The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming

We've been in hibernation. For a ridiculously long period of time.
NO MORE.Because I found a story about a potato pancake who couldn't
stop screaming. It was a red hardcover and it had gold foil - and I'm
a sucker for both. Bought it, of course.

The star of this picture book is the latke (a traditional potato pancake
made during Hannukah) and our hero is on the run. Unfortunately for the
latke, he bumps into Christmas icons like coloured flash-lights and candy
canes whose lack on knowledge on the Jewish holiday is appalling. He is
tremendously aggravated when he is insultingly called a "hash-brown", for
instance. Naturally,he screams his guts out.

In true Snicket fashion, a gingerbreadmanesque tale is given a wicked spin,
while also weaving in the history of Hannukah.

Ending's delicious, too.

FatCat Stars:5

Interval

I have been meaning to do this for a while now. Haven't got down to it
for no real reasons. This one's about Interval.

Interval's about a nameless boy with no head.(i.e it isn't drawn) How that happened is less profound than I would like to be; I drew the rest of him,eyes,nose and all, and found that I couldn't finish up the head in a way that satisfied me, so I said -
Hmmmmm.he doesn't need to have a head,does he?

S does the writing and she rocks,needless to say. Among other things, Interval is about the pains of keeping one's canvas shoes white, spinach more traumatized than it's eater, the grandparent who's 80 going on 5, the severe but kind P.T Sir, the girl next door you have a crush on before you know you do, and a mother who tells her son he doesn't have to like the birthday girl to eat her cake. (She knows he secretly likes her,though.)

It has hot punch dialogue and just enough parentheses.It's effortlessly moving and
funny,two things writing for the comic form should be,if it possibly can.

It's the last cookie you didn't know was there. Sometimes, I save it up for the end , and after everything else is done, work on it top speed. Other times, I do it slowly.Savouring every bit.

It makes me want to get better at everything.


N.

Just Peanuts

Yesterday, I was at N's place because I needed very badly to believe in the goodness of tragedy and what it does to the soul. There must be some point to why life gets progressively worse as we grow older. As we graduate from classrooms to cubicles, from one kind of box to another, from one kind of chair to another, from one kind of lunch box to another...there must be some reason to these boxes. These endless patterns that we weave out like lotus eaters, too drugged to stop, too supine to protest.

I promise to be less elegiac from this point.

So N suggested that I read Peanuts. And I did. I took the book home and I read strips from it till I fell asleep. Schulz has this immense ability to make you laugh while wincing. It is amazing that a lone, depressed man could sit day after day and work on these strips all by himself. It is amazing that he could draw as well as he could write. That Charlie Brown's talent for failure couldn't have been drawn in any other way. That tragedy should be so funny. I love Linus's tiny T-shirt with horizontal stripes. Lucy's lectures. The impossible loveliness of the little red-haired girl (a girl Schulz was in love with in real life). Snoopy's typewriter. It is incredible that a man of such genius should have been depressed. The book has little notes by Schulz...his inspirations for a particular strip, an anecdote. A sliver of memory. Remembered pain. Love.

Is Peanuts children's literature? The main characters are all children, but the issues he engages with are ones that are rarely found in children's literature. Though they are very much part of childhood, a phase in life when you are not allowed to make any decisions. It is only as one becomes an adult, a person who HAS to make decisions, that one realizes the beautiful gift of indecision that we were once blessed with.

You might not get everything about Peanuts as a child-reader. It's one of those rare pieces of literature that changes before your eyes every time you read it because you have changed. Every time you read it, you unravel a secret about yourself. A smile you never knew you had. If children's literature should have magic, what bigger magic than this? A strip that grows with you. Changes with you. Understands your pain. Owns your failures. Makes you laugh. Teaches you wisdom.

I don't know why the red-haired girl in Schulz's life refused him. In a way, she did great because Peanuts wouldn't be Peanuts if she hadn't. Thank god she was insane.

S

Goodies from the Book Fair!!!!!!

More Madelines:





And guess what??Now I have all of them!!!!HA!

Harry the Dirty Dog,



which I have been wanting for AGES.

And also, a Shel Silverstein :)

My copy of Night Noises And Other Mole and Troll Stories used to belong to Craig Yaroch, who has written his name in very fine blue print, on the inside page. I thought it appropriate to thank him for this piece of neatness. Thanks, Craig Yaroch!

In four little episodes with no apparent plot, few words and intricate black-and-white pencil sketches, the affection between the whimsical, impetuous Mole and the wide-eyed,dependable Troll is told in a refreshingly light-hearted way. This book doesn't stick its friendship badge out a mile. (Unlike those that feature bambi inspired, identical, retch yellow bunnies/bears/pigs with psychedelic pink noses, romping on simply too much countryside.) You know, the fun 'n' (not even 'and') frolic kind.

When Mole wishes on a clover, his practicality and fancifulness is tickling. "I wish I had someone to tell me, when my fur needs combing!" He tells Troll, who overwhelmed by his friend's exuberance, listens, keeping a safe distance. When Troll has a toothache, it takes Mole's ingenuity to invent an 'Old Mole Family Way' and Troll's trollness to have faith in it. And the selfishness, the indignance, the taking for granted also has its space here, which I like very much.

The Mole and Troll Adventures are now out-of-print so for all the picture book buffs reading this, if you happen to see them at a book sale, even if the cover has spotting or the binding is damaged, pick it up!

My second hand books man mailed and said they've got lots of Gallico - do I want?Yes, I want!!!!!

YAY!

N

Madeline's dearer to me because I almost didn't pick it up. If its droll verse doesn't get you, the illustrations will - which look like Bemelmann popped into an unruly art class in a school and smuggled some willing kids back into his studio. The unstudied roughness and criss-crossing of lines, the ease with which certain colours acquire more importance than others, the unfussy lines and scribbles that make everything from a ripple to a skyline dynamic, how perfectly natural it is that noses aren't drawn on the faces of Madeline and the other little girls! - I can't stop looking at the book.

One of my favourite images, one that recurs throughout the series, is that of Mrs. Clavel, the governess, rushing to the girls' bedroom because she's got that sneaky feeling that something isn't quite right.



It isn't just the inspired childlikeness that makes it lovable but Bemelmann's lively perspective, which has captured the urgency of this moment so wonderfully.Each time I look at this page, I just marvel at the way he makes one travel the length of the corridor Clavel is on.

FatCat Stars: For its blend of comedy and warmth and for all the sights of Paris that fill the pages. (The landmarks are listed at the back too!)

N

Where the Wild Things Are is for every child and every adult who remembers being the kind of child who bit someone not-so lovingly and with a grin that wasn't worshipped.

Sendak's easy and loving treatment of the dark side of children aside, few other picture books so effortlessly unlock for its readers, their memory keys: it is impossible to read this book without remembering being mutinous. Fights with family, the comfort of rebellion, usually realized underneath beds, hatching plots featuring oneself in outlandish places, with or without SFX. Losing track of time as tables turned upside down became ships and bedsheets were employed in a manner one imagined was grand and it stopped mattering what a pirate really looked like because you had more important things to do: such as being the first to set down the rules. Rules with the illusion of complexity so that everyone could argue over it later, and some smartypants could say, "Look, technically, I am not out because..." Followed by much joyful bickering.

And then, there were the games we invented and played alone to amuse ourselves, the ones that were kaleidoscopes on a long, hot afternoon.

FatCat Stars:

For Max, the hero: what a gleeful, wicked, authoritative, endearing child.

For its artwork: capturing through apertures, large and small, these wild things.

N