Urban Decay, Picture Book Style

In lieu of a full round-up, which will take a little more time since our last library visit netted quite a haul, I thought I'd comment on two books which both tackle the eroding urban core.

The first is Mutt Dog!, by Stephen Michael King. This book follows the nighttime progress of the titular dog from rainy back alley to homeless shelter, where he is given food and comfort by a sympathetic shelter worker. After forcing the dog to return to the streets in the morning, the worker thinks better of it, plucks him out of his dumpster-scavenging world, and carries him off to her suburban home where her family is waiting to clean, feed, and spoil him in all manner of classic suburban ways. (Think pretend pirate play, rolling in flower beds, and walks along manicured lawns.) When he returns to the shelter, it is as a well-groomed visitor, where he politely allows himself to be petted by an odd twosome of tattoed skinhead and eccentric bag lady knowing he'll be rewarded with a bath later. As you probably already figured out, I thought this book was, shall we say, thematically suspect. The pen and watercolor drawings are delicately pretty, and the depiction of urban poverty is certainly a rarity in picture book land, but honestly, what are we supposed to think about all the people at the shelter who I'm sure would also like a trip into the countryside and a good round of "Arrr, Matey"? Sure, this is an easy critique, but the book invites it a little too much, I'd say.

The second, Carousel Cat by Robert J. Blake, has some downsides as well. I thought the setting--a nearly abandoned oceanside amusement park like Asbury Park or Coney Island--was cool, and the plot was satisfying, but the writing is a little dull, and the main character Dan, an out-of-work carousel operator, looks to have recently escaped from Margaritaville. Yet the artwork is inventive: the boardwalk appears in colored detail in the framed center portion of each illustration while, outside the frame, the illustration continues in sketchy sepia, thus symbolically conveying the boardwalk's decay and disappearance. Further, Dan and his friends, Madame Fortune and The World's Strongest Tattooed Man, handle their loss of livelihood realistically and with a minimum of fuss. Also, it's about a cat. What's not to love?

(Just writing this has brought back fond memories of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, and the time I forced Peter and Asalad and Nadia to ride on the mini-rollercoaster with me even though Peter had just gotten his wisdom teeth out. Sigh. Somehow I don't think I'll ever have a similar experience at Worlds of Fun.)