Caldecott Medal Contender: A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider

by Sam Juliano

Most book historians see it as America’s answer to Britain’s beloved The Wind in the Willows.  Teachers have been partial to it almost from the time it was named a Newbery Honor book in 1953, months after it released.  Indeed the very fact it did not win the Newbery Medal remains in the children’s book world a bone of contention to match the Oscar snub of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane in 1941, especially since the vast majority can’t identity the title chosen over it.  Similar to the way some recall where they were when they heard the news of Kennedy’s assassination, former students have never forgotten when they first read the book.  Some like myself can vividly recall the year and place where it happened and teacher who presented it  (Grade 4, Mrs. Celeste Zematies, 1963/4), while many others seem to always recall the experience as something very special in their lives. Though the author of this tour de force of children’s literature only published three novels during a long life, the fascination for his persona has never abated.  Children who read Charlotte’s Web are invariably drawn to questions about its creator.  The intrigue is bolstered by an emotional connection to the book’s characters.  As a child I had hoped the author would still be alive to tell us that Charlotte had not really expired or that she would be resurrected in a sequel.  White lived twenty-one years more after the book was read to our class, and was highlighted in several articles of The Weekly Reader, so some of us never stopped hoping.  What I found out in adulthood is that White was an even more intriguing literary figure, and that after he passed away at the ripe old age of 86 on October 1,1985, information about his life were invaluable in piecing together how this towering literary figure came into the ideas that resulted in his three iconic works, one of which is his wildly popular maiden novel, Stuart Little.

Just barely one year ago two-time Caldecott Honor winning author-illustrator Melissa Sweet released her own homage to the E.B. White literature with a passionate straightforward biography, Some Writer!,  utilizing archival materials that helped paint a provocative portrait of the icon through letters, manuscripts, interview excerpts and photos that achieve immediate visual chemistry with Sweet’s trademark mixed media collage art.  It was an exceptional work, befitting such a beloved American icon, but as it turns out it is not the final word.  Indeed it is doubtful there will  ever be any measure of finality as far as White is concerned.  What even the most passionate White aficionados could hardly have expected was another book so soon and at that one worthy of comparison with its immediate predecessor conceptually and artistically, a collaboration of extraordinary prose and sublime art, pairing together a newcomer with a young artist who already has won a Caldecott Honor among a bevy of magnificent titles.

A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider’s acute focus is on how animals and nature exerted the defining influence on White’s prose, and how that writing was inspired by the observation details of the immersion, which may him feel free.  As Michael Sims notes in his The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E.B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic, “sometimes he (Elwin) joined friends at the Stratton family’s barn, where the coachman would let the boys climb up into the loft and swing wildly down on a rope.  He loved the wild sense of freedom as he fell toward the ground and then flew up into the sky.”  Direct interactions with the rodent immortalized by Walt Disney led to Stuart Little the most beloved children’s mouse book ever written.  A deeper observational engagement in the barnyard inspired his great masterpiece after a pig and spider spurred his imagination to its heights.  Herkert’s illustrator is Caldecott Honor winning humanist Lauren Castillo, who brings the desired bold lined, earthy quality to an indelible assortment of double page spreads, single page tapestries and vignettes, all negotiated in brown ink, watercolor, Adobe photo shop and foam print textures  on Arches hot pressed dotted beige and white pages.  The book’s trim is a square, which as Tennessee school librarian Emme Stuart superbly poses in her Calling Caldecott review of the book, in paraphrasing another  “four even sides of a square book can impart coziness or a sense of security.”  This is of course precisely the environment the young White grew up in.

The book’s fabulous dark brown colored spine topped by a web and a sting holding a spider is my favorite of the year in that often obscured category.  The cover features a pre-pubescent White jotting down notes in the barn, as a bevy of happy animals look on.  Castillo’s bold-lined silhouettes of pigs and chickens make this observational session distinctly two-dimensional pictorially and thematically.  The handsome inside hard cover is orange-yellow with a maroon etched depiction of young Elwyn holding a mouse while eyeing a spider hanging down from a thread.

Herkert’s narrative launches with Elwyn befriending a mouse in his toy friendly bedroom, and in follow-up vignettes he is shown bringing up to the attic and out to the horse barn, while dressed in his sailor suit.  While in the stable his senses are acutely enlivened as the author conveys in one of her most lyrical passages:

In the refuge of the stable, Elwyn’s senses sharpened to the ripe scent of harness leather, the perfect shape of eggs, the snort of tired horses, the sweet-dry smell of hay, and a spider’s masterpiece.

The scenario of Elwyn’s schoolroom initiation is one shared by many insecure kindergarten students who are invariably afraid to venture out their comfort zone, especially bereft of security blankets like the boy’s absent mouse.  The routine after the daily conclave was full immersion in his zoological holdings, as per Herkert:  pigeons, polliwogs, rabbits, turtles, and canaries, all of which were afforded permanent residence in in “cages, coops and jars.”  Castillo, an avowed picture book humanist, chronicles genuine affection, what with daily affection at an impressionable age, with a series of irresistible vignettes of Elwyn in his sailor suit prioritizing what he held most dear in the world.  Castillo’s “summer stars” spread is one of the book’s most extraordinary, a double page impressionist tapestry forged by color saturation  and sketch lines that help blur the consciousness, allowing him to write “what he saw, heard and felt.”

Hence, Elwyn developed a passion for writing, which for him was the way to give a measure of permanence to his feelings, even if some were ephemeral.  After he entered college, friends began calling him Andy.  He ascended to Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper, a scene marvelous captured in plaid vests, neck and bow-ties, bundled newspapers, a manual typewriter and an overhanging single bulb light at the commencement of the Roaring Twenties.  A dapper mouse appeared to Andy in a dream as he rode on a train.  Stuart Little was soon to come.  A Yuletide canvas depicting Andy telling mouse stories to an eager audience of eighteen family members recalls Charles Dickens who likewise presented his stories in multi installments.  Castillo’s homey tableau is a study in fireplace captivation, one without a single errant glance or unheard utterance.  The Brooklyn Bridge tapestry, with pre-Depression era cars and crowded apartment buildings vividly recalls a similar scene from Sergio Leone’s period gangster epic Once Upon A Time in America (1984), though Castillo’s pictorial temperament is markedly benign.  Andy is seen pushing Baby Joel in a carriage, with his wife Katherine in tow.

From bustling New York City to pastoral Maine Andy and his family undergo an acute urban to rural metamorphosis, as they move in a dream house in Maine.  Castillo envisions the new residence as a rustic oasis, tailor made for boundless creativity.  Herkert poses that Andy “followed his instincts” and turned his mouse stories into his first novel, the venerated Stuart Little, resisting the diversions of “stoic sheep, anxious hens and gossiping geese” he stocked his barn with.  Yet, his greatest masterpiece and a final well-received third novel were still ahead and the author suggests a few domestic events as pivotal in inspiring White to move forward.  The first dawned on him as he fed a small pig, wondering “What if the creature was rescued from a farmer’s deadly plan?”  The answer to the question of who would be the book’s hero came to him briefly eluded him as he sat at his typewriter in one of the most idyllic of settings for a writer, in a quaint boat house aside a stream on  trek of perfect solitude. Castillo’s sublime representation is markedly Emersonian, setting nature as the sole inspiration.  Eventually while looking up at a spider spinning a web in the corner of the barn door, White found his most unlikely savior, one he named Charlotte A, Cavatica, and friendship had a new definition.  The illustrator’s magnificent canvas, set at dusk on a chilly autumnal day represents a literary epiphany, with the arresting silhouette of a pig looking on, features bordered with a golden glow. The book’s theme and in fact complete thrust centers around the writer’s motivation and how the world around him dictated his productivity.  Herkert relates this beautifully:

E.B. White celebrated life through a mouse’s journey, the pact between a pig and a spider, and the power of words.  He basked in the seasons, the peace of the barn, the beauty of the world.  His stories capture the glory of nature and the comfort of hope.

Author Barbara Herkert

The same familial camaraderie Castillo so strikingly etched in the picnic scene in her Caldecott Honor book Nana and the City is transcribed to the most rural of settings, a direct contrast between steaming masses and the power of the imagination.  A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider a collaborative miracle, deserving vigorous scrutiny by the Caldecott committee.

Award winning illustrator Lauren Castillo

 

Note:  This is the twenty-first 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.