Bubblegum 🍬 delicious (books)

Can we read? No. 85

Good morning.

I’m arriving here to this screen with some mixed emotions: I’m having a lovely week, back from a short getaway with my family, enjoying this gorgeous Wisconsin September weather, feeling blessed and loved, but also, today is the two-year anniversary of a lost baby in our lives. He was not our baby, and yet I feel this day heavy on my heart.

In May 2021, I wrote about our experience in a special issue that was inspired by our trauma: my Spotlight On: Loss, Death, and Grief. I share this issue frequently — it will always remain public and free, no matter what, so that anyone who needs books to address these difficult topics can access it at any time. And it seems fitting to honor what I made from something I would never wish on anyone, on this, the day that something did happen to us. (I am being vague on purpose because this is sensitive content, so I want to offer a warning about infant loss for anyone clicking through.)

Please feel free to read that issue if it might be helpful or useful to you now or in the future, and pass it on to someone else, if that feels right. (Thank you.)

---

Anno’s Journey by Mitsumasa Anno (1977)

There are, if my count is correct, 28 Anno books, ranging from counting and ABC titles to ones that visit specific countries — this is the fourth, part of Mitsumasa Anno’s long, illustrious career as a Japanese author and illustrator of children’s books, many of them wordless or nearly so.

I have enjoyed perusing and “reading” his books to my kiddos since they were very small — there is something for everyone in almost all of them, from babies who can look at the images and find animals they might recognize, to tweens and teenagers who can (if they are willing) make up interesting, even lengthy stories about what’s happening in each scene.

This is what makes Anno’s work — on the Anno books in particular, though his math books are mindblowing — so brilliant. So much is left up to one’s own interpretation, like here, in Anno’s Journey, where Anno begins by rowing away from a seashore, journeys across land, into a village (where there is a lot going on, including a race of some sort), and out into the countryside. The possibilities are endless, and so is the potential of this book — it’s one to return to again and again, at different ages and stages, to see what can be seen and revealed as the book changes, and so does your reader.

---

The Paper Princess by Elisa Kleven (1994)

Those of you who have been around here for awhile know how much I love anything Elisa Kleven touches. (This is the eighth title authored and/or illustrated by Kleven that I’ve reviewed. To see the full list, read the lovely interview I did with her in April 2021.) The Paper Princess was our gateway Kleven drug, and with good reason: this sweet book tells the tale of little girl who creates her own doll, a paper princess, who one day gets swept away by the wind and begins an epic adventure.

She’s unfinished, the princess, but she doesn’t let this deter her — as she is flying away she calls out to her little girl, “I’ll finish myself!” (Ask me how much I love this.) And she does. She visits a carnival, a town, a garbage can, a bird’s nest, and a meadow, adding aspects of herself (sometimes with the help of others, animal and human alike) as she goes along, until miraculously, finally, her travels take her to a little boy, who determines that his sister would just love the little paper princess, and — in a very satisfying surprise twist — the doll is returned to her creator.

Kleven’s mixed media illustrations are captivating — it’s a major reason my children and I return to her books repeatedly and with such delight — but so are her messages about art, making, self-reliance, and (I don’t think it can rightly be called anything else) magic. It makes for an utterly charming and wonderful read.

(If you like this one, check out its two follow-ups, The Paper Princess Finds Her Way and The Paper Princess Flies Again. There is a lot of flying in Kleven’s work — read my aforementioned interview to hear more about this from the author herself.)

---

Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes, compiled by Josie Fison and Felicity Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake (1994)

There are a lot of things to love in Roald Dahl’s work: his sometimes-scrumptious, sometimes-disgusting culinary concoctions are pretty high up there (and often make me wonder how on earth he came up with such recipes).

This book — not to be missed if you have a Dahl fan — doesn’t clear up that mystery for me, but it does offer a humorous glimpse not only into the sick mind that came up with Wormy Spaghetti (The Twits), Mosquitoes’ Toes and Wampfish Roes Most Delicately Fried (James and the Giant Peach), Bunce’s Doughnuts (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Lickable Wallpaper (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and my personal favorite, Frobscottle (The BFG), but also how to actually make these delicacies.

Yes, this is a real cookbook — complete with Blake’s characteristic line and watercolor illustrations — and a doable one at that. (Meaning: even I can make these things, which is really saying something.)

This is a goofy but truly awesome resource — read a Dahl book, make snacks, win all around! — and one that, given the right age, you don’t even have to be involved in. Hand this is your capable children and walk out of the kitchen!

(Or come to my house and whip up some Frobscottle for me: peeled kiwis, raspberry kefir, lemonade, and cream soda puréed in a blender. YES PLEASE.)

---

Bubblegum Delicious by Dennis Lee, illustrated by David McPhail (2000)

It’s been unforgivable ages since I’ve reviewed a book illustrated by my very favorite master of watercolors, David McPhail, so thank goodness I pulled this one off my shelf: though I don’t love Lee to a McPhail-degree (I don’t love any children’s book creator to a McPhail-degree, other than McPhail himself), I do love him quite a bit, and ditto Bubblegum Delicious.

If you’re familiar with Lee’s previous work — there’s quite a bit of it, including two titles I’ve previously reviewed, Alligator Pie (No. 55) and The Ice Cream Store (No. 63) — you’ll notice a slight departure here from his usual super-silly fare replete with wild and witty wordplay. These poems all feature a single little boy, and the tone is more tender, touching on a range of topics both real (rocking in a rocking chair, playing basketball, going to the movies) and imagined (riding an indigo stallion, pollywogs parachuting down from the sky, making pretend sandwiches out of “goober and guck”). The focus is on friendship, but most of the friends are animals, or else appear only in the boy’s head.

There is plenty of humor and fun here, but there is also a fair amount of subtle, hard stuff: loneliness, grief, the deep missing of someone you love. It’s almost as if Lee set out to write a funny book, per usual, but something happened — maybe in his own, real life? — and it permeated his poetry.

Which isn’t a criticism by any means. Life is funny and hard, is it not? This is why we need poetry — kids included — and why poetry is eternally lucky to have Dennis Lee.

---

I appreciate the space in your inbox and your brain.

Until next week,
Sarah