Enchantments For
By Stefan Kanfer
A is for abecedarians, people who are learning the alphabet. This season they and their families are in luck: three ABC books offer a bright amalgam of sophistication and simplicity. In Pigs from A to Z (Houghton Mifflin; $15.95), Arthur Geisert's suite of copper etchings follows siblings with curly tails and mischievous minds as they construct a wolfproof tree house by the letters. En route, the illustrator-author ingeniously employs words that describe his book (eerie, ideal, spectacular) and performs the hardest task in children's literature: enlightening with surprises.
Two other volumes share the same aim. Florence Cassen Mayers' red ABC (Abrams; $9.95) uses objects in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: D is for a Renoir dancer; N is for an Audubon nest; V is for a Degas violinist. Mayers also offers a matching blue volume (Abrams; $9.95), with works from the Museum of Modern Art in New York: F is for a Jasper Johns flag; N is for a starry night by Van Gogh; G is for an appropriate goat by Pablo Picasso. After all, he was the artist who said it took him a lifetime to paint like a child.
At 79, Cartoonist William Steig continues to create with a master's style and a youth's imagination. In his 20th book, Brave Irene (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $12.95), the daughter of a fevered dressmaker attempts to deliver a ball gown to a faraway duchess. Young Irene is faced with cold, snowdrifts and night. Lesser individuals might need rescuers, but this child has ingenuity to go with her spunk. She turns the dress box into a toboggan and slides her way to the ball. Young ladies have come a long way since Hans Christian Andersen's little match girl froze her toes in the snow.
Even so, many of the great Dane's stories have remained in the repertoire because, as Isak Dinesen once observed, he "can be so indescribably simple and touching . . . he is a great magician." Andersen's grandest illusion takes place in The Ugly Duckling (Knopf; $10.95). Illustrator Robert Van Nutt begins by using a primary-school palette. But as the duckling sheds its down and acquires an elegant neck, the dominant hue changes to a formal white, reflecting Andersen's change of mood. The story is sometimes read as a revenge play, but Van Nutt makes it clear that he regards the duckling's progress as a happy tale of growing up, giving the protagonist (and the young reader) the enviable role of Everyduck.
The clean, antic style of the Warner Bros. cartoons lives in the pages of William the Backwards Skunk (Crown; $10.95). And why not? The artist-author is Chuck Jones, 74, director of so many Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Road Runner animated shorts that even he has lost count. Jones has no trouble recalling the number of books he has produced: this is his first. The star is a highly odiferous creature who wears his white stripe in front, where no enemy can see it. In the forest, confusion reigns supreme. The panthers, foxes and bears are afraid to hunt; without a stripe across the back, any small, furry animal might be a stinker. Will hunger prevail? Jones believes in a peaceable kingdom, but he is well aware of Woody Allen's aphorism that the lion may lie down with the lamb, but the lamb will not get much sleep. There are some tough and hilarious negotiations before the forest can guarantee the survival of the fuzziest.
A year without a Maurice Sendak book is like a dinner without ice cream. This season the doyen of children's books has produced nothing new, but his Posters (Crown; $45) collects in an oversize volume works that few enthusiasts have ever seen. Here are his broadsides for operas by Mozart and Janacek (with sets and costumes from designs by the artist). Here are brilliant announcements for the International Year of the Child; a magnificent lion and butterfly for the Broadway flop Stages; and 1985's poster for Jewish Book Month, with the sound rabbinical advice, "To three possessions thou shouldst look. Acquire a field, a friend, a book."
Chris Van Allsburg is a magic realist whose haunting illustrations are full of silence and mystery -- perhaps too much mystery for his slender narratives. In The Stranger (Houghton Mifflin; $15.95), 15 autumnal watercolors all but supplant the story of a nameless figure knocked down by a farmer's pickup. He recuperates at the farm, mute but helpful. As long as the mysterious man is present, the farmer's fields stay green, while all around them leaves turn the color of fire. Winter comes only when the stranger departs. Every year thereafter, the frosty windows bear a Delphic message, SEE YOU NEXT FALL. Van Allsburg the writer could use an interpreter. Van Allsburg the illustrator is luckier; his paintings have an eloquence of their own.
In the past, black children have generally been neglected by publishers, but this year brings two outstanding compensations. In Cherries and Cherry Pits (Greenwillow; $11.75), Vera B. Williams introduces Bidemmi, a gifted young black girl who draws a world of apartments and subway stops and ghetto / streets. With her felt-tip pens and knowledgeable left hand, Bidemmi gives those scenes an optimistic glow, heightened by a metaphor: cherry pits. Everyone in the neighborhood, including a pet parrot, eats cherries. The seeds are scattered in the hope that one day there will be a whole orchard on Bidemmi's block, with harvest enough, says the last rainbow illustration, to feed everyone.
The roots of the urban experience are exposed in Flossie and the Fox (Dial; $10.89). Patricia C. McKissack's comedy of a girl who has to get a passel of eggs past a predator recalls Joel Chandler Harris' Brer Rabbit stories. "See," says the fox, "I have thick, luxurious fur. Feel for yourself." Returns Flossie, "Ummm. Feels like rabbit fur to me . . . You aine no fox. You a rabbit, all the time trying to fool me." The fox spends so much time trying to convince Flossie that he is nearly undone by a dog, allowing the child to escape with her treasure intact. Rachel Isadora's warm illustrations are as sly as the characters, and they carry a valuable message first articulated by Mark Twain: "Put all your eggs in the one basket and -- WATCH THAT BASKET."
And how did all the above works find their way to the shelves? For the curious of any age, Aliki shows How a Book Is Made (Crowell; $12.95). Here the author -- and every other professional from editor to printer -- is a cat. Except for this trifling departure from reality, every detail is absolutely accurate. With affection and whimsy, Aliki takes the reader from the day of inspiration to the fretful submission to the publisher, the text changes, the choice of typeface, the compelling and intricate business of color separation, the binding, the selling and, finally, that most curious of all processes, reviewing. In this case the judgment is an encouraging purr: Happy New Year.