So this children's picture book is about death, time, renewal, friendship and sacrifice. A few minor themes involve music, food, life cycles, loss and disappearance.I have no idea how to write about this book in a way that would even begin to do it justice, and this is before I mention to incredible artwork, which is of course married to the words of the story in a way that makes them one and the same powerful and beautiful thing.
This book is also translated from French, and even though I haven't yet read the original text, I read a few of Herbauts' other books in French, and suspect that while the translation is lovely, the original is better.
The book is about a character named Monday who lives in tiny house in a vast and beautiful place with mountains and trees and valleys and has two friends named Lester Day and Tom Morrow. Monday looks a bit like a bird, Lester Day is kind of like an animated teapot, and Tom is a cat with wings, kind of. It really makes perfect sense when you are actually inside the book. The three friends drink tea, mend old clothes, and play a grand piano that is constructed out of a keyboard with a suitcase with a chimney on top
Then, in an almost theatrical presentation that spans four pages and evokes, among others, Bruegel, Maeterlinck and Vivaldi while remaining strikingly original, we encounter the four seasons, that flow, personified, both visually and through first-person narrative text scattered among the pages, as an interlude and a subplot into the passage of time on the much smaller scale of the week.
This Dadaist play with time - the four seasons crash into the much smaller space of a week and explode it - forces the reader to enter a completely different time-space than expected, break with rules of physics and the flows of time, and become aware of the passage of time in a much more mythical and all encompassing way. This is achieved, incredibly, with lighthearted and almost unintentional elegance that feels exactly as it should and not at all strange.
Of the four seasons, winter arrives last and lingers on; It brings along a snowstorm that blows away Monday's house and over the course of a few pages gorgeously and slowly, bit by bit, buries Monday under piles of snow, obscuring his entire existence except for an embossed outline of his figure that we as readers can feel with our fingertips, but his friends who come looking for him, can not see at all.
The two friends search for Monday in the snow while he slowly disappears. They look under a tree, bring out the makeshift piano and call his name. But he is gone, and they look no more. However, like one can expect from experience, a new Monday comes into existence on the very last page. A slightly different one, but undeniably familiar, whole and strong and happy.
I recommend this book to all lovers of beautiful, wonderful, and absurd with much enthusiasm. I think it has a lot of information, but even more empty space within which the mind can dance in very novel ways and reach out for ideas that will be enticing and rewarding. It works for children and for grown ups. A lot of the pages have tactile elements that complement the narrative and add charm without being pretentious as it is so often the case with pointless and gimmicky marvels of contemporary publishing possibilities. I hope you find it and enjoy it!
