'Strange Stories': Strangely Irresistible
If it's true, as
Amazon.com suggests, that
Strange Stories for Strange Kids (HarperCollins, $19.95) is intended for readers ages 4 to 8, I need to be remanded to first grade immediately. Husband-and-wife team Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly (he's the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
MAUS: A Survivor's Tale and she's the art editor at
The New Yorker) have stuffed so much vibrant talent into this 64-page compendium of surreality that it would be a prosecutable travesty if only the 4-to-8 population enjoyed it. The first entry, Spiegelman's "The Several Selves of Selby Sheldrake" has the ability, like the cartoons that follow it, to enchant both children and adults by telling a story that becomes increasingly preposterous but that begs to be believed. Selby is a curious little boy who refuses to remove his finger from his nose -- for good reason, we soon discover. David Sedaris and Ian Falconer
(Olivia) collaborate in "Pretty Ugly," the story of Anna Van Ogre, an unattractive little girl from an unattractive family who, in a very literal way, interprets the admonishment to let her inner beauty shine. Maurice Sendak serves up the fantastical tale of "Cereal Baby Keller," a toddler who swallows everything in sight, and Barbara McClintock reveals what happens to your shadow when it runs away from you. All the entries are slightly wacky, but some of them are more airy and wistful than others, like "The Day I Disappeared," a memorable evocation by Paris artist Jacques de Loustal of the Paul Auster story of the same name. Even the contributions that are picturescapes with a list of items that have to be hunted down (including one by
Where's Waldo artist Martin Hanford) are embarrassingly irresistible to those of us who think we don't have time for such things.
Strange Stories for Strange Kids may be intended to get children to read, but adults won't be able to put it down.
