Myth-Making, Child-Style

Even in the land of unfailingly blue skies and perennially flowering trees, people notice, come fall, an indefinable shift in the season as clearly as if they had walked through a dusty, crackling pile of dead leaves. Stories are a part of this season: family gossip, legends, well-loved and oft-recited poems, spectacles like the theatre or the ballet. To all of these a child will listen, with eyes wide, ears attuned, listen and remember forever.

With images that are uniquely childlike and primordial, Veronique Tadjo’s Lord of the Dance (Lippincott: $12.95) asks children to listen to the voice of the ancestors. In her tribute to the Senufo culture of the Ivory Coast, Tadjo invokes the power of still, abstracted forms that live outside time and place. Sacred objects--masks of many faces and other incarnations of spirits--float in a flat, two-dimensional space, accompanied by an inspired text: “I, the Mask / Dance in the forest / . . . To announce the next sowing / I dance to call the rains.” The poem, describing how people have turned their backs on the Mask, ends on a redemptive note: “Child, let me tell you / A secret / Don’t forget me / If you get lost / In the city.” A work that shimmers with old truths and points the way toward new ones.

A child’s impulse for rhythm and free, joy-filled motion often resonates with nature’s dance of creation and destruction. Tiddalick the Frog by Susan Nunes, a tale derived from stories of the Australian Aborigines’ dreamtime and illustrated by Ju-Hong Chen (Atheneum: $13.95), inspires this ticklish thought. Tiddalick wakes up with great thirst; in few slurps he takes in all the water on the earth. Despite the pleas and antics of the other animals to try to get Tiddalick to open his mouth, the engorged hopper is unmoved. Only when an eel ties himself up in the knots of a frenetic dance does Tiddalick give a great, wet guffaw. Chen’s puddles of watercolor add authenticity to the locale, and the mad jig of Noyang the eel is a picture that will itch any child’s funny bone.

The story of Saint George constitutes a fundamental part of the western world’s own mythology of good and evil. Saint George and the Dragon by Geraldine McCaughrean, illustrated by Nicki Palin (Doubleday: $13.95) treats only the legendary aspects of George’s feats, taking little account of the historical events that made him patron saint of England. Palin’s paintings are semi-realistic settings of architectural ruins, and alert readers will find that they don’t always match the descriptions of the text. Stiff human faces give each action the staged look of a passion play, artificially frozen in time.

Illuminations (Bradbury: $16.95) by Jonathan Hunt, is an alphabet that makes the Middle Ages and Arthurian lore accessible to young readers, with enough gore and glory for older ones as well. From alchemist to zither, through entries about falconry, the Grail and the troubadours, this stellar work is embellished in the style of illuminated manuscripts. Hunt’s dazzling colors and intricate arabesques, together with an original format, command the attention of the most ambivalent reader. Try this on the scoffer who is “too old” for picture books.

In The Ballad of Biddy Early by Newbery Medalist Nancy Willard, illustrations by Barry Moser (Alfred A. Knopf: $13.95), set in the 19th Century, exotic Maureen, the tinker-town queen, is but one of the myriad characters. Moser’s paintings carve light out of darkness and bring into being the subject of Willard’s incantatory poems, the wise woman of the Irish County Clare. Vitriolic Biddy, with “spells on each finger,” is friend to all, “bird, beast, or fish.” The images conjured by words and paintbrush will press this sublime work upon the reader: “Little tiger in God’s eye / remember Biddy’s lullaby.”

Another biography of mythic proportions is that of the lord of dance himself, Nijinsky (Doubleday: $13.95). Inspired by his costume and shoes for his performance in “Le Spectre De La Rose,” Catherine Brighton stages in a picture book format the dancer’s early life. Each frame, cloaked in the brooding, moody hues of a Russian winter, captures the sparks of brilliance and the melancholy in the child. The text is compact, each page like one act in the theatre of Nijinsky’s life. The pictures highlight characters or landscapes with light and shadow; a shaft of light illuminates the children’s faces the night their father leaves their mother.

You can hear a French horn sounding a lone anticipatory note as you gaze at the first painting in Swan Lake by Mark Helprin, illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg (Houghton Mifflin: $19.95; 80 pp.). The author wraps a story like spun silk around the familiar elements of the ballet. An elderly man relates in humble terms to his young female charge how he came to be a friend of the emperor and tutor to the prince. The tutor’s destiny is unalterably linked to the young girl’s, just as their stories are tragically bound to that of the prince and Odette. Helprin’s dulcet prose, compassionate characters, and mythic adventure provide immense reassurance that there is still good old-fashioned storytelling with the power to stir our deepest emotions. Van Allsburg’s paintings hang, like fine brocade, among the beautifully designed pages.

In Ernst by Elisa Kleven (Dutton: $11.95) an alligator named Ernst wonders about big and little things: what if sand were fudgy, what if everyone traveled in magic carts? He moves blissfully through his day, wishing for many worlds, but ultimately content with his own--the real , the one-and-only. In primitive illustrations, brimming with minute creatures and people frollicking among the multiple landscapes, Kleven imagines an entire universe filled with sparkling animation and sweet affection. This small and beautiful book neatly reconciles the child’s wishes with dreams fulfilled.

A child’s imagination can transform even the impersonal shelves of a grocery store into unthinkable terrors. Take Tommy at the Grocery Store by Bill Grossman, illustrated by Victoria Chess (Harper & Row: $12.95; 32 pp.), starring a small pig who is repeatedly mistaken for something he is not. Tommy’s mother unintentionally forgets him at the store, and the grocer must deal with the toddler as best he can. “He thought that Tomy was salami / And set him on the deli shelf. / And Tommy sat among salamis, / Softly sobbing to himself.” Before the happy ending of this frantic do-si-do of mistaken identity come several near-fatal puns when Tommy is nearly “prepared” for dinner. It would be cruel were it not so deliciously funny and yes--to reassure youngsters--entirely absurd. It could never happen--could it?

Hansel and Gretel’s wicked stepmother, were she alive today, would be able to ditch those brats in a minute. She’d just drop them off at the nearest department store mall and they’d be lost for good. And no adult would pay any attention; witness another book set in contemporary times that, like Tommy, uses basic elements of children’s humor. Young consumers will want to head to the mall with everyone’s favorite faithful Rotweiler in Carl Goes Shopping, the latest in the series by Alexandra Day (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $9.95). It may be the first picture book to turn the inside of a department store into a leading character. The other two characters, of course, are Carl and his baby-size charge; the results of their antics within the store are invisible to the mother who returns and repeats that now famous refrain, “Good dog, Carl.” This latest adventure should prove enduring and popular.

Finally, I’m in the Zoo, Too! by Brent Ashabranner, illustrated by Janet Stevens (Cobblehill/Dutton: $12.95), is a declaration that leads to all kinds of loop-de-loops of thinking and head-scratching. A squirrel named Burl lives in a tree inside a zoo. But he doesn’t get regular drop-offs of food from the zookeeper; isn’t he in the zoo, too? Demanding equal rights, Burl becomes a regular little performer, posing for photos, playing with other animals, and getting locked inside a cage. Suddenly it’s clear that Burl has given up a lot more than nut-gathering. Children will flip past the logistical implications, but adults will be readily involved with smiles of their own as fearless Burl’s tale of trial and error comes to a close. Despite the unfortunate use of illustrations--awkward lines and expressions prevail in several frames, and a tendency toward the slapstick undermines the story’s more thoughtful aspects--this may yet be one of the season’s brightest.