From the Child's Shelf: Sendak's No Bumbler

Sendak, Maurice. Bumble-Ardy. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Maurice Sendak's new book Bumble-ardy is the story of a pig celebrating his first birthday party, which is his ninth birthday. The backstory, which is told in preface, is that Bumble-ardy's family "frowned on fun", which explains his lack of birthdays hitherto, and his parents were recently killed. Although his parents were butchered, the fact that humans would have been the ones to murder them isn't emphasized. And so, all readers of the book are immediately set up as the antagonists to this world. 


The story begins with Bumble-ardy moving in with his aunt and his decision, against her wishes and knowledge, to throw himself a birthday party. A masquerade party. The party lasts most of the book as the animals, dressed as humans, drink "brine", dance, and celebrate the life of Bumble-ardy--and, as such, life itself. But it's a strange dance to celebrate an equally strange life. Without surprise, as it is with any celebration of life comes life's comrade-in-the-wings: death. 

When any talk of controversy or irritability about Bumble-ardy rears, it's typically in regards to the presence of death (although, a cursory glance at the GoodReads page for the book suggests that adult readers are equally irritable due to Bumble-ardy not being Where The Wild Things Are). 

However, death is not a focus of the story, is never central to any page, stands in the background, and only becomes apparent on subsequent reads. Perhaps it is death's representation as natural and part of the scene that causes some readers to focus and dwell on it, and in dwelling, become concerned that their children are dwelling in the same ways. Perhaps if readers view death as unnatural and something to be feared, heckled, ignored, repressed, and otherwise stricken from reality, then Bumble-ardy works as a counter to those notions. 

Bumble-ardy is a fine addition to the growing canon of children's literature. The style of the illustrations ranges between realism (in how Bumble-ardy and his aunt and friends are depicted) and the grotesque (in how the costumed animals are depicted when they attend the masquerade). Thus, because Bumble-ardy's birthday masquerade is the dominant focus of the story, the majority of the illustrations are styled in purposely crude renderings. 

Foldout of one of the masquerade scenes from Bumble-ardy. In this one it is less clear whether

the skeleton is a costume worn by a pig or a guest that slipped in as guests do when everyone's in

disguise. 

This is an especially poignant decision on the part of Sendak because it is when the pigs mimic humans that the drawings become grotesque--the pigs' imaginings of human life and their play-acting it. After all, the pigs' world is the reality of this book, and the humans' world is not the reality--adult humans are the murderers and antagonists.  And the swine children, in subverting power take on the masks of how they perceive that power to look and behave (little differently than human children behave behind the backs of authority figures who have abused their power). That the masquerade has a dark element running throughout it is true, but perhaps it is not the background presence of death that causes it but in how the pigs act when they pretend to be more powerful (what chaos they reflect).   

In terms of calling the figures at the masquerade grotesques, it seems useful to note that the drawings at these points are much closer to the hand of the child artist--and so, likely, children will recognize their own renderings of the world in Sendak's and, thus, find a comrade in the world of adults. In a way, Sendak is replying to the child reader's own drawings, no doubt tucked away under his or her mattress or in a desk at school.  

(It is little wonder that some adult readers do not like these drawings, but again, the book isn't for them. Here I'm reminded of an anecdote from my sister-in-law in which she had to have a child's drawing printed on T-shirts for her son's class of third-graders and when she went to pick up the T-shirt she found that the business owner had "fixed" the child's drawing and printed the "improved"--adult--rendering on the T-shirts. Needless to say, the shirts had to be reprinted with the correct, child's drawing. And, then, there's the children's literature equivalent of the narrator of The Little Prince joking with his readers about how silly people can be about drawings.)

When Bumble-ardy's aunt comes home to find her house overflowing with swine and brine, she threatens to slice everybody into ham if they don't scram. Here she is not threatening cannibalism as some casual readers have suggested but murder. In fact, since the pigs' predator is the human, Bumble-ardy's aunt is at her worst when she treats Bumble-ardy and his friends as a human would treat them: unreasonable animals undifferentiated by any action, thought, or word--as a mass for mass slaughter.  And she holds the human's tool: the cleaver.


But the book can resist this read as well, for it's unclear whether or not humans actually exist in the world Bumble-ardy lives in.  Just as humans have masquerades in which they don costumes of mythical creatures, so too might Bumble-ardy and friends be costumed as the mythical human.  After all, no human presents him or herself in the book outside of being a costume and there does seem to be a hierarchy of class in Bumble-ardy's world in that not all the swine walk upright and not all the swine are in costume but are used more like a servant class (being used, for example, like a footrest for another pig to stand on).  In this way, Bumble's parents could have been killed by other hogs, and the closest resemblance to those sorts of hogs that we get is in the actions of the outraged then suddenly calm aunt.

Her extreme and sudden outrage upsets Bumble-ardy enough that he wishes aloud to stop time, a sort of Peter-Pannish refusal to age.  But whereas Peter Pan's refusal to age results in an impish, somewhat endearing child-man, Bumble-ardy's refusal has an immediate deep tenor to it, one that contains the wish and impossibility, just as any birthday is both a celebration of life and an acknowledgement of moving one year closer to death.

As soon as Bumble-ardy matches her emotional level by expressing his sorrow in terms of halting life ("I won't ever turn ten"), his aunt undergoes an equally extreme and sudden mood change and decides he's her valentine. They hug and kiss and the book ends with Sendak asking the reader "Ain't that fine?"; however, this time when Sendak asks "Ain't that fine?" readers are left to decide if it was, and what "that"  refers to. 

It's an ingenious move because the book ends in the way many simplistic children's books do: tying everything up in a neat bow, but Sendak is simultaneously asking the reader about that bow--what to think about it. After all, is everything really fine when an aunt can nearly simultaneously move into a murderous rage and then into a swarm of affection and triviality? 

In all, Bumble-ardy is a welcome addition to the few but important shelves of excellent children's literature. Like the best toys that don't require batteries to operate, the book requires no adult to operate. The illustrations are complex and will hold a child's interest on his or her own. 

The book is written for a child audience and not an adult one, which is one of the reasons it resists adult control of the narrative (this is not a Richard Scarry book where adults are plainly lead to read a word and point at the object and have their children mimic these motions). In addition to the main lyrical narrative, pictures are embedded with text (like the writing on the birthday cards), but the story isn't lost by not being able to read embedded text or by skipping it and returning on subsequent reads.

The book's pages are slightly thick but likely not thick enough to endure an early toddler's curiosity, though there's nothing wrong with torn and taped pages. 

The age range can go into adulthood, of course, but likely will top out at a ten-year old or eleven-year old--or any age of child who is still not totally sold on adults and their version of the way the world works.  


A good book, this one.

EDITOR IN OZ: May be human, only behind curtain

When I attended the Dublin Phoenix Convention as a guest last year, I met John Kenny, co-editor of Albedo One magazine. During the convention he solicited a story from me, which I then wrote for the Aeon Press anthology he edited, entitled Box of Delights.  Because I had a good experience with him as an editor, I started following the blog he recently began.  And he recently wrote a good blog article on submission strategies for writers.

It stood out to me for a number of reasons, one is likely because I find myself in a rather new situation as a long-time submitting writer: I have a number of new stories, and all of them are thirty-to-forty pages long.  Most magazines no longer accept story submissions of such length, and those who do typically cut off at 10,000 words. The few remaining either charge a $3 "reading fee" to submit or don't seem really that interested in reading long stories to begin with.

Of course, what writer with half a thought in her head would decide to write long stories ("novelettes", suggests Duotrope) at the very moment everyone else has decided that a story the size of a dead leaf is best?

Image of Writer Submitting Stories Pre-Ebook

Needless to say, I've been spending some additional hours thinking about submissions and, in many ways, feel like I'm re-experiencing what it was to send out my stories when I was 15.  Except it's not as exciting, the dazzle is gone, I don't save all my rejections in a jean purse, and online form rejection letters are--as I'm noticing--often made to seem like they're not form letters, which makes the task of submitting (and managing them) all the more frustrating.

In the good old days, the rejection form, and its variants, implied a certain code to the writer based on how it was written and signed.  Little differently, I would assume, than how a writer's cover letter--its formatting, tone, and content--will say something to the editor about the professionalism, or lack thereof, of the writer.

But in regards to the code of rejection letters: A rejection addressed to "Dear Writer" and signed with a photocopied editor's signature (or simply "The Editors") meant that the story didn't merit more than this.  It was just another story, and so the writer would know something about what just happened and how to think about re-submitting.  The same rejection letter but with a real signature above the photocopied one meant the editor was sending a sort of compliment.  It was a rejection but the editor took the time because of this particular story.  And so that would tell the writer something.  Thus, a handwritten P.S. on an otherwise form rejection was really something.  This is what was meant by "I got a good rejection."

But many magazines are emailing form rejection letters (equal to a photocopied Dear Writer form rejection) but making them look personal.  And while I'll save my deeper thoughts on pseudo-personal form rejections for another day, perhaps you can see why automated online rejections that fill the writer's first name into the "Dear" field and the story's title in the Thanks for submitting your story ___________ can be a bit confusing:

'The Floating Order Feels Significant'

Women: A Cultural Review recently published a review by John Regan, a Cambridge graduate and lecturer at University College Dublin.  His review, "More Than Women and Cats", regards two collections from Two Ravens Press: Regi Claire's Fighting It and Erin Pringle's The Floating Order.

In an overall positive review, about The Floating Order, Regan at one point calls Pringle "a master of tragicomedy" and later writes:

"Just as her stories thrive on a kind of profitable restlessness, The Floating Order feels significant by virtue of its narrative, structural and thematic variety."

Quite nice, quite nice.

Obviously, Dr. Regan has excellent taste.  Cheers!  

Landscapes Carved By Death, Onto Memory: An Interview With Poet Laura Read

Laura Read, 2011 Winner of the AWP
Donald Hall Prize in Poetry

 I sat down recently at Madeleine's Cafe in Spokane, Washington with writer and fellow teacher Laura Read to discuss her new book of poetry, Instructions for My Mother's Funeral, which won the 2011 AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry and was a finalist in the 2011 May Swenson Poetry Award. Her first book, The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You, won the 2010 Chapbook Award held by Floating Bridge Press.  


Read is an active member of the Spokane writing scene, co-running with poet Maya Jewell Zeller the monthly Beacon Hill Reading Series at Spokane Community College and co-advising with poet Connie Wasem Scott the student literary journal WireHarp at Spokane Falls Community College. Read participated as a panelist in last year's GetLit!, a Spokane-wide literary festival, and has read her work with other well-known and local poets at Auntie's Bookstore.

As part of the AWP award, Instructions for My Mother's Funeral will be published in late 2012 by University of Pittsburgh Press. Judge and poet Dorianne Laux, and one of Read's deepest inspirations, had this to say about the book:

Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral uncovers the mysteries of girlhood in haunting tableaus and synesthesiac encounters with the past and [ . . .] domestic present. Strange in that way all art is strange, light come to light, but always a palpable darkness riding beneath; a mature lyrical voice translating memory’s turbulent, wordless world. 

Like the title poem, Instructions for My Mother's Funeral is a mapping of absences and, in returning to where each absence began—or what best symbolizes the absence, Read recreates the past into the present. Explanations to questions of why occur, but not all explanations serve and many questions still remain, such as what is it for a father's death to cause a house to be sold and strangers to live in it, and what is it to live in a house where he never lived.

Just as the title poem directs the listener not to go back to the mother's birthplace because it's all gone—all the buildings that were important, all that made who she is exists only in memory—by imagining the return, the identity is created through the path of return:

[. . .] If I go back, I won’t find her—

they took the town down

like the Heath Library

across the street from St. Aloysius

where I read the World Book Encyclopedia

for my ornithology report—

I had to tell the story of 30 birds,

where they lived, what they ate,

how you can spot them up in the branches

and tell them one from the other. [. . .]

Sometimes the path of returning is linear as is the overall organization of the book; however, 
the return to memory resists the linear movement and causes a stylistic tension that is 

International Ghost Story Contest 2012

 The Dr. Euguene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas has announced its fourth annual ghost story contest, Scare the Dickens Out of Us!

Word count: 5,000 or less

Who?: Anyone (adult and junior divisions)

Entry fee: Adult division $20; Junior division $5

The money is used to benefit the library.

First prize: $1000.00 and a trophy

Second prize: $500.00 and a ribbon 

Third prize: $250.00 and a ribbon

Junior contest prize $250.00 and a trophy

Entries will be accepted only between July 1, 2012 and October 1, 2012 (postmark dates).

For more information, formatting guidelines, and a list of previous winners, visit the library's website (www.clarklibraryfriends.com).


To qualify, stories should be of the ghost-story genre.  

Read This Book: Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke

Her husband brought this book home from the magical place where most all the books in their house have come from--the best ones that move from bookcase to bookcase, the ones carried most and that, most often, while she and he sleep, seemingly try to slip out the door--again and again and so they must be pinned down with little notes in the margins, dark lines under their feet.

Space, in Chains is a collection of 72 poems by Laura Kasishke, whom she hadn't read or heard of until now and now she thinks is one of the most brilliant writers moving among us.

From the publisher: Space, in Chains speaks in ghostly voices, fractured narratives, songs, prayers, and dark riddles as it moves through contemporary tragedies of grief and the complex succession of generations. [. . .] Kasischke has pared the construction of her verse to its bones, leaving haunting language and a visceral strangeness of imagery.

This is one of those breathless reviews, the kind where she doesn't want to, or cannot yet, explain why this book is good, why we must read it, why the writer shows her skill--her genius here, here, and here, too.