I’m on an overnight train, rolling westward. I’m traveling from Harpers Ferry, W.Va., to Chicago — off to see my daughter’s college play, an alchemical reimagining of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a circus.
Along the way, as the scenery fades to dark, I read two picture books. Both are journey books. Both are clever concoctions of seemingly disparate elements that, when combined, crackle with life. A good journey book, after all, captures the almost indescribable flavor of life on the move.
There is something special about reading these books on the train. I’m not saying you have to read them while in motion, as the world rolls by out the window, but it doesn’t hurt.
I start with TUMBLEBABY (Neal Porter/Holiday House, 48 pp., $18.99, ages 4 to 8), written by Adam Rex and illustrated by Audrey Helen Weber. This is the story of a baby, silent and sleeping from start to finish, who rolls one night out of a little fruit-bowl bed, across the house, out the door and around the world.
Tumblebaby crosses paths with bumbling outlaws, becomes Captain of the Coyotes, joins the Winter Olympics, tumbles up and down the highest mountains, and finally returns home.
Unnamed and ungendered, purple of body and rainbow of face, Tumblebaby is the kind of hero in which all children can see themselves.
The book’s prose is poetically fantastical. Its strong narrative voice is fresh and sly but at the same time harks back to a distinctly American storytelling tradition. With its outlaws and coyotes, family farms saved and fortunes won and lost, “Tumblebaby” reads like a half-forgotten fable from the Southwest.
My one niggling criticism is that I find the foldout page in the middle an inelegant solution to a dramatic moment. It’s personal preference, perhaps, but a foldout page always feels to me like an interruption, something to fiddle back into place before turning the page.
Still, “Tumblebaby” is a delight to read aloud, its propulsive storytelling beautifully complemented by Weber’s flowing, textured watercolor shapes. Best of all is the graceful twist at the end, likely to bring a tear to a parent’s eye.
As my train rolls on through the night, I next read MEESELPHE (Elsewhere Editions, 48 pp., $20, ages 5 to 9), by the French author Claude Ponti, translated by Alyson Waters and Margot Kerlidou. From the front cover to the bar code on the back (no joke!), “Meeselphe” is a dreamlike absurdist romp.
We follow little Meeselphe as she peers out her treetop bedroom window and then, for no other reasons than adventure and curiosity, jumps into the wide world, where she is plunged into a surreal landscape. Its many bizarre creatures bring to mind the work of Jim Woodring and Felix Colgrave, as well as the film “Yellow Submarine” and the animated illuminations in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” A choice heritage.
This psychedelic realm of optical illusions is full of visual and verbal tricks and puns.
I have to assume the clever wordplay has come across at least spiritually intact in the translation, if not word for word. And it’s no surprise two translators are listed.
“Ponti is a headache for his translators,” one of his publishers once noted. “Even in French, plenty of things are missed; the reader must read a second or a third time to understand.”
Are those rabbits or ducks floating in the meadow?
Which direction is up on the two-page spread of floating cubes?
There is a hint of menace in some of the creatures Meeselphe meets, but she matches their challenges with a blithe self-confidence that precludes any real fear. In the end, the monsters melt and Meeselphe is carried back home by a giant flower she’s picked.
I’m not sure “Meeselphe” is a proper bedtime read-aloud. It’s too complex for that.
Rather, it’s a world you fall into and wander through. A book to be taken to a quiet corner and devoured again and again. A strange journey to be relived.
My own journey ends in the early-morning hours as my train hisses into Chicago’s Union Station.
My daughter’s play is everything I hoped it would be. A black box theater transformed into a circus tent with ebullient colors, aerial acrobatics, magical illusions and even, improbably, a prancing faux elephant — all woven into and bound together by Shakespeare’s language. Young and old alike are enchanted. As with the picture books, the mix of story and spectacle is rejuvenating.
The liveliness of a multicolored, multidimensional tale is infectious, and soon enough I’m recharged for the return journey. Ready to tumble on.
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