A Cornucopia of Children's Books

By Stefan Kanfer

Mythical creatures and magical transformations

Despite the claims of publishers, the popularity of children's books can not be gauged from sales figures. There only one reliable indicator of favorites: the library card. Books, after all, are merely purchased by adults; they are read by the young. This year, as in all years, the market is glutted with the inane and the precious, the coy and the overproduced--volumes designed to catch the shopper's eye, not the child's heart. Still, this year, as in all years, a few volumes have the aura of permanence: books that will not only be bought but--far more important--also borrowed.

Gnomes (Abrams; $17.50), by Dutch Scientist Wil Huygen, is the most original and sustained piece of whimsy since the productions of J.R.R. Tolkien. Throughout the book that bears their name, the little creatures are treated soberly as an endangered species "well out of sight, so much so in fact that belief in their existence is waning rapidly." A series of maps, anatomical charts, even recipes are provided, enlivened with sly, soft-focus illustrations by Rien Poortvliet. Gnomes one of the season's very few new books designed to be savored by the entire family. That the male gnome remains potent until about 350 years of age or that the buxom females, unencumbered by gravity, go braless may be of greater interest to parents than to the very young. The rest of this oversize book, with its bounteous legends, its wealth of robust humor and lavish illuminations, deserves a resounding G rating as ageless entertainment.

Joerg Mueller's The Changing Countryside (Atheneum; $9.95), is the pictorial equivalent of music--an unbound suite of seven large luminous paintings (33 3/4 in. by 12 1/2 in.) that spellbind without the use of words. Though Mueller is Swiss, his story, unfortunately, is universal: the gradual erosion of a natural setting by urban sprawl. Starting in the spring of 1953, with barefoot farm children in a burgeoning countryside, Artist Mueller takes characters and acreage through the incursions of a railroad, the depredations of bulldozer, drill and crane, and, ultimately, in the fall of 1972, to those hallmarks of Western civilization, the discount store and the parking meter. Yet Mueller never stoops to cheap nostalgia or self-righteous despair. Each page is keyed to a child's comprehension; each of the meticulous landscapes shows compassion as well as irony in the face of the familiar. A companion suite, The Changing City, shows the same process in an urban environment, from the calm, dignified arrangements of turn-of-the-century houses to the epoch of right-angle multiple housing and fast-food enterprises.

A Birthday Wish (Little, Brown; $5.95) is equally textless--save for a greeting on the final page. But within its elemental comic-strip layout a series of hilarious sight gags are set up and sent home. Author-Illustrator Ed Emberley has never been a man to pull his punch lines, and his jokes are often a bit too raucous; but then so is the laughter that ensues from their close inspection.

If birthday wishes and altered landscapes are mute, The Magic World of Words (Macmillan; $6.95), edited by Christopher G. Morris, more than compensates. This Very First Dictionary lucidly explains some 1,500 basic verbs, nouns and adjectives in comprehensible terms that do not send the child in search of yet another word. The illustrations tend to overemphasize exurban aspects of modern life--there is a preponderance of horses to illustrate such items as "chance," "gave" and "thin"--but the drawings are cheerful and the definitions make an important distinction between childish and childlike.

Somewhere in the '50s, William Steig grew in the popular mind from comedian to artist--a leap reflected in his series of now classic children's books. Caleb & Kate (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $7.95) again exhibits Steig's canny palette and a galloping narrative sense worthy of the brothers Grimm. The title characters engage in one of those domestic quarrels that have no origin and a violent end. Caleb slams out of the house, followed by a cascade of insults from his wife. Kate grows to miss her husband, but in time she is consoled by the appearance of a shaggy dog. The story matches the animal--for Caleb has been magically changed into a canine. His trip back to humanity is both a moral and a merriment, revealing the author's mastery of the folk tale and his origins as a magazine cartoonist.

Every child shuttles between the indulgences of fantasy and the demands of reality. Come Away from the Water, Shirley (Crowell; $6.95), by John Burningham, divides the opposing worlds into two parts. On the pages to the left, Shirley's parents prepare for an ordinary day at the beach--complete with folding chairs, snacks and warnings. On the right, Shirley engages in fictive voyages that would do credit to Sinbad, confronts pirates, finds buried treasure and sets sail for shore--all in the glowing terms of a child's interior vision.

Nancy Winslow Parker's Love from Uncle Clyde (Dodd. Mead; $5.25) maintains the same 20/20 insight. The title character is one of the great explorer-eccentrics. There is no finer way to say Merry Christmas, he decides, than to send his nephew a hippopotamus. The great behemoth's adventures on lawns and in bath tubs have the freshness and vigor of a kid with a new crayon, an unlined piece of paper and an unfettered imagination.

The captions of One Old Oxford Ox (Atheneum; $6.95) are little more than exercises in alliterative tongue twisters like "six sportsmen shooting snipe." The illustrations are something else entirely. The purity of Nicola Bayley's hues and her quattrocento landscapes, blended with a parade of lunatic fauna, recall the work of the finest Victorian illustrators--and cry for a text to equal their richness and exuberance.

Graham Oakley manages the illustrator's most difficult balancing act: animals that are true to the story and to themselves. In The Church Mice Adrift (Atheneum; $7.95), without a trace of anthropomorphism, he follows the journey of displaced mice through rain, darkness, rats and cats. His cast is Dickensian, and his male lead, an orange feline named Sampson, turns out to be the most unlikely and delightful Mouseketeer of the year.

Eric Carle's bright, elemental The Grouchy Ladybug (Crowell; $6.95) is about a mite spoiling for a fight. But every opponent has a stinger, a scent or a size that is superior. Carle has designed the book to fit the tale: as the heroine meets larger animals, the pages grow in size. None of the confrontations manage to sweeten the insect's disposition. That transformation is accomplished by powers that neither ladybug nor reader can resist: hunger and exhaustion.

The Second Whole Kids Catalog (Bantam; $7.50), by Peter Cardozo, belongs on any whole kid's bookshelf. No matter what his or her interest--or obsession--this fat paperback has an entry to satisfy it. Like the first Whole Kids Catalog (1975), its encore lists scores of free items that children can send away for--posters, coloring books, even games. Is the child a budding conjuror? Self-Working Card Tricks are only a postage stamp (plus $1.50) away, as well as membership in the Young Magicians Club. Kids into cartoons and photography can study film animation, make paper movie machines and paint with the sun. From Kite Flying to the less earthbound joys of Star Trekking and Rocketry, the Whole Kids Catalog consistently amuses and informs. It could use one visual aid: the book has no index. Still, its 250 pages are so entrancing that the searcher for any particular item will find that getting there is more than half the fun.

Richard Scarry should get an award for everything but his titles. His Best Make-It Book Ever! (Random House; $4.95) is nothing of the kind; it is merely the best of the year. Like his other amuse-yourself books, this fine, inventive paperback shows young readers hundreds of ways to brighten a rainy day or beguile the hours between Sesame Street and supper. This is a cut-and-paste book for all seasons: there are valentines to make, Halloween masks to wear, even Christmas decorations to festoon the tree--including a Santa Claus bird and a mouse on ice skates. Bakers are invited to try an easy-to-make--and easier-to-eat--orange cake frosting; puppeteers are shown patterns for a cast of characters; TV fans are even given a plan for constructing a paper set with moving characters and a nonviolent script. As always, Scarry's freehand drawings and merry text provide the best arrangement since the dish ran away with the spoon.

This year two books need no color to make them models of superlative craftsmanship and originality. In My Village, Sturbridge (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $6.95), Gary Bowen invents a character, True Mason, and walks him through a 19th century New England village. Bowen's style is lean and precise. But it is his and Randy Miller's brilliantly detailed wood engravings that grant My Village the aura of a rare antique rescued from some forgotten attic. David Macaulay has won an international reputation without being able to draw believable people. What he can draw--churches, cities, pyramids--he does better than any other pen-and-ink illustrator in the world. His previous books have examined the construction and administration of those structures; Castle (Houghton Mifflin; $8.95) once again goes through a brick-by-brick assembly, employing crosshatches and thin black lines to evoke a medieval place and period.

Caveat emptor: miracles occur in only a few books each season. And when they do, it is usually the givers who are astonished, not the recipients. This Christmas, as in the past, Ogden Nash's words will still ring true:

Sophisticated parents live agog in

a world that to them is

enchanted;

Ingenuous children just naively

take it for granted.

--Stefan Kanfer

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