neither here nor there

First off, this book falls into the category of "gimmicky" for me. It utilizes vellum pages in the middle of each page spread, so that the picture on the right has a detail that changes as you flip it to the left (and then the picture on the left usually obscures that detail, rather than incorporating it interestingly). It's not a huge problem for me, and actually my 2yo enjoyed it, and often had me flip the page back and forth. But that's where the shortcoming of the story itself really stands out. My 2yo was not interested in the words in this book at all. This fits into a certain category of book, that I don't have a name for, where the author has just created a ponderous list of things that fit in some category. In this case, "things that go away". This really feels more like something that works as a showcase of the author's artwork and meditative thoughts than something a very young child will connect with (and I feel this way about many, if not most, books that are in this category, so it's not a special complaint for this specific book). It's a lovely book, and as the adult reading it, I can see how lovely to contemplate the ephemeral nature of so many things in life. But it just doesn't connect for my child, who really prefers narrative content.

This book is so beautiful, that any adult flipping through it will be filled with the sense of awe and appreciation for the natural world that clearly inspired its creation. But it is just too abstract and ponderous for my 2yo, and, I suspect, any young child. And it has one very specific gripe from me, which is the following lines which span 3 page spreads: "Life is not always easy. / There will probably be a stretch of wilderness now and then. / But wilderness eventually ends." I don't like equating hard times with "wilderness", personally. The book as a whole is a celebration of the natural world and having a sense of awe and wonder, so they could have just chosen some different wording and I'd have preferred that. When I talk to my own child about the wilderness, I never want there to be a sense that wilderness is bad or challenging, but only very complex and fascinating.

(SPOILER ALERT - can't say what I want to say about this book without spoiling the plot) There's a lot to like about this book, especially the illustrations and the hybrid picture book / graphic novel format. The illustrations are glowy and colorful and many of them are just so very pretty, you want to bask in the scenery a while. It's hard to put a book like this into this particular list! But there is just a little bit of magic missing in the actual story. The child meets an alien as a child (at "Wonder Rock") and then throughout life longs to be reunited with said alien. There's not really any back story given as to what might be troubling this child, or missing from their life, that this alien experience was so meaningful, or what it added to the child's life. It's a sort of disembodied longing. And so perhaps the reader can imbue this experience with their own meaning from their own childhood, which may be the author's intention, but for me it just felt a bit lacking in dimensionality. Then the character returns to the rock throughout life, and though the pictures of the character growing/aging are powerful images themselves, there's again a lack of a feeling of connection to the character's experience. We see that the character has a child of her own, and my response was to immediately wonder how the childhood experience of the character was making it so hard for her to feel fulfilled by her experience of parenthood that she would long for such separation. She finally gets to board the alien ship when she's old, and her child is grown up, and THEN, as she's zooming away, looking back on earth, she has a sudden flash of insight about how her heart really belongs on earth, to the people there. But once again, there's no real story foundation for us to understand what's underneath all of this. It's like a story that's missing a lot of pieces. It's almost like a story skeleton. I'd love to see it filled with a lot more emotion and turned into a feature animation, for instance, with all the beauty of the style seen in the book. But as a book, I just feel kind of disappointed, because it feels like it could have been so much more!

This book has plenty of content that certain parents (like me) will need to edit out on the fly, but it's not so extensive that it's not easily done: Elmer's mother is angry at him and berates him, so I turn that into playful questioning from mom, without the threats, easy enough. And a few other things like this. There's no hiding that the animals throughout the book are on the offense, many of whom wish to literally eat Elmer, but for a 2yo, especially one who is used to nibbling games of "I'll eat you up", tone can change it from sinister to playful. And there are a few other elements I'm not thinking of, as well... But once these edits are made, what's left isn't especially compelling fare. The premise is that Elmer uses things in his backpack to trick or distract each animal that means him harm, and sneaks away before they realize. It can be seen as a sort of fun romp through the jungle, full of playful & clever trickery, and my 2yo liked it well enough, but it just wasn't especially captivating. Neither the language nor the story line really felt inspiring.

So, what I really love about Jackie Morris is her way of weaving myths that feel instantly timeless and are rich in a language of a deep appreciation for the natural world. And that is paired with magnificent watercolors. But this book, despite its lovely illustrations, and a few pages that we especially liked looking at, is missing most of the storytelling magic of her other books. It has no narrative to tie the pages together. Each page-spread goes "My dragon [is like this]" with a description of the dragon's morphology and habits and personalities. But for most page spreads, it's a single sentence or maybe two. So it's pretty sparse. You're only picking this book up if you're obsessed with dragons and can't get enough of looking at illustrations of them. But she has a postcard set based on this book you could get instead for that purpose. And my 2yo, who is normally really into dragons, had zero interest in this book.

So, I really, really, really hate to put anything by Julie Morstad into any list other than the recommendations list. There's nothing WRONG with this book. It's just that it entirely failed to interest my 2yo. And I can't see her being interested when she's older, either. I love the illustrations, as I do with ALL of Julie Morstad's work. But even still this isn't enough to make this book compelling. The problem is that it lacks any narrative. So you can make up your own little mini-stories about what's going on on each page, but the book doesn't flow. This was interesting enough for me to flip through once or twice, but not interesting to a child like mine.