It is William Joyce Week here at The Jade Sphinx,
as we celebrate two new books in his Guardians
of Childhood series, as well as the release of the film Rise of the Guardians. We’ll focus on the books today and tomorrow,
starting with the prose novel Toothiana:
Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies before looking at the picture book The Sandman: The Story of Sanderson
Mansnoozie tomorrow.
The book
continues to chronicle the evolution of various figures of folklore dear to
children and how they came about. In
short, the whole series is an origin story: once the entire 12 book series is
complete, readers will know how such beloved icons as Santa Claus, the Easter
Bunny, the Sandman, Mother Goose and Tooth Fairy came about. In
this installment, Joyce outlines the origins of the Tooth Fairy while moving
forward the overarching serial-story of the Guardians and their ongoing battle
against Pitch, also known as the
Boogeyman.
The
story opens with North (Joyce’s Santa), Bunnymund (the Easter Bunny), Nightlight,
the wizard Ombric and the girl Katherine (who, I suspect, will evolve into Mother
Goose) celebrating victory over Pitch following the battle at the Earth’s
Core. They travel by rabbit tunnel now to
the very top of the world, to visit the Tsar Luna, head of the Luna Lamadary,
and his followers who worship the great focus of this fantasy universe, the Man in the Moon. Once there Katherine looses her last baby
tooth, which introduces Toothiana and her dramatic backstory.
This
tale is Joyce at his swashbuckling best.
Toothiana comes complete with invading monkey armies, flying elephants, and
enchanted jungles as well as daring rescues and hairbreadth escapes. It also contains some of Joyce’s most
haunting imagery, including the notion that every baby tooth holds within it
the memory of a child’s happiness. Imagine,
for instance, an entire flying machine made of children’s teeth, each holding
within its pearly whiteness nothing but happy memories….
Joyce
plants grace notes throughout that make for delightful reading. One of my favorites is Down below, North’s elves ate plate after plate of jam roly-ply, noodle
pudding, and sweet potato schnitzel, topping off the meal with elderberry pie
and Bunnymund’s newest chocolates – a delectable blend of Aztec Cacao and
purple plum – all the while asking North to describe the meals prepared by the
Yetis (accomplished chefs all) at the Lunar Lamadary. It seemed that being turned to stone and back
again was a hungry business. Or this
throwaway: While the children were
anticipating their first trip to the Himalayas, Ombric and Bunnymund were in a
deep debate about which came first, the chicken or the egg. Ombric believed it was the chicken. Bunnymund, not surprisingly, believed it was
the egg. But the Pooka had to admit that
he could not answer the question definitively. Joyce also, as usual, has lots of fun with
chapter titles, including the delicious: A
Journey Most Confounding, with Flying Monkeys Who Smell Very Bad Indeed.
Perhaps
Joyce’s greatest achievement with this book is his conception of the Tooth
Fairy. His story of her past makes for
affecting reading, and Joyce imagines the character into something of an emerald
warrior, an almost crystalline vision of beauty concealing an indomitable
will. There are also notes of melancholy
throughout, as Joyce flirts with ideas of loss, creeping adulthood and the
sense that time irrevocably changes everything, and not always for the
better. These dark notes are never
enough to overwhelm the willful giddiness of events and situations, but they
are there and give the continuing story its heft and resonance. Toothiana:
Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies is a triumph.
William Joyce Week continues
tomorrow with The Sandman.
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