Caldecott Medal Contender: Nana in the City

by Sam Juliano

The city is a bustling place, intimidating and congested, and an unwelcome panacea for privacy and meditation.  Living there takes on nightmarish proportions, as people are always frantically rushing to be somewhere at a specific time.  Streets are inhabited by a mass of business people, vendors, cultural mavens, musicians and bicyclists, all either camped out on sidewalks or public parks, and heading in all directions.  Tourists enter and exit cabs, blending in with the flow, taking long and short glimpses at places gazed at for the very first time.  People who visit the city are sometimes kind enough to remark that it is such a great place to visit, but “I sure as heck would never want to live there.”  After all, the city is so big and so enveloping, that it sets the rules and the pacing, rather than the other way around.  The city never sleeps and its sounds are deafening.  The needy and the homeless hang out on street corners,  and panhandlers ply their craft, intruding on already violated privacy.  Construction seems to be going on at every other corner, and the visually bombastic signs of graffiti artists are ever cognizant at every turn.  There is no such thing as a one-family house in the city – everyone lives in tall apartment buildings.  The rooms shake as a result of rushing railway trains.  A young boy is exasperated that his beloved Nana calls this  melting pot of frantic activity her home.  Surely she would rather have some peace and comfort in her later years.  Surely she must recognize there is major inconvenience every day and some dangerous possibilities with such a feverish lifestyle.

This is the main idea and theme of Lauren Castillo’s extraordinary Nana in the City, a book about a rural youngster spending time with his granny in the Big Apple, and learning by experience that one should never read a book by its cover.  In the tradition of a distinguished series of books set in New York City (M. Lasek’s This is New York, Marc Brown’s In New York and Salvatore Rubbino’s A Walk in New York quickly come to mind) Castillo’s story and exquisite watercolor art escorts readers on a sensory tour of the very streets of the setting, weaving in familial intimacy that makes it stand apart.  There is a metamorphosis of sorts unfolding on these pages, which is basically that of a young child coming to learn and appreciate that fun can be consummated anywhere, and that happiness should never be dictated by geography.  There is a universality in the matter of displacement, even if it is of the transient variety.  Castillo uses the metaphor of the red cape to emphasize it is the person and not the surroundings, and the code word is brave.  The knitted cape in turn helps eradicate the boy’s shyness, enabling him to take refuge during his frolics around the metropolis with abandon.  He soon realizes that the place is steaming with all kinds of happy things – bicycling, sidewalk concerts, leashed dogs to pet, and full immersion in the picnic-like lawns of Central Park. Even gifting a homeless man -the same one he was frightened by early in the story-  a pretzel – brings on a special measure of satisfaction.  Nana in the City concludes with a farewell comparable with Lydia Grace Finch’s tearful departure from Uncle’s Jim’s apartment building in Sarah Stewart and David Small’s Caldecott Honor-winning  The Gardener.  

If Castillo’s timeless tale of urban domestication via a brief period of trial and tribulation provides the book’s emotive underpinning, the art is an exquisite visualization of that theme.  The copyright page showcases the Brooklyn Bridge seen from the Brooklyn side, and includes black ink and pencil sketching of the newly-constructed Freedom Tower and the New York City skyline.  Throughout Nana and the City, Castillo beautifully negotiates her trademark style of bold lines and colors that have impact for the younger ones, while leaving adults with the sturdy conviction that this is child’s eye impressionism.  It is earthy, real and honest, yet there is just enough of an abstract swing to make it the stuff that memories are made of.  One could surmise that the boy may not have an acute remembrance of all the details, but certainly what matters most – the sounds, the mass of people, and the numerous activities that define the very special nature of the city.  Some of Castillo’s set pieces are superb: the boy looking lost with his grandmother on a street corner, holding his ears while a policeman holding a stop sign blows his whistle and a jackhammer rumbles in the background.  The bright colors of the yellow cab and the traffic guard’s uniform are strikingly seen over the painstaking ink drawings of buildings, bricks and water towers.  In another marvelous double page spread the theater district is seen as a kaleidoscope of shapes and sizes, with words gloriously scribbled to emphasize that specific details are not what count, but the overall impressions.  The expansive Central Park vista is envisioned as place where bikers are out en masse, dogs are chasing balls, kids are flying kites, while others lounge on blankets, read books or push baby carriages.  The scene is sublimely shaded with autumnal hues, much like the arresting cover of the book, which does immediately set the time frame.  Most of the book features delightful and loving vignettes of grandmother and grandson interacting, and they are affectionately rendered in warm colors.  The six illustrations of the boy getting used to his cape are especially charming.

While Castillo also authored and illustrated the charming The Troublemaker early in the year, it is Nana in the City, that has landed her in the Caldecott race.  Children may well be able to relate with the boy’s initial mistrust of a lifestyle that seems too concentrated and alien, but likewise should find solace in his coming to terms with an understanding that there are wonderful aspects to every living equation.  Nana and the City is one of the year’s most accomplished picture books, and well deserves extended scrutiny from the Caldecott committee.

Note:  This is the seventeenth entry in the 2014 Caldecott Medal Contender series.  The series does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running.  In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration.  It is anticipated the series will include at least 30 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender.  Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end.  The awards will be announced on February 2nd, hence the reviews will continue to the end of January.

NANA AND THE CITY montage

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