(++++) THEMES AND VARIATIONS

Let’s Fix Up the House. By Robert Pizzo. Schiffer Kids. $9.99.

Let’s Fix Up the Yard. By Robert Pizzo. Schiffer Kids. $9.99.

     Clichés become clichés because there is a kernel of truth in them. Sometimes more than a kernel. It is a cliché of children’s books, especially board books for the youngest readers and pre-readers, that their visuals must be sweet and simple and unworldly, their content educational in only the most simplistic sense possible, their ability to teach largely limited to such foundational concepts as the numbers 1-10 or formulaic illustrations of objects beginning with specific letters of the alphabet. Not all board books are formulaic, but enough of them are so that families looking for new ones can quickly become dismayed by the sameness of far too many of the offerings.

     But then there are Robert Pizzo’s books. Pizzo has the rather revolutionary idea that children, even the youngest children, are interested in the everyday world around them, and can be taught about it even if they are too young to read detailed explanations about real-world objects and tasks. They can, he asserts, familiarize themselves not only with the latest version of “K is for Kangaroo” and “Z is for Zebra” but also with elements of the world that they are far more likely to encounter in their own lives than all the intriguing-looking creatures with whom they are highly unlikely ever to interact.

     Thus, in Let’s Fix Up the House and Let’s Fix Up the Yard, Pizzo uses geometric precision and a clear understanding of how things work to present, in board-book form, quotidian tools and the ways people use them – very likely including young children’s own parents and, perhaps sooner rather than later, the children themselves. The result is to-do lists in highly visual, semi-realistic form: not fully realistic in illustration, since the tools and tasks are boiled down to their essences for purposes of clarity, but quite realistic in showing just what those tools and tasks involve and how they are done.

     In each book, the left-hand pages, which open with the words “We’ll need,” show a specific stylized tool of some sort, while the right-hand pages show the tool in use and illustrate what it accomplishes. Pizzo’s art has clarity and precision that make the whole process look simple, although it is anything but: he manages to boil down to its essence every task and technique, so even very young children can see what a real-world item looks like and how it manages real-world accomplishments.

     So Let’s Fix Up the House shows, on one left-hand page, a hammer – stripped to its essence and drawn so it is instantly recognizable. The right-hand page shows a stylized adult – think of a very colorful version of the figures used to illustrate warning signs or public restrooms – about to use the hammer to drive a nail into a strip of wood above a window, with the words “to nail the wood trim.” Another page says “We’ll need a level” – and it is a beautifully rendered one, with three different bubbles allowing leveling at different angles – opposite a page that says “to straighten the shelf,” on which the use of a level to do just that is shown with straightforward exactness. And there is the left-hand age featuring a saw, with a right-hand one saying “to cut the lumber” and making it abundantly clear just how that happens. To wrap up the book with a slight twist, the final pages say “We’ll need a vacuum” – a shop vac, to be precise, and yes, it is precisely drawn and looks nothing like a standard in-house vacuum – “to clean up. All done!” That is a great summary lesson: cleaning up thoroughly after completing a project is a crucial step that all too many adults neglect. Kids won’t, after they absorb Pizzo’s presentation: they will know that cleanup is integral to fix-up.

     Let’s Fix Up the Yard follows the same narrative and presentation pattern with equal effectiveness. On one two-page spread, “We’ll need a leaf blower – to collect the leaves,” and the handheld blower is shown in just enough detail to make its real-world appearance clear, while the person using it is wearing ear protection and the larger-than-in-real-life and beautifully colored fall leaves are flying around the page. Elsewhere, what is needed is a wheelbarrow “to haul the dirt,” which is shown piled high and, for a touch of amusement, with a bird perched atop the mound and looking at the person pushing the load along. Whether as simple as a pack of seeds “to grow the vegetables” or as complex-looking as a cement mixer “to pour the concrete,” every outdoor tool and item is put on display with admirable clarity and shown in use in ways that children of just about any age will be able to understand. The very end of the yard-focused book is more amusing than the end of the house-focused one, and quite equally accurate. “We’ll need to rest” (the picture shows the two adults, male and female, wiping their foreheads after some very taxing work) – “when we’re all done!” And that last bit of art, with the two hard-working people lounging on chairs in a yard whose spiffy appearance directly picks up on earlier illustrations that showed them performing various tasks, certainly communicates just how well-earned their rest is. Indeed, the clarity of communication in Let’s Fix Up the House and Let’s Fix Up the Yard is always front-and-center, showing Pizzo’s exceptional ability to rethink the basics of illustrative education, demonstrating that even the well-worn format of the board book does not need to come across as if it is worn out.