(++++) THE BEAUTY OF SIMPLICITY, THE SIMPLICITY OF BEAUTY

I’d Like to Be the Window for a Wise Old Dog. By Philip Stead. Doubleday. $18.99.

     This book may be written for children, but oh my, do families, all members included, need it now. It is a very simple, old-fashioned, oversize picture book, officially aimed at kids ages 3-7, featuring repetitive, easy-to-read text and beautiful colored-print illustrations that exist on the line between realism and interpretation: characters and objects have just slightly more personality in Philip Stead’s pictures than they do in real life, or Stead has perhaps simply noticed personality elements that most humans miss.

     Wise old dogs, however, miss nothing, or very little, as they gaze out windows at the possible and impossible alike. Windows became a barrier to closeness when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, separating those on each side of them in often-heartbreaking ways – all those photos and videos of older people who could only interact with young ones through the glass! And windows’ protective function quickly became onerous because of shutdowns, shut-ins and the other depredations of the pandemic. Windows let in light, but for weeks, months, even years, they came to be barriers as strong and often as unwanted as the bars of prison cells.

     Stead restores the wonder of windows, and does so with a kind of gentle humor and sense of absurdity that will attract young readers and pre-readers to this book repeatedly, and really ought to attract adults as well. The first, wordless page shows the dog gazing out a large window on a rainy day, seeing a bright red bird in the leafy tree outside. Nothing unusual there, and nothing too out-of-the-ordinary in the book’s first words, in which the narrator imagines being “the raindrop falling on a turtle shell” and “the puddle for a big bullfrog.” Those images follow naturally from the rainy day seen at the book’s start, and the turtle and frog seem alert and delighted by their environment and altogether at home in it.

     The narrator’s meandering thoughts soon turn less realistic, though, with a wish to be “the welcoming umbrella of an elephant” – and there is a very real-looking elephant holding a very real-looking umbrella in its very real-looking trunk, the totality being something very much outside any sort of normal real world. Then Stead returns to the window, which now shows a rainbow, and to the wise old dog napping in front of the glass; and the narration gently wanders into amusement and oddity. For example, Stead shows a penguin, a bird known to waddle, but asks, “Will I ever be the waddle of a snail?” And sure enough, there is a snail being watched by the penguin. And then there is a bee alighting on a flower, and the question is, “Will I ever be the bumble – of a whale?” (The whale is on the next page, sized to fit neatly among the flowers that the bee is visiting.)

     The wandering, wondering text goes on like this, connected with the illustrations in captivating ways. Sometimes Stead seems simply to like the sounds of words: “I’d like to be the hollow of an owl’s oak tree.” Sometimes he shows animals together and writes of a wondering between them: “Will I never be the feather of a walrus?” (The walrus is wearing a rainbow-colored stocking cap, and a wren perched on its tail sports a matching scarf.) And eventually, a mouse that has appeared several times is shown in thoroughly imaginary guise, sporting white wings and carrying an acorn aloft as a nearby cat goes by. By the book’s end, the wise old dog, gazing through the window at the reality of a leafy tree, is said to “wonder happily about everything she’s never been and ever been,” and all the other creatures adorn the final pages; and thus Stead has waved his magic wand and restored those much-maligned windows to portals that reveal beauty, hope, warmth and above all, possibility. This is certainly a book written and illustrated at the level of young children, but it is adults, who for too long in recent times have seen through a glass, darkly, for whom it will likely have the greatest meaning – if they open their eyes and hearts to hear the final words, “joyful and free.”