The Little Wizard Stories of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (1914)

We have never taken a prolonged look at the corpus of Oz books by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) and that is something we will do in 2017.  They are perhaps the most important and accomplished work of sustained fantasy in the 20^th Century (take that, J.R.R. Tolkien!), with the first six books in the series being especially delightful.  We will fix his absence in these pages soon.

As an appetizer, and considering the holidays are upon us, I thought I’d take a look at the only collection of short stories in the Oz canon, The Little Wizard Stories of Oz, written in 1913 and collected in 1914, with illustrations by the greatest of the Oz artists, John R. Neill (1877-1943).

The stories were conceived by Baum and his publisher, Reilly & Britton, and were intended for publication in little booklets for each story (each costing 15 cents).  The Oz books were traditionally written for middle readers – ‘tweens,’ in today’s lexicon – while these short stories were created for very young readers.  Baum and company hoped to generate interest in Oz at a very early age, and continue to promote Baum and all of his books into a brand name for kiddie lit.

Because of the younger audience, Baum tones down a bit of the irony and pun-play found in his longer books, and the plots are significantly less intricate.  But taken on a level of simple fun and games in the land of Oz, these stories are unbeatable.

There are six stories in the book, with three of them being particularly charming.  In The Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger, both big cats are bored standing guard at the throne of Ozma, princess of Oz.  The Hungry Tiger would particularly like to eat a little baby, while the Cowardly Lion is eager to maul some innocent.  They leave the castle and promptly come upon a lost baby and, later, the distraught mother – both ripe for consuming and mauling.  The self-deceptions they use to avoid creating mayhem are hilarious, and very human.

Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse shows two of our favorite characters from the later novels work together to save a boy lost in the forests of Oz.  This is particularly grand because Baum always tried to work out the absurdities of Oz to their most logical conclusions…. For example, since neither Jack nor the Sawhorse sleep, when night comes, they simply stand by the side of the road till daylight.  (A somewhat disquieting image.)  And when Jack’s pumpkin head is spoiled, he must go headless until he gets back home.  There is more than enough to delight any child with a sense of whimsy here.

The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman features, perhaps, the two most famous characters in the series.  When the two friends go boating, the Tin Man falls overboard.  He lies at the bottom of the riverbed, his tin stuck in the soft earth.  The Scarecrow would save him, but his straw would not allow him to submerge.  The two finally escape with the help of some low comedy crows, but things get significantly better when the Wizard himself shows up.

The other stories, Little Dorothy and Toto, Tiktok and the Nome King and Ozma and the Little Wizard are all fine, and worthy of attention.

The book is available online, but can also be gotten in a low-cost hardcover reprint from Books of Wonder, complete with the original illustrations.  Their Web site is: http://www.booksofwonder.com.  For the Oz completest, or to introduce younger readers to the world Oz, it makes for amusing reading.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, by Neal Gabler (2006)

As we approach Christmastime, many Americans will be looking to the films of Walt Disney (1901-1966) for holiday comfort.  Those interested in the man behind the brand could do not better than Neal Gabler’s magisterial biography, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.  It will leave you with the distinct impression of having met Disney himself, warts and all. 

Surely few American entertainment icons have been more discussed – or subject to more historical revision -- than Disney.  During his salad days of the 1920s and 30s, Disney was regarded as both an important artist (embraced by intellectuals and modernists like Dali), and an emerging American institution.  It was only with the national rupture of the 1960s that Disney’s reputation started to tarnish: books such as The Disney Version by Richard Schickel in 1968 sought to take down the Greatest Generation hero down as many pegs as possible.  (Indeed, Schickel’s attack is so out-of-proportion as to seem unhinged, sadly all too common in that both sad and common decade.)

The simple and irreducible fact is that Disney was neither the plaster saint of the right nor the uber-bogeyman of left, but rather a complicated and contradictory man who achieved remarkable things in animation, live-action filmmaking and that strange mix of theater and amusement park that is Disneyland.  Few American artists have had a more influential or pervasive grip on the American mindset (indeed, I cannot think of any), and fewer have transcended their own art to become a brand name.

In addition, there are few artists as resolutely American as Disney.  Raised on and near a farm in Marceline, Missouri to middle-class parents, Walt’s earliest surroundings were a mix of Tom Sawyer and The Music Man.  Though he would remember having a contentious relationship with his father (Walt always had a touch of self-dramatization), friends and neighbors remember him as perpetually sunny and optimistic.  He was fascinated by cartooning, by drawing, and by the possibilities of animated cartoons. 

After knocking around the nascent animation industry for a bit, Disney and his brother Roy (1893-1971) lit out for California in 1929 to hang their own shingle.  Many would think the rest is history, but not so, according to Gabler’s book, which chronicle the young animation entrepreneur’s struggle over the next decades, not fully finding financial success until well into the 1950s, despite great critical and popular success.

This sense of hand-to-mouth desperation is one of the many details found in this richly detailed book.  A dreamer and idea-man, Disney often drove innovation without regard to the costs, leaving money-man Roy with the problem of finding much-needed funds.  It seems that Disney took every success they had and funneled that money into some other plan, vision or scheme. 

Like many gifted creators of children’s entertainment – Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) and L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) immediately come to mind – Disney was pulled in opposite poles by his idealized vision of home, safety and small-village charm on one side and by an overweening sense of travel, adventure and expansion on the other.  It seems that Walt never fully recovered from his happy years at Marceline, and sought new and innovative ways to recreate it.  (It is no surprise that Main Street in Disneyland – that tribute to small-town hominess – was modeled on Marceline.)  Walt longed to return to his own personal Arcadia, one foot in an idealized past and the other foot in an idealized future.  His studio, and later Disneyland, would be the engines he used to drive him back there.

The central argument of Gabler’s book is that Disney sought to create his own personal Neverland, an Arcadia where he could create in peace and play as he wanted.  Disney’s studio in the early years was an earthly paradise, with drawing lessons, endless fun-and-games and goofy good times, all with Walt watching paternalistically.  This haven was destroyed by a series of strikes that permanently marred Disney, pointing him towards increasingly rightwing or libertarian politics, while also making him more reclusive, autocratic and difficult to work with.

After the war and as he entered the 1950s, Walt seemed to lose interest in his empire, and spent a great deal of his time building man-sized model trains.  Though many thought he was losing his grip, actually Walt was retreating within himself as he conceptualized his next innovation: an actual, physical Wonderland that he could call home.  The creation of Disneyland was a balm to Walt, and he entered his second great phase of creativity – as filmmaker and innovator – once the project gained ground.

Soon after making Marry Poppins (1964), his last great film, and conceptualizing key components of the 1964 New York World’s Fair, Walt would be diagnosed with lung cancer and die, his studio and his name becoming a byword for family entertainment.  He also left behind a public persona – part real, part myth – that has attracted debunkers and back-biters for decades.

So, after so many years of pro-and-con debate, where does that leave Gabler’s readers?  There is a great deal of data to sift through in Gabler’s book – the research is exhaustive and the reporting sometimes exhausting.  (This is the type of biography where the author writes, “Walt walked the 90 feet to his office.”)  Gabler had unfettered access to Disney’s papers, and worked on the understanding that he would have complete autonomy over the final product.  Here, then, is the true Disney as he was, take him or leave him.

Disney was too slippery an entity for such classifications as hero or heel.  For example, he greatly wanted to create an Arcadia of sorts with his studio, but was also parsimonious with money, perks and control.  Gabler believes, and I agree, that he had no idea of the acrimony that would lead to such divisive strikes – strikes which cut Walt to the heart because they questioned his own inherent sense of decency.

To the charges that Disney vulgarized everything he touched, Gabler also chronicles the true artistic masterpieces for which he was responsible, including Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, and Fantasia.  The legacy of Disneyland is perhaps best summed up by the simple fact that a visit there has made countless millions of people happy.

A devoted husband and a doting and caring father, Disney could also be a shark in the realm of business, a credit hog, and a bully.  But Disney also faced hardships of a type that few readers of these words could ever imagine, and still managed to retain his innate optimism and come out sunnily on top.  He had grit and moxie, and, perhaps most of all, he had heart.  Bastard Saint, Everyman Bully, Uncle Hardcase – he was equal parts monster and sweetheart. 

Perhaps Disney managed to connect with America’s children in such a deep and profound way because Walt never completely grew up.  He was a paternalist who was still a kid.  The strike and financial hardship may have unfortunately politicized and soured him, but it never robbed him of his ability to dream. 

Neal Gabler’s book is a splendid chronicle of a complex and contradictory character; a uniquely American visionary of a type never to be seen again.  It is easy to see that, by the end of 800 pages, Gabler has become enamored of his subject, and Your Correspondent left the great man somewhat teary-eyed.  If you read only one book about Disney, make it Neal Gabler’s Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children’s Literature, by Selma G. Lanes (1972)

Though perhaps little remembered today, Selma G. Lanes (1929-2009) was an influential editor and children’s book critic.  Born in Dorchester, MA, she attended Smith College after a stint at the Dorchester High School for Girls.  She would eventually land in the Columbia School of Journalism.

She became editor of Parents Magazine, and from there became managing editor of Western Publishing children’s book division.  During this time, she wrote dozens of reviews on children’s books for the New York Times daily and magazine section.  She was one of the first members of the literary establishment to recognize the genius of Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), and would eventually write a book about his art.

But Lane’s great claim to fame were her two books about children’s literature, Down the Rabbit Hole, published in 1972, and much-delayed and far superior sequel, Though the Looking Glass: Further Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children’s Literature, published in 2004.

Down the Rabbit Hole is a remarkable achievement, both as literary criticism and as a historical document.  Being a journalist, Lane clearly recycles previous reviews and covered trends.  Happily, there is a minimum of recycled journalism in Rabbit Hole, and Lane includes original chapters that are as fresh and insightful as they were over 40 years ago.

Lane seemed to be among the first in the literary establishment to fully realize Sendak’s genius, and her chapter comparing him to English illustrator Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) – of all people – is something of a tour de force.  Better still is her dissection of the American fairy tale tradition, and just how unique and separate it is from its European counterpart.  She also sites L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) as one of the central figures of American letters, a position as unpopular in 1972 as it is today.

Lane also provides historical context with a lengthy chapter on St. Nicholas Magazine, the first important periodical directed at children.  She writes at length on why such a publication would be impossible in 1972 (as it would today!), and mourns, to a degree, the then-incipient fracturing of our society.

Happily, Lane also champions children’s serial fiction, finding much value in the various adventures of The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.  She concludes that children do not see life as a story with beginning, middle or end, but, rather, as a series of adventures.  It’s only natural that their books reflect that view.  More important, the endings of individual titles in children’s series are often quite disappointing … better still is the promise at the end of further adventures to come.  (Children weaned on everything from Nancy Drew to Harry Potter become, I’m sure, besotted by the continuing adventures of everyone from James Bond to Sherlock Holmes.)

Her finest chapter, though, was on the explosion of books for African-American children.  While applauding these books – some of which by now are considered classics – she bemoans the loss of previous books about black children chucked overboard in the name of Political Correctness.  (PC seems to be a scourge of modern life – its baleful influence seemingly as potent then as now.)  Lane pleads for both historical context and intent when reading a work of the past, a simple catechism that seems inexplicable to most college students today.

Though Down the Rabbit Hole is sadly out-of-print, this title is easily gotten by Abebooks.com or ebay, and is well worth the investment.  Delightful reading for anyone seriously (or even somewhat) interested in the genre.

In the weeks to come, we will look at her follow-up book, Through the Looking Glass, written more than 30 years later.

Christmas Books: Jack Frost by William Joyce

Readers of The Jade Sphinx are well aware of our high regard for well-crafted children’s literature.  The genre boasts works that demonstrate all of the best that was said and thought in the language – think Wind in the Willows, Peter Pan or The House at Pooh-Corner – and has carved out a singular literary tradition of its own.  The United Kingdom and Continental Europe owns this literary franchise (from the days of Grimm’s Fairy Tales to today’s own Harry Potter), and any serious discussion of the genre returns again and again to several key, European works.

Fortunately for us here in the United States, we have enjoyed our own golden age – but the tradition stateside has really been in fabulously-illustrated picture books.  Our great prose fantasist was L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), but most American masters have a special magic for merging word with image, and they have created art of a very high order.  For the last 50 years or so, the US has been home to some of the most fertile, creative and artistic book creators in the world. 

The fullest contemporary realization of this great tradition is the Louisiana-born William Joyce (born 1957).  We have been watching his work with great interest, and he has not lost his ability to continually surprise us.

After decades of beautiful and evocative work, Joyce has concentrated on his magnum opus, The Guardians of Childhood series, which chronicles the beginnings of such childhood gods as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman.  The series has included both prose novels and picture books, and unified his own cosmology, much like Baum’s world-building Oz books.  The latest installment in the series is the lavishly illustrated picture book, Jack Frost, created in collaboration with Andrew Theophilopoulos.

As his narrative has crossed several mediums (prose novels, picture books and a feature film), Joyce has had to juggle elements between episodes to maintain a fully-realized whole.  Jack Frost provides the bridge between the character Nightlight as seen in the books and Jack Frost, who served as the focal character of the feature film.  But as a key segment in the ongoing narrative, or as a stand-alone picture book, Jack Frost is terrific entertainment and a delightful addition of the Guardians saga.

In short, Frost tells how the heroic sprite Nightlight sacrifices his life to protect the infant Man in the Moon from the soul-crushing evil of the series villain, Pitch.  (That’s the Boogeyman to me and you.)  Nightlight saves the day, but at terrific cost.  He resurrects as Jack Frost, but has no memory of his former self or mission.

What follows is some of the most haunting and resonant themes in the Joycean canon – that of death and resurrection as well as continual change and growth.  Frost feels Olympian isolation and loneliness, and as he does, he leaves cold and frost in his wake.  This winter of the soul becomes actual winter weather for humankind – until that grief and mourning can be rechanneled into healthier, more positive energy.

Joyce accomplishes this miracle with great economy of language; he has also retained the lush blue-gold European palette of the series, paying homage to the Continental roots of many the of Guardians.

The series will continue with additional prose novels and picture books, and one wonders how Joyce will conclude his epic in the books to come.  There is the sense that the Guardians of Childhood is a mid-career summation of Joyce’s artistry, of his deepest-held beliefs, and his untiring optimism and energy. The Guardians of Childhood is a magnificent monument to a kind and benevolent genius, and an important influence on young hearts and imaginations.  More, please.

Jack Frost is available in bookstores everywhere, and is highly recommended for the young (and young at heart) this holiday season.

The Getaway Special, by Jerry Oltion (2001)

One of the many pleasures of summer reading is the serendipitous discovery of new authors.  Since I have raley read much science fiction since my boyhood, I had missed the ascendance of Jerry Oltion (born 1957).  Fortunately, I have just come accross his delightful 2001 novel, The Getaway Special.

Few books would better define summer reading than The Getaway Special, the very theme of which is escape.  It is the story of NASA space shuttle pilot Judy Gallagher and what happens when research scientist Allen Meisner tests his new invention, a hyperdrive that enables spacecraft to travel light-years through space in the blink of an eye.

Meisner is a member of INSANE, the International Network of Scientists Against Nuclear Extermination.  He believes that hyperdrive technology available to the masses will drive humankind’s pioneer spirit, and people will travel through the vastness of space in homemade space craft, populating the universe and ensuring that humanity survives possible nuclear extinction here on earth.  While on the shuttle, and with Gallagher’s help, Meisner broadcasts the secrets of his hyperdrive, which can easily be made with parts at the local Radio Shack.

Instead of being hailed as heroes upon their return, Gallagher and Meisner become fugitives – it seems that the US wants to cover up the whole thing as a hoax and keep the technology for themselves; similarly, governments around the world believe that easy access to off-planet escape technology would greatly reduce the control of people entrapped by their own nations and governments.

Hiding in the American Midwest, the couple are befriended by a redneck cowboy libertarian, his wife, and a friendly Robin Hoodesque bank robber.  With their help -- and with some easily available around the home parts and a well-stocked septic tank (don’t ask) – they leave the earth in search of habitable planets.

In space, further than any human being has ever traveled before, they encounter a race of super-intelligent, space-travelling butterflies, sentient trees that uproot themselves and move around, and … a submarine full of belligerent Frenchmen.

As you can tell from this quick synopsis, The Getaway Special is a lark, designed to amuse and entertain – which is does wonderfully.  It is a very funny book (a rarity in science fiction), and is ultimately extremely humanistic and optimistic (a rarity in contemporary science fiction). 

While reading The Getaway Special, I had the curious feeling of renewing an acquaintance, and then it hit me – in mode of storytelling and imaginative prowess, Oltion was writing a book very much in the vein of L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels.  Like the Oz novels, our heroine and her male friend (often inadequate in some way), travel far and meet a serious of outlandish peoples, who eventually help them return home and resolve the problems that sent them on the road to begin with.  In short, Oltion has written an extremely amusing children’s book for adults.

When looking at Edgar Rice Burroughs yesterday, we said that science is really always about the time in which it is written, and not the future.  That is certainly true here – released before September 11^th, The Getaway Special is frank and honest about how severe a compromise to American interests would be viewed.  However, Your Correspondent read it with a trace of nostalgia – there was still some semblance of law and checks-and-balances of power at play in the novel, and one imagines that today that our heroes would have been shot out of space while broadcasting the hyperdrive specs.

Also interesting is the politics at play.  Oltion seems to appreciate the often good sense of the Right to perceive real and present threats, while also giving credence to the Left and its belief that the vast majority of human beings want the same things.  (And with a forest of sentient trees, Oltion is literally a tree-hugger.)  And one of the more heroic characters (indeed, the one perhaps most responsible for humanity’s eventual survival … is a beer-guzzling libertarian in a cowboy hat.

Oltion’s work is new to me (though he has been active for some time), and I will happily seek out other books.  I was also amused to learn that there is more than a little Allen Meisner in him.  Oltion is the inventor of the trackball telescope, an equatorial mounting system with an electromechanical star tracking drive.  He has put the patent-able portions of it on his Website, making his invention accessible to other telescope makers.

Sandman and the War of Dreams, by William Joyce

Regular readers of The Jade Sphinx know that we take our Christmas here very, very seriously, so it is with great delight that we announce that prolific author, illustrator, animator and filmmaker William Jocye (born 1957) has released the next prose novel in his ongoing Guardians of Childhood series, Sandman and the War of Dreams.  It is, in a word, marvelous.

For those of you who came in late: Joyce has undertaken to create a series of books – both picture books and prose novels – that chronicle the origins of the great heroes of childhood, including Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Man in the Moon, and the Sandman.  In doing this, he does not fall into the trap of presenting the mixture as before, but, rather, creates a whole new persona and background for each classic figure, making it wholly his own.  (Did you know that the Easter Bunny is the last of a race of brilliant warrior rabbits?  Or that Santa Claus was raised by Cossack brigands?  If not, read on….)

Brazenly, Joyce ends his novels with edge-of-your-seat cliffhangers.  In the last book, Toothiana Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies, the heroine, Katherine, was kidnapped by Pitch (the Bogeyman) and his daughter, the beautiful and dangerous Mother Nature.  Our heroes return to the magical land of Santoff Clausen to regroup, convinced that Katherine may be lost to them forever.  However, just when things look their darkest, out of the night (literally) comes the newest Guardian to join their ranks, the Sandman.

Or, to be more precise, Sanderson Mansnoozie.  Awakening from a sleep of eons, Mansnoozie is one of the last of a great race of star-faring Star Captains.  Or, as Mansnoozie explains, As a star pilot, I belonged to the League of Star Captains, a cheerful brotherhood devoted to the granting of wishes.  We each had a wandering star that we commanded.  In the tip of our star was our cabin, a bright compact place, much like an opulent bunk bed.  We journeyed wherever we pleased, passing planets at random and listening to the wishes that were made to us as we passed.  If a wish was worthy, we were honor-bound to answer it.  We would send a dream to whomever had made the wish.  The dream would go to that person as they slept, and within this dream, there would be a story…

The book combines Joyce’s taste for swashbuckling adventure with his usual goofy humor – almost as if Soupy Sales were writing Robin Hood.  Chapter titles include The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of, The Sandman Cometh and, my favorite, Do Be Afraid of the Dark.  And while the story further complicates and expands the overarching story, Joyce never loses sight of what makes his characters tick.

Sandman is part of an ongoing effort by Joyce to make a children’s cosmology, and has, within the pages of these books, created a fully-realized fantasy world.  It has pep and zest and a zany sense of humor – and is more reminiscent of L. Frank Baum’s Oz stories than any other contemporary series that I know. 

Sandman is the darkest book in the series, thus far.  In it, we see the horrific events that turned one of the great leaders of the lost Golden Age into Pitch, and how violence and hatred can warp even the most noble souls.  The book also resonates most deeply on the sense of a passed Golden Age, an Age of Wonders.  Children’s books are often the inkblot test upon which we see a multitude of meanings, and I cannot help but think that Joyce – consciously or not – is mourning for the marvels of the 20^th Century, the Great American Century, now passed forever.

The book is wonderfully designed.  Joyce provides a series of charcoal and pencil drawings (so different from his lush, colorful, classic Americana paintings), and the middle third of the book (a flashback) is on black paper printed in white type.  The images here have a certain magical quality that seems far removed from most fantastic fiction for children; they are more primal and have a sense of … urgency that is usually missing from Joyce’s work.  Sandman is not a book to be forgotten quickly.

It is perhaps not surprising that the strongest entries in the series have all been about the “second tier” figures of the kiddie pantheon: to most children, the Tooth Fairy or the Sandman or the Man in the Moon are little more than names, but free from other conceptions of the characters, Joyce makes them startlingly original and alive. 

In the previous novel, he created a Tooth Fairy that was a figure of otherworldly delicacy and beauty.  With the Sandman, he creates a figure of surpassing strangeness.  Mute (he communicates through dreams and symbols), Sandman is of benign and beatific aspect.  But he also strong, resolute and brave – equal parts Harpo Marx and John Wayne.  As such, he is a wonderful creation and a worthy addition to the Joyce canon of children heroes.

The Sandman: The Story of Sanderson Mansnoozie

Paging through William Joyce’s new Guardians of the Universe picture book, two words rang through my head like a great bell: luminous and transcendent.

Perhaps the most deceptively simple installment of Joyce’s vast cosmology of new childhood folklore, it would be a mistake to dismiss The Sandman: The Story of Sanderson Mansnoozie, as nothing but a bunch of pretty pictures and sketchy origin story.  What Joyce is really serving up is something akin to an incantation – a spell that redefines while it revives a figure who to many is little more than a name, the Master of Sleep, the Sandman.

Here is how Joyce opens the story:  Of course you know the Guardians of Childhood.  You’ve known them since before you can remember, and you’ll know them till your memories are like twilight.  The very first guardian was the Man in the Moon, and it was he who found the others.

The Man in the Moon watches over the children of Earth.  Like a giant nightlight in the sky, he keeps nightmares away.  But when the moon is les than full and bright, who will keep the children safe at night?

If you will, listen to the cadence of some of that.  You’ve known them since before you can remember, and you’ll know them till your memories are like twilight.  Perhaps, someday, much of the Guardians will be set to music (a Boy’s Own Ring Cycle!) because so much of it aspires to the quality of music.

In many ways, the Sandman is the most beguiling and powerful Guardian of them all.  Though he lacks the “star power” of such legends as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, think upon what the Sandman does – promising sweet repose and sweeter dreams.  The Sandman stands for all that refreshes, enriches and empowers.  The entire world of dreams is his bailiwick, and, as such, his capabilities are not tied to a single holiday event or season.  More so than the Man in the Moon, the Sandman is the Guardian by your side … every night.

In a series of beautiful imagery, the Sandman book may have the most exotic and intoxicating images of all.  Dreams take shape around the Sandman in streams of magical, golden sand, taking the shape of dinosaurs or golden floating bubbles or … well, anything in the imagination of the dreamer.  Because Sandman story takes place solely at night, Joyce is able to contract rich blues with muted yellows and glorious, glowing pale-whites (mostly the moon and its light).  Fittingly, the Sandman is mute – but his baby-like face is extremely expressive and he is, in many ways, the most accessible Guardian of all.

As always, the supporting characters are half the fun.  Sandy has a retinue of mermaids, warrior clams, sea turtles, and a wonderfully realized base-of-operations, Dreamsland, made entirely from the remnants of a fallen star. 

The Sandman: The Story of Sanderson Mansnoozie is highly recommended, not just for children on your holiday list, but for anyone who appreciates beautifully illustrated children’s books.  More important, it is a key component in the Guardians series, which is shaping up to be the first great, American fantasy epic since the Oz books of L. Frank Baum.

Tomorrow, the film Rise of the Guardians.

The Pearl and the Pumpkin – A Forgotten Halloween Classic

Your correspondent remembers a time when Halloween was a holiday primarily celebrated by children.  As I dimly recall that era, we kids purchased some great, inexpensive costumes, or, better yet, made our own.  We would trick-or-treat after school and then, if we were especially lucky, television would make the day perfect with a vintage monster movie, preferably something starring Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) or Boris Karloff (1887-1969).

Things have changed quite a bit.

Today, one would be hard pressed to find children celebrating the holiday at all.  Misguided, unimaginative parents fear something “unwholesome” about Halloween, and church leaders and other professional blue noses prate piffle about “satanic influences.”  As if wearing a Capt. America costume before eating a pound of licorice was the fast road to perdition...

But worse than disenfranchising children from the holiday, adults have coopted it as their own, making what was once a childish frolic of skeletons and ghost stories into a sort of demented Mardi Gras.  As if the Baby Boomer generation was not sufficiently infantilized, it continues to make matters worse by taking the very stuff of childhood and perverting it into an extended flight from adulthood.  If your children are home while you are in a Halloween party … then something is seriously wrong.

Not that adulthood means leaving behind the fun of Halloween completely.  Many of the great classics of English literature are ghost stories (Hamlet, anyone?), and the shudder tales of M. R. James and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remain champion reading.  And if, like your correspondent, you have an interest in the children’s literature of the past century, you could do much worse than finding a copy of The Pearl and the Pumpkin by Paul West and W. W. Denslow.

Denslow (1856-1915) is, of course, remembered primarily as the first illustrator of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in 1900.  Denslow was considered to be one of the major contributors to the success of the book, as his illustrations were applauded by critics and children alike.  Baum and Denslow would work on several other books, including Father Goose: His Book, and Dot and Trot of Merryland; jointly holding the copyrights of their collaborations.

However, things went sour when the Wizard of Oz was adapted for the stage.  Baum wrote the show and Denslow designed the sets and costumes – but the two would quarrel when Denslow insisted on 50 percent ownership of the show.  It would be the last time the two worked together – though Denslow earned so much from the book and the show that he was able to buy an island off of Bermuda and crown himself King Denslow I.

Baum would, of course, go on to write 13 more Oz books, and dozens of other classic children’s tales.  Illustrating the Oz stories fell to John R. Neill (1877-1943) who, to this viewer’s eye, surpassed Denslow’s conception to become the finest illustrator of the Oz corpus.

Immediately following the windfall of the Oz book and stage play, Denslow sought to duplicate its success.  He worked with writer Paul West to create The Pearl and the Pumpkin in 1904.  (It would go on to become a successful show in 1905, running in Boston and New York before touring the country.)

For sheer audacious invention, it would be hard to beat The Pearl and the Pumpkin.  The story begins on a farm in Vermont, where Joe Miller has perfected a method for growing perfect pumpkins.  He and his cousin, Pearl, are all set to celebrate Halloween when they are visited by the Ancient Mariner (complete with albatross and crossbow), who contrives to learn the secret of perfect pumpkins because the pirates down in Davy Jones’ Locker (including Long John Silver, Balckbeard, and Capt. Kidd) are hungry for pumpkin pie.

Before too long, Joe is turned into a giant pumpkin boy by a sprite called the Corn Dodger, and they (along with a baker and professional canner) all end up under the sea, battling pirates and contriving to get Joe back to normal. 

The book was clearly designed with a stage extravaganza in mind (the Glinda-like figure, Mother Carey, even has a bevy of chorus girls behind her), but the joyous energy, high spirits and bright good humor make the book a unique experience.  Denslow created illustrations for every page – including some spreads that straddled both open pages.  Fortunately, the book was available in a facsimile of its 1904 edition from Dover Books, and can be found in places like New York’s Books of Wonder.

I could think of no better way to celebrate Halloween.

Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King by William Joyce

We at the Jade Sphinx ring in the holiday season with a great treat – a look at the new book about Santa Claus by celebrated children’s author and illustrator, William Joyce.

“Children’s author,” though, seems something of a misnomer, considering the breadth and range of Joyce’s ambitions and accomplishments: he has also designed film characters (Toy Story and A Bug’s Life), has formed a new company, Moonbot, a Shreveport-based animation and visual effects studio, and he has recently produced a 13-minute animated short film and an e-book app called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.  Joyce manages to do these things with an amazingly light touch and great insight – perhaps his real title should be Kid-in-Chief.

Earlier this year, Joyce started a remarkable undertaking: the creation of an entire cosmology incorporating all of the great myths of childhood (Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Boogeyman, etc) detailed in a series of picture books and young adult novels.  The first book in this series, which are all under a banner title The Guardians of Childhood, was The Man in the Moon, which was released this autumn to rave reviews.  He now picks up the Guardians saga with Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King, co-written by Laura Geringer, which continues the overall story while introducing a key character who will later evolve into the Santa Claus beloved by folklore.

The concept of inter-connected picture books and prose novels is a unique one, and facilitates Joyce’s mythology nicely.  The Guardians of Childhood series is new territory for Joyce.  Most of his celebrated picture books were really chamber pieces: A Day With Wilbur Robinson (1990) detailed a simple afternoon, Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures With The Family Lazardo (1988) described the summer of a sophisticated family and their pet brontosaurus, even his first stab at the Santa Claus legend, Santa Calls (1993), was really a one-night adventure story.  But Joyce’s goal with the Guardians is more complex and symphonic, and like L. Frank Baum and Oz, he is creating a whole alternate history, a densely packed saga of fantastic fiction that brings to life a fully-realized fantasyland.

Joyce has also rather heroically altered his signature style for his Guardians conception.  Rather than the vibrantly colored, sun-kissed slices of Americana that Joyce fans have sought in the past, Guardians tells a somewhat darker tale, with influences that run more deeply to European fantasies.  This beautifully designed book is filled with ‘illuminations’ (illustrations) by Joyce in pencil and charcoal.  The book design provides ample opportunity for Joyce to delight readers with full-page drawings and marginalia, and changes from white pages with black text to black pages with white text for a somber and effecting flashback.

Though darker than his other conceptions, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King is filled with typical Joycean joie de vivre and insouciance.  Despite the darkness of tone, Joyce’s prose is optimistic, zestful and fun.  (Some chapter titles include: Wherein Speaking Insect Languages Proves to Be of Value, Where the Impossible Occurs with Surprising Regularity, and Partly Cloudy and Most Unfair.)

The plot of the book is simple:  Pitch, the Nightmare King, was imprisoned previously by the Man in the Moon.   After an accidental escape, he threatens the children in the haven of a great wizard, Ombric Shalazar.  In much need of help, Ombric is joined by the swashbuckling bandit and freebooter, Nicholas St. North.

Re-imagining Santa Claus as a reformed swashbuckler is a stroke of genius.  There has always, perhaps, been a touch of roguishness in the Big Man From the North, just as there was more than a touch of Santa Claus in swashbuckling figures as diverse as Robin Hood, Simon Templar and Zorro.  Here is how Joyce first introduces the man who would be Santa:  Later that night, in the raggedy camp of the wildest ruffian of the Russian plains, there slept a young bandit chief named Nicholas St. North.  No one knew exactly how old he was, for even he did not know his birthday, but he was old enough for the beginnings of a beard and was without argument the most daring young rascal in all the Russias.  A hero he was not.  But it was said that he once defeated an entire regiment of cavalry with a bent steak knife – while he was eating.  Impressive swordsmanship indeed, but not the kind of achievement that would make a mother proud.

Joyce also returns to the notion of a haven, or contained paradise in this book.  This recurring them can be found in the art deco mansion in Wilbur Robinson, Toyland in Santa Calls, the enchanted forest in The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs (1996), and even the oversized house in George Shrinks (1985).  Even in his nonfiction book The World of William Joyce (1997) his studio seems to be a place where the rules of adulthood are suspended.  Here, Ombric Shalazar rules over Santoff Claussen, a land with talking bugs, owl sentries, trees that become homes, and all manner of magic. 

Like figures as diverse as Michael Chabon and Ray Bradbury, Joyce has drunk deep at the well of Americana.  His influences are many, and you can catch the current of many of them in his new book:  Oz, Robin Hood, robots, Superman, and Little Nemo in Slumberland.  But William Joyce is his own thing, almost his own genre.  Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King is a deeply satisfying continuation of his magnum opus, which is estimated to run a full 15 volumes.  It is eminently possible that, once he is done, William Joyce will truly inherit the mantle of L. Frank Baum, and enter into the folklore of children’s lit himself.

The Man in the Moon by William Joyce

Last night your correspondent had the pleasure of attending the launch party for the new picture book by William Joyce, The Man in the Moon, held at Books of Wonder, one of the premiere independent book stores in New York City.  This is great news for fans of illustrated books and connoisseurs of children’s literature, as Joyce is a major talent who has been absent from the publishing world for too long, devoting his time and creative energies to movies like Toy Story (1995), Robots (2005) and Meet the Robinsons (2007).

Before looking at The Man in the Moon, first a brief word about Books of Wonder.  Located at West 18^th Street in Chelsea, Books of Wonder has been an oasis for book lovers for over three decades.  I have been able to find everything and anything on their shelves, from magnificent facsimile editions of L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz books (complete with color plates), to opulent editions of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, to Edward Bloor’s masterful London Calling.  In addition to books, there is a gallery in the back of the shop, complete with original works and limited-edition lithographs, a vast selection of vintage books and even an (under renovation) coffee shop.  Anyone with a love of books, children’s lit or illustration will find Books of Wonder a must-go destination.  Their Web site is:  www.booksofwonder.com.

The Man in the Moon is Joyce’s first picture book since Big Time Olie in 2002 and the first non-Rolie Polie Olie book since The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs in 1996.  Before my uninitiated readers blanch at such titles, let me state unequivocally that Joyce produces pictures books and children’s lit of an exceptionally high caliber, celebrated for his wit, his stylish watercolors and pencil drawings, and his infectious sense of the ridiculous.  His 1993 book Santa Calls is an Art Nouveau fantasia celebrating the Santa Claus myth with the most perfectly idealized Toyland to ever find itself in the pages of a book, and A Day With Wilbur Robinson (1990) is, in many ways, a sun-kissed Art Deco rift on You Can’t Take It With You.  And his hilarious Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo (1988) might be best described as Nick and Nora Charles and their pet dinosaur.

If I sound besotted by Joyce’s work, I confess that I am, gloriously so.  The arrival of The Man in the Moon is an occasion for handsprings, unbridled kazoo playing and infectious hilarity.  And the news that The Man in the Moon is the first of an extended series, The Guardians of Childhood, including both picture books and prose novels, might inspire back flips, cartwheels and street-corner harmonizing.  Let the revels begin.

As is fitting for the first book in a series, The Man in the Moon is an origin story.  It tells how the Man in the Moon got there, and outlines his conception of those mythical beings who would watch over the children of the world.  These Guardians would later evolve into Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Mother Goose, the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy.  The first prose novel in the series, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King will be available in bookstores in about two months.

Joyce has lost nothing of the richness of his illustrative style during his long hiatus from books.  Most devotees treasure his incandescent watercolors because of their distinctive sparkle inspired by a 1930s sensibility.  Like the best 1930s patter, Joyce draws on the balls of his feet, and his art is nimble, freewheeling and somehow screwball.  His books have a distinctive rhythm, much like a Little Rascals short or a classic screen comedy. 

There is much of that in Man in the Moon, but also something more.  Here, while Joyce delivers some pages with his customary Art Deco glow, much of the book harks back to a more Eastern European tradition.  There is almost a Russian folk art quality to many of the illustrations, with brings an unusual gravitas to the proceedings.  This is completely in keeping with the text of the story, which perhaps carries greater emotional and thematic depth than his previous work. 

Of course, one of the secret pleasure s of reading Joyce is looking at his illustrations and wondering at their inspiration.  A Baby Boomer steeped in a glorious period of American pop culture, Joyce’s memory seems to be housed in his eye as much as his brain.  The origin of the Man in the Moon (or MiM, as he’s called) calls to mind Superman comics as much as Moses.  Once on the Moon, he sees starfish that look for all the world like the Disney version of Capt. Nemo’s Nautilus, and it’s only after looking at the giant caterpillar on the moon that astute readers wonder … is Joyce channeling Ray Harryhausen’s Mooncalf from First Men in the Moon?

As the series progresses, both picture books and prose novels will detail how MiM created the Guardians of Childhood and also relate individual adventures.  One cannot help but wonder at the audacity of the conception.  What Joyce is undertaking is a remarkable feat of imaginative creation.  Much like C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien – though with a lighter touch and greater wit – Joyce has promised to create his own cosmology.  His goal is not only to recreate St. Nick, Mother Goose, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Sandman, but to weave them into an interconnected narrative that is the basis of a new myth.  Where it will all end and what shape his final cosmology will take are now unknown, but Joyce has never failed to delight, amuse and enchant this reader, and I know that the Guardians of Childhood are in good hands. 

The Guardians of Childhood

William Joyce Display at Books of Wonder