Bluebird. By Bob Staake.
Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.
A short, wordless,
beautifully presented, bittersweet tale, Bob Staake’s Bluebird tackles some big issues in a wonderfully sensitive way –
despite one glaring oversight that kids who become emotionally involved in the
highly affecting story are likely to notice. The book, created primarily in
shades of grey, features round-headed, stylized children portrayed in a style
that is quite recognizably Staake’s. One child in particular draws Staake’s and
the reader’s attention: he is lonely, isolated, walking with his eyes cast down
and excluded from the happy games of the other kids. There is no way to know
why; this is just the way things are – and a way that many sensitive children
feel. The boy is laughed at in school and clearly isolated and bullied, for
whatever reason or for no reason at all.
The urban landscape of the
story is almost all right angles, as if accentuating the unforgiving nature of
the world around this lonely boy. But a spark of color appears in the form of
the bluebird of the title, colored a very rich blue indeed and trailing a
lighter blue streak while flying here and there. Soon boy and bird are
interacting, not unrealistically but in a way that could really happen, with
the boy coming close to the bird but not too
close, feeding it some cookie crumbs, smiling and laughing and enjoying its
presence even as he finds himself isolated from yet another group of kids
playing soccer on the street. At that point, things become less realistic but
more heartwarming, as the bluebird seems to realize what is going on and
actually flies to the boy and perches on his shoulder. The two go to the park –
a stylized Central Park, in New York City – and have a lovely time playing with
a small boat on a lake; the boy even makes a couple of sort-of-friends there.
But then boy and bird
encounter three bullies, and what the nasty kids do even horrifies those boys
themselves – leading to a tragic outcome that moves the story all the way into
fairy-tale territory, as the boy is suddenly surrounded by many brightly colored birds, none of them blue, and the birds carry
him skyward to a genuinely moving conclusion that will resonate with kids and
adults long after they finish paging through the book.
This is beautiful work on
almost all levels, both as storytelling and as art; and it is a very moving
tale indeed. But it does have what might be called a Wizard of Oz fallacy. In the movie version of that story, which
also contrasts grey (actually sepia) with bright color, Dorothy overcomes all
obstacles and disposes of the Wicked Witch of the West, returning happily to
her home at last – but the movie never resolves the incident that propelled
Dorothy to Oz in the first place: the viciousness of nasty neighbor and
landowner Almira Gulch, who becomes
the witch in Oz. Miss Gulch has arranged for Toto to be destroyed, remember? So
what is going to happen to Toto and Dorothy after the movie’s happy ending?
There is no way to know – just as there is no way to know what will happen next
to Staake’s sad, bullied little boy when he no longer has the bluebird around
to cheer him up and help him connect with a more-pleasant, less-grey world. We
can hope for the best for him, as we do for Dorothy and Toto, but it is just
that: a hope, scarcely a certainty. And yes, kids will notice, as generations
of them have noticed the narrative flaw (or omission, if you prefer) in the
famous 1939 film.
Still, Bluebird is so beautifully drawn and so lovingly told that the book
will linger in family members’ thoughts far longer than more-elaborate books
usually do. This bird is scarcely the proverbial bluebird of happiness – there
is too much grey in Staake’s world for anything so simplistic, and in this way
Staake’s New York parallels L. Frank Baum’s original vision of Kansas as well
as the one transferred to the movie screen. But what Staake does offer is a bluebird
of possibility, and in the real world, that is about the most that any child,
or adult, can hope to find.
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