Big Kids
Chris Flynn
May 31
The success of Adam Mansbach’s book Go the Fuck to Sleep, so wonderfully illustrated by Ricardo Cortés is indicative of the huge, and largely under populated branch of children’s books that are written specifically for adults. Just as Pixar realized the potential in populating their kids’ movies with scenes adults would enjoy, Mansbach and Cortés knew they were creating a book that would appeal to parents, and that in fact would probably never be read aloud to most children. For those mothers and fathers concerned about the sensitive ears of their tykes, the epithets have been removed in the more palatable but less fun version Seriously, Just Go to Sleep.
Their partnership reminded me of the enduring relationship between Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake. Anyone who ever read the illustrated versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Twits, The Witches and all the other mildly disturbing Dahl classics will be familiar with Blake’s perfectly attuned watercolours. Blake turns eighty in December of this year and has illustrated more than three hundred books, including thirty-five he wrote himself. He worked with Dahl for thirteen years, during which time the intimidating writer good-naturedly kept Blake on his toes by ribbing him constantly on a variety of matters, amongst them Blake’s penchant for wearing white loafers (he was asking for that one).
Lisa Brown is an American author who released a series of books a few years back through McSweeney’s, in which she proposed putting infants to work to complete the everyday tasks parents can’t be bothered doing anymore. These include Baby, Make Me Breakfast, Baby Fix My Car, Baby Do My Banking and my favourite Baby, Mix Me a Drink—‘Are you a parent? Are you thirsty? Too many of us allow our infant sons and daughters to lay about idly: napping, drinking milk, and sometimes “turning over.” Why not have them mix you a cocktail?’
McSweeney’s have on occasion dabbled in this genre of odd children’s book that is more satisfying for adult readers—2009’s Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country being a prime example. In this, kids from across America were invited to send letters of advice to their newly inaugurated President, Barack Obama. Some gems of wisdom include, ‘If I were President, I would help all nations, even Hawaii’ and ‘As president, I’d have a couch made out of pudding that you could eat with a giant spoon. And I’d have a pizza carpet. After we’d eaten all of our furniture, we’d buy real furniture.’ Those politicians at home and abroad looking to court the youth vote take note—couches made of pudding are a sure fire winner.
Dave Eggers and his younger brother Toph write books for younger readers under the pseudonyms Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey, including such gems as Giraffes? Giraffes! and Animals of the Ocean, in Particular the Giant Squid, though these can be a little tricky to come by now. McSweeney’s have finally formalized their children’s books endeavours in the McMullens series, named for their influential art director Brian McMullen. A triumph of art and story, their titles are as yet few, but are looking good. Jordan Crane’s Keep Our Secrets (to be read in a whisper) features heat-sensitive disappearing ink, robot raccoons and cheese cameras, whereas Sheila Heti’s We Need a Horse, so beautifully illustrated by Clare Rojas, follows a philosophical horse and his friend the tennis-playing sheep as they work out the big question—why?
Only four McMullens books exist so far, but the intention is to publish many more, including out of print classics that will no doubt be reinvented for a modern audience by Brian McMullen as triumphs of design. Go the Fuck to Sleep has once more raised the profile of this genre championed so many years ago by pioneers like Dahl, Blake and Sendak, and it should be fascinating to see what else appears on the horizon of the rude fictional netherworld that appeals to children and adults alike.
Here is Quentin Blake creating a drawing from scratch in ten minutes:
Our Friends
- Alien Onion
- Ampersand Duck
- Andrew McDonald
- A Pair of Ragged Claws
- Arts Victoria
- Australia Council for the Arts
- AustLit
- Bookshow blog
- CAL
- City of Tongues
- Crikey
- darkly wise, rudely great
- David Astle
- Dorothy Johnston
- Elmo Keep Does Stuff
- The Ember
- Going Down Swinging
- Griffith Review
- Hackpacker
- Harvest
- Island
- Killings blog
- Lorraine Crescent
- Lynden Barber
- Mandy Ord
- Marcus Westbury
- Matilda
- Meanland
- Melbourne University Publishing
- Mel Campbell
- The Monthly
- Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
- Oslo Davis
- Overland
- Paul Callaghan
- Read, Think, Write
- Right Now
- Sleepers Publishing
- Sorrow at Sills Bend
- SPLOG
- The Stella Prize
- Tom Cho
- Virgule
- Wheeler Centre
Comments
31 May 12 at 13:34
Thought-provoking post, Chris. Though, imo, there’s different ‘adult’ concepts being explored in the texts you’ve listed here.
Go the f*ck to sleep and the Lisa Brown books seem to me to be written from the position of the ironic parent: the joke is for grown-ups about their children and the frustrations of parenting; it was never really intended for a child audience.
The Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey books, on the other hand, are not unlike the children’s annuals of forty and fifty years ago (when children were expected to act as children with an adult’s educational enthusiasm), admittedly with a fat dollop of absurdism thrown into the mix.
But I don’t think the works of Dahl, Blake or Sendak were produced to fit the landscape of this adult world; I suggest their works totter on the precipice of the uncanny and the sublime, the adult knowing and the child sensing.
Two of my favoutie children’s books are Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, illustrated by Quentin Blake, and Maurice Sendak’s Outside Over There, both of which terrify me with their impressions of a kind of Otherness that comes from experiencing grief or horror. They are concepts so adult that I still don’t have the words to quite express how unsettled they make me feel, but they seem to me to totter in that space where adult and child readers might meet.
...