Caldecott Medal Contender: Where’s Rodney?

by Sam Juliano

“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach of us more than we can ever learn from books.”           -John Lubbock

In clinical terms the condition is referred to as “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” but what really defines the title character in Carmen Bogan’s exuberant Where’s Rodney? is a youth possessing an orientation for immersion in anything of an alfresco slant.  This is a boy by his very nature who could never achieve his potential in a rigidly cerebral environment.  The independence one associates with the open air promotes self-reliance and a naturalist philosophy that in turn will bolster rather than curtail scholastic advancement.  Legendary botanist and environmentalist John Muir spent years hiking through Western forests and writing impassioned pleas to important politicians, which in part resulted in the creation of the “national park.” William Dickson Boyce, an outdoorsman by nature, is often credited with helping to found the Boy Scouts of America after many years of camping and hiking through especially rugged terrain.  The celebrated  transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau in his defining work Walden detailed his experience in rejecting the city life in favor of a cabin on the edge of a pond.  As these seminal figures have documented, there can never be a replacement for actual experience, for all the study and volumes read.  Bogan reverses the learning process by having Where’s Rodney?’s spirited protagonist absorb the sensory elements first, and then to attach the meaning that is meant to be imparted in strictly didactic terms.  In this sense it would be exceedingly difficult to argue that Rodney or any other young person who redefines academic order doesn’t have a head up on those who can identify or access but not necessarily “feel.”

In conjunction with the Yosemite Conservancy, “Dream On Publishing”, an independent multicultural children’s book sponsor committed towards promoting literacy for children of color was established four years ago by none other than Bogan herself.  Planning a visit to a park within the reach of any school or family unit is the underlying aim of this unique and singular picture book, one of a continuing series that is intended to let all kids know that individually and collectively they count mightily in the larger scheme.  After the brown hued title page replication of a later tableau depicting Rodney at the height of his sensory raptness a situational drama juxtaposing the insufferable claustrophobia of the classroom and the free-spirited exhilaration only made possible without the man made barriers is played out.  Bogan’s illustrator is the acclaimed Floyd Cooper, an inspired choice for this project if there ever was one.  Cooper’s “subtractive” process, distinctive and idiosyncratic, involves color washing and peeling away of layers to achieve the striking grainy texture that emboldens the humanist elements in his books.  A crisp and soulful documentation of profoundly registered unbridled emotions carry along the stories he illustrates far more than any conventional notions of plot.

Rodney’s teacher is forever exasperated by his regular tardiness (Rodney! Where’s Rodney?), the result of his propensity for keeping an eye on matters unfolding outside through a cafeteria portal.  Keeping an eye on a black bird, pill bug and a bullying stray dog was infinitely more appealing than sitting in a desk listening to a teacher.  Rodney is unable to supply the requested definition of the word majestic, but can skillfully ape the movements of birds and crickets, a practice that inspires hilarious uproar among his classmates but vexation for his teacher Ms. Garcia.  Sit down, Rodney! is no doubt a recurring order in a place that for Rodney is a glorified Alcatraz.  Cooper answers the bell with a soulful pictorial burst of classroom anarchism.  The next view of a Rodney in a full frontal shows him frowning with that grounded look after the at-her-wits-end educator defines the word majestic for her incorrigible charge, adding that the price to pay for not completing his work will forfeiture of the coming field trip privileges.  This impending revocation leaves the boy unfazed as the park is nothing more than a small patch of yellow grass “next to the corner store and bus stop.  It had one large cardboard trash can and two benches where some grownups sat all day long.”  This was not a place Rodney’s mother wanted her son to hang near and she expressed herself on that matter explicitly.

When the bell rang for end-of-the-day dismissal Rodney darted out after his daily incarceration, ignoring urgings from the crossing guard not to run.  Bogan states:  He ran past the corner store.  He ran past the bus stop.  Then he ran past the triangle-shaped patch of yellow grass and the two benches and the broken gate where the bully-dog slept. The hug Rodney gives his mom tells us all we need to know about this family dynamic, and as always Cooper exhibits that soulful eye.  A most unexpected of developments played out on Friday morning after Rodney and his classmates boarded the yellow school bus.  Cooper depicts the two young girls Sue Lin and Amina singing and clapping via the back window of the vehicle, but Bogan notes that the bus moves “past the bus stop, past the corner store, and even past the patch of yellow grass.  The old school bus rumbled, rolled and creaked farther and longer than Rodney had ever been.”  Cooper’s blurred perspectives confirmed urban departure, a gleeful revelation for Rodney who gazes out the window with marked delight.  After doing what so many kids do when enraptured – counting white lines on the road or the numbers of trucks that pass by- Rodney observes the workers in the field tending to rows of crops, a sure sign that his group has entered the rural realm.  Bogan’s metaphorical framing of the bus’ arrival at the actual park is fabulous:

The old bus clanked, coughed, and choked.  It climbed higher and higher untill a great mountain swallowed it whole.  At the other end of the tunnel, the mountain spit out the old bus into a flash of sunshine.  

Cooper’s depiction of Rodney is one of unbridled joy, though he saves his most extraordinary tapestries for the scene-specific tableaus of Rodney’s nature immersion, where he takes on the role of an extremist in every location and interactive moments the author mapped out for the various park land forays.  His various immersions recall the opposite contentions in the song “Turn Turn Turn” based on the book of Ecclesiastes.  At the top of a rock formation the boy no doubt felt like Sir Edmund Hillary when he became the first person to ascend Mount Everest.  He was no less contented sitting at the bottom of a valley  looking up at birds in flight and the towering column shaped configurations.  Moving from Lilliput to Brobdingnag, as he spies an ant hill incredulously or ponders a towering sequoia in a scenario that evokes Jack and his fantastical beanstalk.  You can practically hear an echo as Rodney proudly confirms his reverberations are the most booming, while approaching a bird’s next he’s the very definition of quietude.  The illustrator’s impressionist application of color balls on the leaves in a forest hamlet is dazzling.  Cooper’s gigantic boulder canvas bears a striking resemblance to the one at Devil’s Den in Gettysburg, and it serves to signify how nature offers up freedom and obstacles in the same natural enclosure.  Perhaps the most irrepressible capture of Rodney in the book is the one where he holds out his hands as a drop of water lands on his forehead.  Alas he is truly in his element.  As the bus departs, Rodney is shown gazed out a front window where a rainbow wash filters in.  His teacher sits next to him, posing a question about the park, though she well knows the answer she will get.  The special bonus is the real lesson learned when Rodney enthusiastically opines “It’s majestic!”

Author Carmen Bogan

Light nature green end papers and an exquisite back cover of a floral and forest trek complete the deal in the most ravishing of terms.  In a year highlighting books like the Polish import A Walk in the Forest by Maria Dek and Over and Under the Pond by Kate Messner and Christoper Silas Neal, Where’s Rodney? is perhaps the most unabashedly celebratory of them all.  Once again Floyd Cooper, working here with superlative material from Ms. Bogan has through his arresting tapestries captured the essence of an outdoor experience that is meant to both clarify the learning process and as other book critics have rightly asserted to convey the “transformative power of nature.”  Like his other 2017 book The Ring Bearer, (which will also be reviewed in this series) Where’s Rodney? is a magnificent and moving work that should be sitting plain and center on that final stack of books in front of the Caldecott committee members.

Acclaimed Illustrator Floyd Cooper

 

Note:  This is the sixteenth entry in the 2017 Caldecott Medal Contender series.  The annual venture 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 in the neighborhood of around 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 in mid-February, hence the reviews will continue until around the end of January or through the first week of February.