This is the energy of the book. It holds us all, holds multitudes, high and low energy, with ceaseless motion of mind and body, for even as the restless Caldecott lies exhausted in bed, his pencil and pen record the energy of his mind and imagination.

This book is a gift, especially at this time in the picture book world. Today, I feel a caution in the world of picture books; not to offend, not to overstep, not to go too far, and absolutely never should one produce anything that isn’t “age appropriate.” (I still don’t know what’s age appropriate; please don’t tell on me.) Randolph Caldecott feels breathless, incautious, and frenetic. And there, on one spread, we see the range of what he has given us– the left asks us: “Randolph Caldecott– WHAT HAS HE DONE?” while the right side tells us of the joy and worlds he has given children through his characters, while below the words we see the Caldecott Winners of the future (and how I loved to see Sendak and Pinkney of blessed memory alongside Sophie Blackall).

(Let me have an aside on Jerry Pinkney, I know both author and illustrator won’t mind a bit: have you read Just Jerry? You must, I promise you. Oh it gave me all the feelings in the world. Seeing that picture of him with his lion and mouse, so daring and so vivid, just as Caldecott would have loved, gave me a warm glow.)

Above those Caldecott winners I see the wind blowing and birds flying, and I can only hope the winds are carrying the caution of these times, rambunctiously thrown aside by artists today, and letting more experiments fly with the birds. Randolph Caldecott paved the way, as Michelle Markel and Barbara McClintock so ably demonstrate here, to giving children art as deft and brilliant as any in galleries– literature that blends art and texts and creates new worlds. This book is not just an ode to a great figure, but a testament to the fact that you neither can nor should “get away with it in a book for kids.” Kids are people, whole people, and merit the very best, as do those reading with them. This book is the very best, and its creators did full justice to the glorious history of the picture book.