(++++) SMALL SUCCESSES

Mabel and the Mountain. By Kim Hillyard. Penguin Workshop. $14.99.

     A sweet, simple, silly little story with an uplifting moral and a distinctly peculiar central flaw (or at least oddity) that young children will notice immediately – but that will not reduce their enjoyment of the book – Mabel and the Mountain is, as the cover directly states, “A Story about Believing in Yourself.” That “yourself” of the title is Mabel, who is – a fly. This unlikely protagonist is, of course, a perfect surrogate for the very young children at whom the book is aimed: she is so small that pretty much anything she wants to do will seem large by comparison. So when she decides she wants to do big things, well, they are certain to seem to be very big things indeed.

     Kim Hillyard draws Mabel adorably and quite unrealistically: she is almost completely circular, with huge eyes and tiny wings. And of course she is packed with anthropomorphic thoughts and expressions. She has BIG PLANS, as Hillyard points out in underlined capital letters. Specifically, she intends to climb a mountain, host a dinner party, and make friends with a shark. Never mind that the second of those is modest compared to the first and third – there is a reason it is there, as Hillyard eventually shows. However, the book is almost entirely about the first of Mabel’s plans: climbing a mountain. “It is important to get started right away,” Mabel thinks, but first she has to confront the naysaying of her friends, who are equally round and equally big-eyed flies sporting a bandana in one case, a helmet in another, a handlebar mustache and bushy eyebrows in a third – in other words, thoroughly non-fly-like characters drawn very amusingly indeed.

     Mabel hears her friends’ warnings and concerns, but says she knows only to “listen to those who say YOU CAN” accomplish things. This is not entirely realistic – parents reading with young children may need to remind them that there’s nothing wrong with listening to cautionary words – but it fits the book’s approach well. So off goes Mabel to find an appropriate mountain to climb, rejecting a human’s long nose as too easy and a cherry-topped, Jello-like food concoction as too wobbly. She sets her sights on a real, honest-to-goodness, tremendously tall, snow-capped mountain, starts climbing, and soon discovers that “this is hard.” Furthermore, she is passed on her upward quest by faster and stronger climbers (including a mountain goat – well, duh) and considers altering her big-plans list to “climb a tree, eat dinner” and “make friends with a sheep.” But no! Mabel is determined, heeding her inner voice and singing words of encouragement to herself! And eventually, yes, she reaches the top of the mountain!

     Now at this point, any young children reading Mabel and the Mountain or having it read to them will ask, if they haven’t already done so, “But why couldn’t she just fly up the mountain?” That is a very good question indeed, and is the central difficulty with this otherwise charming book. A more-experienced author than Hillyard, who is a first-timer, would have anticipated the question and provided a simple in-book explanation, for instance by having Mabel say flying would be too easy and she is determined to use her teeny-tiny legs to climb. After all, she is a fly, and even the youngest children know that flies, umm, fly. Adults reading with kids should anticipate being asked about this no-flying approach and should come up with their own reason (attributed to Mabel, of course) for what Mabel does and does not do.

     Well, by the time Mabel comes back down the mountain – and she apparently does fly down, since the next page shows her flying to greet her now-admiring friends – all the former naysayers are complimenting her and discussing their own big plans, such as writing a book and building a robot. Mabel greets all of them at, of course, a dinner party – thereby fulfilling her second big-plans plan. And the book ends happily, with Mabel near the seashore, shark fins projecting from the water behind her, determined to start on her third big plan. Be careful, if reading with kids, not to suggest that this time she might be biting off more than she can chew. Or might be bitten and chewed herself. After all, the whole point of Mabel and the Mountain is “never say die.” Or “never say nay.”