Mr. Wuffles! By David
Wiesner. Clarion. $17.99.
Raven and the Red Ball. By
Sarah Drummond. Pomegranate Kids. $9.95.
Calendar Mysteries: #9—September
Sneakers; #10—October Ogre. By Ron Roy. Random House. $4.99 each.
There is an old, much-used
but still fascinating plot in science fiction, and it revolves around size. What if first contact with aliens
has already happened, but we know nothing about it because our sizes are
different by orders of magnitude? What if our entire universe is merely a speck
within a vastly larger, unimaginably huge universe? And so on. The idea
actually predates what we think of as science fiction: Jonathan Swift used it
brilliantly in Gulliver’s Travels,
and there is a wonderful Edgar Allan Poe story called The Sphinx in which a trick of perspective leads the narrator to
believe he is seeing a gigantic monster in the distance when what he is really
observing is an insect very close to his eyeball. So there is nothing
particularly new about the underlying plot of David Wiesner’s Mr. Wuffles! But the book is so
well-done that it is a genuine pleasure from start to finish. “Well-done” in
this case means “well-paced,” “well-plotted” and “well-drawn,” but not
“well-written,” because one distinctive element here is that the book is almost
entirely a pantomime – except in “framing” panels at the start, finish and
middle. Mr. Wuffles is a cat, and like many cats, is standoffish when the human
of the house tries to get him to play with toys – since what he is offered is
not the right toy. What is the right one? There is definite
potential in a little something sitting next to a rubber-band ball and shaped
pretty much like it, but not quite. The “not quite” refers to a flat ring
around the middle of the “ball,” which in fact is nothing more or less than a
spaceship. Now this is worth playing
with, and Mr. Wuffles does so with typical feline abandon – causing substantial
upset, physical and emotional, to the tiny, vaguely insect-like creatures that
have just finished celebrating what appears to have been a successful
interstellar journey. Neither the aliens nor Mr. Wuffles can speak in words we
humans would recognize – the aliens certainly talk, using a mixture of
geometric symbols, but it is their body language and facial expressions that
communicate what they feel as Mr. Wuffles unintentionally puts them at risk of
their lives. Well, clearly the aliens have to do something, and being
intelligent (obviously!), they do. What they do is get out of their craft into
a small, out-of-the-way space in the room, where they discover an entire Earth-insect
civilization with which they turn out to have a great deal in common. Soon
Earth insects and interstellar insectoids are communicating quite well, watched
by a staring cat that cannot quite get to them in their protected space; and
eventually there is a dramatic escape that, even though it is handled with
humor, will have readers (or viewers) wondering….could this happen? Well, why not? Perhaps the Earth insects are
shown to have more intelligence than they really do – or than we know they really do – but who is to say
what aliens might really look like and what creatures on our planet they might
have an affinity with? Mr. Wuffles!
is more than amusing and interestingly drawn – it is foundationally
fascinating, raising some genuinely thoughtful questions that kids and parents
alike may want to consider, if not the first time they go through the book then
the second, third or fourth.
The pantomime format can be
a highly attractive way to tell stories, provided that the author/artist comes
to it with care and sensitivity. Sarah Drummond brings both to Raven and the Red Ball, which has no
words at all – just a series of striking black-and-white woodcut-like illustrations
of a raven and a dog, plus a red circle (the ball) that briefly unites the two
animals. Perspective is put to particularly good use here, starting as we look
down over Raven’s wing to the dog far below; continuing as bird and dog begin
to interact after the red ball draws Raven’s eye (a circumstance that Drummond
shows by cleverly having the ball become
Raven’s eye); and continuing further in a series of chase scenes in which Raven
consistently escapes, eventually leaving the dog exhausted – at which point
Raven drops the ball right on his head. The result: a happy dog that has the
ball again, and Raven flying high once more. Raven is a trickster god in Native
American mythology, and Drummond seems to draw on that in showing Raven’s
behavior here, but the main point of this short and attractive book is simply
to take young readers on a journey of high spirits and exuberance, without a
single word written or needed. And Drummond’s art is attractive and detailed
enough to bring kids back to the book several times.
The slight Calendar Mysteries stories are unlikely
to provoke repeated readings, being too simple for most kids ages 6-9 to enjoy
more than once. These (+++) books are
enjoyable one time, though, and they are certainly easy to read. September Sneakers involves green
sneakers being left around the town of Green Lawn in exchange for various
things that go missing – such as a hamster, a flower and a doormat. The kids
are sure their teacher – with the exceptionally obvious name of Ms. Tery – has
something to do with the happenings, and that turns out to be true, in a manner
of speaking, as Bradley, Brian, Lucy and Nate go through their usual tracking
down of clues and following of leads until everything falls into place. Each of
these books is tied in some way to the month of its title, September being the
first full month of school; so of course October
Ogre is tied to Halloween. In this one there is – what else? – a haunted
house in the town. It is actually a hotel transformed for the holiday, complete
with ogre out front. But something is wrong: the kids who go inside don’t seem
to be coming out. And so the mystery solvers get involved with fog effects,
plastic spiders, a severed head that is actually a scary face painted on a
volleyball, and so forth. They even stumble on a recipe for “witchy stew” that
requires using three small children. And then, even the local policeman
disappears! Of course there turns out to be a perfectly logical, non-magical
explanation for everything, but this book is a touch more mysterious than most
in Ron Roy’s series, and so kids will get a touch more enjoyment out of it, especially
if they read it around the time of Halloween. It is still not the sort of book
to which readers will return time and time again, but at least it is fun while
it lasts.
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