Night Out. By Daniel Miyares. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99.
It is almost impossible to overestimate
the influence that Maurice Sendak’s Where
the Wild Things Are has had in the more than half century since it was
published in 1963. Again and again, other authors of children’s books – and
some authors of adult books, too – have used Sendak’s dream-fantasy of an
overly rambunctious young boy who becomes king of huge, toothy but distinctly
unthreatening monsters as a jumping-off point for imaginary journeys of their
own. When an author does this with care and sensitivity, as Daniel Miyares does
in Night Out, the result can be as
delightful and striking in its own way as Sendak’s original book was in its
time – if perhaps not quite as groundbreaking.
The framing story for Night Out actually occurs outside the pages of the story proper – a
very neat touch. What happens is shown on the inside front cover pages and the
inside back ones: the front ones show empty chairs at a communal meal table,
and the back ones show the chairs occupied by young boys, only one of whom has
a visible face; he sits in the middle of the group, looking out from the
picture. The two-page illustration just after the title page fills in a bit
more of the story – still without a single word. The empty chairs from the
inside front cover pages are now occupied, but the boy who is face-forward at
the book’s very end is seen here sitting very far from everyone else, eating
all by himself, his expression downcast.
How do we get from the glum front-of-book
scenes to the upbeat back-of-book one? That is where the Sendak influence comes
in. Using spare text and delightfully surreal drawings, Miyares shows the boy, tired
but still awake in his bed at the end of a row of beds in which the other boys
are all sleeping. He looks slightly disconsolate, and the two words on the
page, “All alone,” immediately capture his feeling. But he is not quite alone, since there is a fishbowl
on a chair next to his bed, and a small turtle is just finding a way to climb
out of it. And suddenly, looking at the bowl, the boy sees an envelope resting
next to it. “An invitation?” asks Miyares’ text. Oh, yes – “the honor of your
presence is requested.” That is all the card in the envelope says, but it is
enough to get the boy out of bed as the full moon shines brightly outside his
window. Soon he himself goes out the window, and “a journey begins” as the boy rides
his bike – from what is apparently a boarding school, through the woods, to a
very deep ravine above which a small footbridge stretches. Then it is over the
bridge and to the edge of a body of water in which “a friend,” his turtle,
swims toward him. But this is his turtle made gigantic, coming to shore only
long enough for the boy to climb on his back for a journey to a cave where a
chair looking exactly like the one by the boy’s bed and the ones by the dinner
table stands ready for the boy – offered to him by a motley collection of
animals: full-size bear, oversize owl, really big bunny, and a goose and a fox,
all welcoming the boy to a tea party that is less Sendak than it is Lewis
Carroll.
After tea, sandwiches, cookies and cake, it
is time for “a song,” with the boy dancing as the animals play instruments – fox
on banjo, owl on flute, bear on washboard, rabbit on harmonica, and goose on
tambourine, as the giant turtle claps along. And then it is time for a ride
back to shore, back to the bike, back to the boarding school, with the boy
sleepily climbing in through the window as the now-small-again turtle climbs
back into his fishbowl. And then? Well, then
it is time for “a story to share,” which the boy does as five other boys listen
attentively, apparently enthralled. And that
explains why, at the book’s very end, the formerly lonely boy is eating right
in the middle of the group, now sporting a satisfied smile. Sweetly offering
its message of inclusion, Night Out
is a delightful bedtime story for ages 4-8 as well as a lovely tribute to the
thoughts and sensibilities of Sendak’s justly famous, somewhat wilder and more
boisterous story of more than five decades ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment