Once there was a girl who, trawling as she liked to do ofttimes for little treasures in her favourite bookshop, found in a pair of hands a very special treasure indeed: Oliver Jeffers Presents The Incredible Book Eating Boy... A declaration of circus proportions in bold, star-marked letters...
"Henry loved books.
But not like you and I love books,no."
No?
Piquing curiosity, a turn of the page...
"Henry loved to EAT books.
It all began quite by mistake one afternoon when he wasn't paying attention.
He wasn't sure at first, and tried eating a single word, just to test.
Next he tried a whole sentence and then the whole page.
Yes, Henry definitely liked them.
By Wednesday, he had eaten a WHOLE book.
And by the end of the month he could eat a whole book in one go."
So begins the fascinating story of Henry, who loved all books, or more specifically eating all books. And as far as book-eaters go, Henry is entirely non-discriminatory in his book tastes...From "storybooks," to "dictionaries," "joke books," and "even maths books," he eats them all - although, admittedly, the "red ones [are] his favourite."
Furthermore, Henry is thrilled to discover he is becoming smarter in the process.
A prize of a book from the onset, The Incredible Book Eating Boy is accompanied by illustrations equally quirky and charming enough to share in Jeffers' original tale. In fact, I suspect most readers will find it difficult to imagine one without the other. It's this quality, I feel, that makes the memorable picture book: words and story and illustrations merging in such a way as to constantly surprise and delight the reader. And Jeffers, both as artist and storyteller, is nothing short of surprising and delightful.
Henry's new-found adeptness at crosswords goes cheek by jowl with a picture of the dad (a balding man with square glasses, staring perplexedly at the paper open before him), as the young boy at his side triumphantly calls out "MONUMENTAL". Later, the book-eating boy reaches great heights as he surpasses even his own teacher, a bemused though attentive blonde - kitted out like the dad in square glasses, the really smart kind. Turned to face the blackboard, the teacher is perched at her desk while Henry demonstrates by sketching out the formula for a rocket to make its journey to the moon in white chalk. Meanwhile, as if to explain away the phenomenon, a diagram-style drawing demonstrates Henry eating a large orange book entitled Rodney's Great Adventure and Other Chicken Stories, as "A: Book goes in; B: Information goes to brain [Brain getting BIGGER]; C: Belly gets FULL." An artfully-wrought 'win win'.
Mmm... Too good to be true, or downright unlikely, the reader begins to suspect...
Most readers have come to learn, in books as in life, there can be no actions without consequence and surely, in this, book-eating is no different.
And while Henry becomes so "incredible" at book-eating as to swallow books not only "whole" but "three or four at a time," suspicions are confirmed when things suddenly start to go "very, very wrong."
Chased screaming through his dreams by the terrifying A-Z of Monsters, its gaping jaws wide open, a daytime Henry finds he is unable to munch a copy of Best Quiche 1972 - nor any other book for that matter! - without being turned "greenest" and forced to perform "an Irish word for ejecting the contents of your stomach", that is, "boke." But the worst is yet to come as all the knowledge Henry has accumulated is bungled up inside. Unable to digest his books properly any longer, streams of nonsensical words spew from Henry's mouth making it "quite embarrassing for him to speak" and maths equations result dismally in "2+6 = elephants."
Advised against it by his father, physician, fines-tallying librarian and the A-Z Book of Monsters alike, Henry resigns from the business of book-eating, dismally disappointed. However, it does not take our young protagonist long to pick a slightly nibbled text up off the bedroom floor and do the unthinkable...
"[A]fter a while, and almost by accident," our Henry begins "to read," finding much to his astonishment that he love[s] to read" and "that he might still become the smartest person on Earth" after all...
And seldom without a sly sense of humour, Jeffers ensures that the back-cover of the book is missing a chunk in one corner, a tip-off to readers that occasionally, just once in a while, Henry falls back on old habits; Ginger meanwhile sagely advises on the same coverpage the "DISCLAIMER: DO NOT EAT THIS BOOK AT HOME."
Beginning with Anthony Browne's Little Beauty a few weeks prior, I think it was Oliver Jeffers' story of a book-eating boy that really confirmed my love of (and return to) picture books.
And I will proudly tell anyone this, as I sit here ever-so-unassuming at my laptop: twenty-six and, to the best of my knowledge, only slightly niggled* by the desire to have any children of my own (or at the very least in this millennium, and yes, for those uncertain, that would make me near-on immortal). Honestly, this picture book is the sort of tribute to books and the art of storytelling that takes one defiant step for little readers and one boisterous leap right over Ageism.
Throughout the picture book, Jeffers cleverly juxtaposes typewriter font with hand-script, while in his employment of collage in illustration, graph paper, worn-out dictionary pages (marked "intemperance" at the top), and that familiar blue-lined A4 foolscap serve as 'backdrops' to Henry's (mis)adventures and ultimate success.
This way, the very young are impressed by the intriguing texture, while the slightly older will more fully relate to the medium using, as it does, tokens from their everyday school-day experiences. And as for me, the old, old who wears her trousers rolled, well, the elderly are easily swayed by nostalgia and memory, but mostly, by the innocence.
Hubbub, bill-paying and daily meannesses have a tendency to turn a young and unsuspecting woman such as myself into a Hag, regrettable but altogether true. I do not want to be a Hag, but I have found myself behaving in a Haggish manner from time to time...
Again, regrettable but true.
And as much as I was all-too-glad earlier to declare my undying gratitude to the picture book, I am as much ashamed to admit that my love of books has been known to become all tied up in the serious business grammar and syntax. This, I will have you know, is a tell-tale sign of an early onset of Haggishness, but not a hopeless symptom if caught early enough. For this, The Incredible Book Eating Boy is the spoonful of sugar and the medicine for the cure.
Never overbearingly didactic in his story's 'message'/moral, Jeffers' home-base is a good story, told well, with the wit, humour, and healthy dose of a childlike suspension-of-disbelief and creative ingenuity. And don't be fooled by the simplicity of Jeffers' less-is-more approach... This, together with other Jeffers' titles soon to feature on this blog, couldn't be further from it.
They speak from a perspective of the world that may initially appear simple to the untrained adult eye, but is, on closer inspection, well-stocked with the relentless marvels of the little explorer's torchlight, felt with the amazement of the child who cannot pinpoint these feelings as we grown-ups, and cares naught but to give the unnamed emotion wings and watch it take flight.
So, although I could tell you, that The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers is ideal for audiences aged 3-5, I won't bother. Instead, I will tell you I can safely hope that, old as I may get, I do not see any Hagging in my future, so long as there are storytellers like Jeffers in my vast and infinitely surprising and delightful universe.
(*Any encounter with a bookish, soapy/grassy-smelling, and properly-mannered child - i.e. one that can say 'Please' and 'Thank You' and refrain from sticking both fingers up his/her nostrils - qualifies as a niggle.)
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