Caldecott Medal Contender: After the Fall

by Sam Juliano

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

In Dan Santat’s gloriously revisionist After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again, the king’s men successfully patched up the personified egg and erstwhile top-of-the-wall dweller after a terrible mishap caused by his incorrigible love of birds.  And contrary to what one learned at the youngest of age after being read the most famous of all nursery rhymes, one can overcome the worst calamity and with the right attitude and application turn the experience into a life defining triumph.  Santat won the 2015 Caldecott Medal in what was considered a surprise for his magnificent The Adventures of Beekle, yet this year most of the children’s book predictors are naming After the Fall as either the winner of another Caldecott Medal or one of the Honors.  This unusually gifted artist, whose sixth book this is, has been on both sides of the expectation equation, yet there appears to be general agreement that this funny, moving and exhilarating work showcases his most exquisite art and that the book in general is his greatest to date.  Still, the sustained momentum for the book has reached a level now, that if Santat doesn’t come away with something on February 12th after all the year-end best lists, predictions and strong grass root support from teachers, librarians and book lovers, mouths will be agape like they were when Marla Frazee’s favored The Farmer and the Clown was left off completely in the year, ironically when Beekle took the gold.  When one factors in the intense 2018 competition, After the Fall’s singled-out superlative regard is even more remarkable.

Santat is up to same game practiced previously by Jon Szieska and Lane Smith and the late James Marshall.  But whereas both the duo (who collaborated on the Caldecott Honor book The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales and the wildly popular The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf) and Marshall (one of children’s literature’s all-time greatest satirists) were irreverent to the bitter end (always a joy of course) Santat’s comparable wit segues into an austere character metamorphosis, where consternation is replaced by bravery, indecision by confidence, abstention to full immersion.  And the final transformation, bringing the widest smile is one of unbridled soulfulness.

The title page spread features the distinguished block lettering of the cover with the article “the” encased in an arrow pointing downward.  The green-brown vine covered wall and the access ladder are seen, along with the ill-fated egg who is losing his balance while looking at birds with a pair of binoculars.  The following page again showcases the wall more richly colored.  Humpty explains his accident, acknowledging it made him famous.  But he adds that it was a life changing event.  Santat shows this nursery rhyme icon in full defiance of his demise, walking through the doors of Kings County Hospital.  His room at home (wouldn’t ya know H.D. would be sleeping on a bunk bed?!) offers conclusive evidence he’s a bird watcher to rate with the best.  He won a first place prize for his obsessive propensity, and bird drawings and the trust binoculars are present.  Humpty laments that “There were some parts that couldn’t be healed with bandages and glue.”  Few readers, whether children or grown-ups will fail to choose the fabulous cereal aisle spread as their favorite.  The colorful display of cereal boxes on the two highest shelves includes “Pirate Crunch,” “Choco Duck,” Rainbow Bites” and “Happy-O’s” is a sharp contrast with the drab offerings on the levels within Humpty’s reach.  Playing it conservatively is thematically tied to health food, but as the “Sad Clown” and “Bland” boxes confirm without the confidence to overcome inhibitions caused by the big fall, life will never again be lively.

But in the large scheme a craving for “Froot Hoops” or “Sugar Elf” is small potatoes next to the withdrawal pangs of hanging out at his favorite, lofty place, a lamentable deprivation he is reminded of everyday as he passes the wall, but risking another accident is no longer a feasible option.  Pictorially Santat’s depiction of yearning is conveyed in melancholic hues, denoting the despondency that has taken hold.  Even when self-made exile decides to end his bird watching sabbatical it is from the ground with the binoculars.  Santat’s color scheme is a gloomy greenish-grey in a pictorially striking ground capture.  But an flying object gives this previous starring player in Lewis Carroll’s Through a Looking Glass a cool idea.  He returns home to incur the trial and tribulations of paper plane construction in a series of delightful vignettes capturing the repeated frustration, before he perfects the sharpest and most ornate paper airplane one is likely to lay eyes on, and one that persuasively recalls some of the images in Gerald McDermott’s Caldecott Honor winning Raven.   The gliding and soaring plane enlivened Humpty’s spirits and in short order had him convinced the thrill and satisfaction was almost as heartening as his previous beloved pastime.  But as all kids who play stick-ball in a lot or volleyball in a contained area, the playing objects will sometimes sail over fences where they must be retrieved.  The look on Humpty’s wide-eyes face in another Santat pictorial gem is a reminder that nothing one does is accident-proof.  Shifting the book vertical is the best way to appreciate the flying over the wall canvas, a breathtaking perspective that as it turns out inspires the life-changing epiphany experienced by our oval shaped protagonist.

After briefly entertaining a resolve to leave well enough alone, this deep thinker who once served as a recurring motif for the Fall of Man in James Joyce’s 1939 Finnegan’s Wake realized that to walk away again might leave him forever disables both mentally and physically.  And the realization that he worked too hard finally persuaded him to set aside his fears and scale the wall again.  The climb brought on terror but he stayed the course, refusing to look up or down, taking it one step at time finally reaching the top in Rocky-like triumph that dispelled the fears at once and for all time as he held in hands up in a victory gesture.  Santat greets the moments with a filter of yellow light and adult readers might recall the famed exploits of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who in May of 1953 accomplished what no other had ever before.  Humpty’s success spelled erasure for failure, reluctance and low self esteem, and his final act, one mirroring Clark Kent’s transformation into the Man of Steel rewrote the literature on this tragic egg after it cracks, allowing the featured creature within to fly over the city in the most exhilarating of tapestries.  The artists’s depiction of the preceding  feathered moment of transformation is surely one of 2017 picture book’s most unforgettable.  The closing end papers depicting dusk, as opposed to the dawn seen in the opening, show this one time egg experiencing a new beginning, one where hope, confidence and bliss are wed into a wholly wistful closing canvas.

Every aspect of consummate book making is evident in After the Fall.  Even the dreamy inside cover, where Humpty is showing falling through the air is available for readers wanting to see the follow up to the title page.  The dust jacket cover of course is one of the year’s most distinguished, with the indented letters alluring even to the sense of feel.  This is a full package bringing together pictorial beauty, revisionism and vital human themes.  To say that Santat’s creation is sitting pretty is the year’s biggest understatement.  After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again is a masterpiece.

Author-artist Extraordinaire Dan Santat

Note:  This is the thirty-fourth 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.

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