CHILDREN’S FICTION : Of Metaphors and a Boy Flat as a Page

For centuries folk tales have creatively used archetypes and metaphors to make sense of the world’s many unknowns while maintaining the safety of distance. One such metaphor, the wolf, has long been a symbol of evil and darkness, but rarely has it been so effectively shared in print as in Ed Young’s Lon Po Po (Philomel: $14.95; 32 pp.; ages 4-8; 0-399-21619-7). Subtitled “A Red Riding Hood Story From China,” “Lon Po Po” shows how a wolf disguised as grandma momentarily tricks three sisters while their mother is away. But unlike in “Red Riding Hood,” these children are not victims. Convincing the wolf of nonsense--that one ginkgo nut from the top of a tree would give him eternal life--the girls out-trick the trickster and save themselves.

Glaring from the dust jacket, Young’s fire-eyed wolf is only a more tangible form of the ragged abstract blackness that all but obscures the book’s blue cover. As the mother leaves the girls on Page 1, an aura of evil surrounds the house. Landscape and wolf literally are one. As long as the sisters are timid and uncertain, the wolf remains more nebulous darkness than animal. Once they identify the unknown and take action, though, the wolf becomes merely another mortal.

Young’s two-page illustrations are divided into several framed panels reminiscent of Chinese screens, but their varying widths and number become much more. They often serve to direct the reader’s attention across the page, like a movie camera filming a scene, lingering at different sights for varying lengths of time.

When the wolf pleads at the children’s door, for example, the slim space between panels acts as the door itself, emphasizing how frightfully close the girls are to danger. And when the wolf does get in, the moment is intensified by an illustration of the shadowy creature leaping across two panels and through the dividing space that served as the door on the page before.

Throughout, Young’s pastel crayon illustrations maintain a sense of mystery and immediacy. Rather than illustrating only the words of his tale, as so many do, Young has given new life to its metaphoric essence and created a book to savor.

While tales of sense explore the unknown, nonsense tales have always celebrated the known. Since no one laughs at nonsense unless they know the sense or truth of things, nonsense serves both as a playful holiday from sense and as an affirmation of it. Stuff and Nonsense, compiled by Laura Cecil and illustrated by Emma Clark’s watercolors (Greenwillow: $15.95; 94 pp.; ages 3-up; 0-688-08898-8), is an extension of children’s maturing play, in which objects are given story and life. Bananas dance, cookies and skyscrapers run away, pumpkins chase gardeners, tables and pasta walk like people, people wish to be tea bags, and motor bikes turn into crocodiles.

Oh, Brother by Arthur Yorinks and Richard Egielski (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $15.95; 40 pp.; all ages; 0-374-35599-1) has no garrulous gadgets, but shares a rich, comic epic made all the more nonsensical by the creators’ deadpan delivery. From the time they cause their ship to sink in the mid-Atlantic until being reunited with their parents in front of the Queen, twins Milton and Morris live a melodramatic life. Everything, including sibling rivalry, exists to extremes.

The heart of this book’s nonsense is that no matter how absurd the brother’s actions may be, they are reported and illustrated in a calm, documentary tone. For example, Yorinks’ quiet sentence, “In a debate over what to charge, the brothers managed to lose their entire stock of fruit,” becomes fiercely ironic when contrasted with Egielski’s illustration of the brothers in the middle of a violent apple-throwing fight. Rather than the quick-lined, jaunty images usually associated with nonsense, his images remain subdued and poised in color and line. Together, writer and illustrator give young readers a major role in “Oh, Brother,” for rather than describing nonsense, they let them discover it for themselves in the juxtaposition of content and style.

In Jeff Brown’s Flat Stanley, with cartoon illustrations by Tomi Ungerer (Harper & Row: $4.95; 44 pp.; ages 6-10; 0-06-440293-2), the impossible happens and, much like Yorinks and Egielski, characters barely bat an eye. When the bulletin board over his bed falls one night, Stanley is flattened to half an inch thick. Everyone, including Stanley, takes his odd condition as just another bit of family news; Gracie Allen could be the trunk of their family tree. Initially Stanley is elated with his new dimensions. He can mail himself to distant friends and literally be his brother’s kite. He even becomes a hero by catching art thieves when he poses as a painting in the Famous Museum of Art, curated by O. Jay Dart.

In addition to word play, Brown works a bit of social realism into his nonsense. When the novelty of Stanley’s difference wears off, others begin to taunt him. Brown quickly and appropriate solves the problem with more nonsense. Stanley is inflated back to size with a bicycle pump. As unflappable as ever, his parents toast his re-inflation with hot chocolate and cheers of “Good for you” before calmly going back to bed.

As in “Oh, Brother,” the contrast between action and narrative generates much of the humor. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, “Flat Stanley” is as fresh and funny as Stanley himself is wonderfully flat.