(++++) MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSES

Ten Little Rabbits. By Maurice Sendak. Harper. $19.99.

Amazing Grapes. By Jules Feiffer. Michael di Capua/HarperCollins. $21.99.

     Some artists manage to do the impossible. For example, Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) was so amazingly prolific that he has produced three books since his death. And they are all wonderful, no more so than the latest of them, Ten Little Rabbits. Few children’s-book creators, living or dead, are as masterful at their craft as Sendak was (or is) at his. Like My Brother's Book (2013) and Presto and Zesto in Limboland (2018), Ten Little Rabbits has appeared courtesy of The Maurice Sendak Foundation – but unlike the two earlier posthumous works, this one has a certain direct connection to Sendak from his days among the living. In 1970, Sendak created the work as a pamphlet for a fundraiser for Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum, after originally thinking about making it a pocket-sized book but then rejecting it in that form. This bit of history is, however, thoroughly irrelevant to enjoyment of Ten Little Rabbits in its brand-new, suitably elegant hardcover version, because the book in any form is pure Sendak and purely wonderful. It is a traditional counting book in the sense that young readers get to count up from one to 10, then back down from 10 to one (actually to zero in this case). It is also traditional in the near-complete absence of words – there is little here except numbers, plus the letter M on the pedestal atop which the boy magician (said to be named Mino, although the name does not appear in the book itself) has placed the traditional magician’s top hat with the intention of bringing forth bunnies from it. Mino is pretty good at this, but the bunnies are a bit less than cooperative. As they mount in number, Mino becomes increasingly exasperated – and the fun of the book lies in his changing expressions as he moves from pride and enjoyment and self-possession (even yawning as he brings out #4, as if this is the easiest thing in the world to do) to increasing irritation and annoyance as the bunny pile grows and more and more of them climb onto him, to such a point that by #10 he can barely be seen. Clearly something must be done, and clearly Mino knows what to do: one by one, he makes the rabbits vanish, first with an exasperated expression, then (at #5) looking much more relaxed, and then smiling and even dancing as the last few disappear one at a time. A tip of the top hat, a bow, the words “All done,” and the magic show is indeed all done as Mino proudly walks off the page – with his every expression, every pose, every attitude perfectly reflective of Sendak’s instantly recognizable drawing style and his ability to communicate a great deal on a purely pictorial basis. Whether today’s kids are just meeting Sendak or have been introduced to him already (likely by parents enamored of Where the Wild Things Are), they will find Ten Little Rabbits a picture-perfect opportunity to enjoy the picturesque (and sometimes a touch picaresque) world of Sendak and his art.

     Jules Feiffer (born 1929) is at least as much an institution in his own right as Sendak was (and is) in his. But the gentle amusements of Sendak are very far indeed from the satirical barbs of Feiffer, and the communicative art through which Sendak tells stories is nothing like the complex, extremely text-heavy method – with its own instantly recognizable art – that Feiffer employs in Amazing Grapes. From its punning title to the reappearing song based on that title to the song’s and book’s final line of “ ’Twas grapes that set me free,” this is a kind of interdimensional multidimensional Timothy-Leary-on-LSD graphic novel that either has no point whatsoever or has too many to count. Feiffer ain’t sayin’ which. But he, or rather his characters, are saying a great deal, much of which is expressed in exclamations such as “wahhh” and “yagaa” and much of which is even less coherent and understandable: “It’s standing in the middle of the second floor, and we don’t have a second floor!” Amazing Grapes is at heart a quest story in which the quest, its purpose and its consequences are unknown and unimportant unless they matter more than anything in the universe. It is the tale of Mommy and her children Shirley, Pearlie and Curly, who are about to be sundered as a family when father Greg walks out and leaves $100 to get everyone through the rest of childhood, leading Mommy to decide to marry Lenny and blend his children Penny, Benny and Kenny into the group, until a two-headed swan intervenes and takes Pearlie and Curly somewhere or rather several somewheres that include the tower that goes nowhere, the land of Trotamania, Feartopia, the Geyser of Glorious Goodness, and elsewhere and elsewhen. It is really impossible to sum up or even describe Amazing Grapes, which is surely Feiffer’s put-on of just about everyone and everything but which constantly hints tantalizingly that it all may mean something that may be important until the next page or panel proves that it doesn’t and isn’t. The book is really pretty amazing, if not particularly grape-ish. Feiffer’s highly distinctive, easy-to-recognize art – the type for which he became famous decades ago and has stayed that way ever since – is used for a few of the characters, but the versatility of bizarrerie is what dominates here. As it turns out, Feiffer appears to have a nearly illimitable number of styles, so that the Lord High Muckety-Muck seems to have been drawn by someone else, the Trotamaniacs by yet another artist, the Feary Queen by another, the Doomanians by another, the Elegantics by another, and – well, you get the idea. But it is well-nigh impossible to get all the ideas, so quickly does Feiffer strew them hither and thither and yon. Take those Elegantics, for example: they are vaguely sharklike flying things, dressed in tuxedos, that speak ominously and in rhyme: “We are the Elegantics! Not antic – nor frantic – We charm a lot – then harm a lot.” So they put the other characters to sleep and then drop them from a height so they die until they wake up, which they soon do (many characters die and are reborn in Amazing Grapes, which may be part of the point of a title that parodies that of a famous spiritual). Feiffer tells his story, or stories, or non-stories, in such chapters as “The Resentful Rescue,” “Floating Mommy,” “Nobody Cares,” “The Lost Head,” and “One More Dumb Thing.” Characters range from the nightmarish to the ridiculous, one of the latter being a guide dog named Kelly that cannot guide because he is a cat in disguise who eventually meets a cat named Kelly who is “the other half of you and me,” resulting in a rollicking dance reminiscent of a scene in the Disney/Pixar movie WALL-E, which – who knows? – might have influenced Feiffer somehow, some way, sometime. The point is that the point of Amazing Grapes may be obscure-to-nonexistent, but the book is a wonderful example of telling a story (or non-story, or multiple stories) in graphic-novel form, and the art (including extensive absurdist dialogue) through which Feiffer communicates his communication is communicative in a way just as unique to him as the equally recognizable stylistic presentation of Ten Little Rabbits is to Maurice Sendak. Feiffer and Sendak may be masters of wildly different styles and thought processes, but both are masters, and their mastery is masterfully presented in these very different masterworks.