maledop

** spoiler alert ** 1991 Caldecott Medal Winner This book questions itself as to whether it's actually all one story or four different stories. Each two-page spread is divided into four panels, each of which tells part of the story and is done in a different art style. A lot of reviewers found it confusing just to read it from front to back. I did too, at first, until I went back and read "each" story separately. I started by reading "Seeing Things," then "A Waiting Game," followed by "Problem Parents" and "Udder Chaos." In "Seeing Things," a boy is on the train, an old woman joins him in his car, the train tracks are blocked by "boulders" that the boy soon realizes are moving (clearly cows in the illustrations), the old woman vanishes, the boy passes a station thinking it's snowing and finds that the "snow" is actually strips of newspaper. He then reunites with his parents. In "A Waiting Game," people get bored of waiting for the train and make hats and clothes out of their newspapers, some pieces of which fly around the boy in the previous story's passing train. In "Problem Parents," some kids' parents come home from work, presumably having traveled on the delayed train, wearing newspaper clothing. Since they had fun, they want the kids to wear newspapers too. Finally, in "Udder Chaos," some Holstein cows escape, cross some train tracks, and a burglar hides among them. Once the story is read like that, it's easy to see where the train fits into each part. The newspapers show up in each part too, except for maybe "Udder Chaos." The burglar, we can now see, is the "old woman" in "Seeing Things," and when he leaves the train he appears in "A Waiting Game" on the train platform. He also shows up on TV in "Problem Parents." The cows themselves show up in "Seeing Things" and "Udder Chaos," and honestly, is that family dog in "Problem Parents" really a dog, or a tiny cow? This is really brilliantly done and has great re-read value even for adults. It just takes some patience for a few reads focusing on different aspects of the story for it to start to make sense.

2023-01-04 12:40