Mythical creatures and magical transformations
Despite the claims of publishers, the popularity of children's books can not be gauged from sales figures. There only one reliable indicator of favorites: the library card. Books, after all, are merely purchased by adults; they are read by the young. This year, as in all years, the market is glutted with the inane and the precious, the coy and the overproduced—volumes designed to catch the shopper's eye, not the child's heart. Still, this year, as in all years, a few volumes have the aura of permanence: books that will not only be bought but—far more important—also borrowed.
Gnomes (Abrams; $17.50), by Dutch Scientist Wil Huygen, is the most original and sustained piece of whimsy since the productions of J.R.R. Tolkien. Throughout the book that bears their name, the little creatures are treated soberly as an endangered species "well out of sight, so much so in fact that belief in their existence is waning rapidly." A series of maps, anatomical charts, even recipes are provided, enlivened with sly, soft-focus illustrations by Rien Poortvliet. Gnomes one of the season's very few new books designed to be savored by the entire family. That the male gnome remains potent until about 350 years of age or that the buxom females, unencumbered by gravity, go braless may be of greater interest to parents than to the very young. The rest of this oversize book, with its bounteous legends, its wealth of robust humor and lavish illuminations, deserves a resounding G rating as ageless entertainment.
Jörg Müller's The Changing Countryside (Atheneum; $9.95), is the pictorial equivalent of music—an unbound suite of seven large luminous paintings (33¾ in. by 12½ in.) that spellbind without the use of words. Though Müller is Swiss, his story, unfortunately, is universal: the gradual erosion of a natural setting by urban sprawl. Starting in the spring of 1953, with barefoot farm children in a burgeoning countryside, Artist Müller takes characters and acreage through the incursions of a railroad, the depredations of bulldozer, drill and crane, and, ultimately, in the fall of 1972, to those hallmarks of Western civilization, the discount store and the parking meter. Yet Müller never stoops to cheap nostalgia or self-righteous despair. Each page is keyed to a child's comprehension; each of the meticulous landscapes shows compassion as well as irony in the face of the familiar. A companion suite, The Changing City, shows the same process in an urban environment, from the calm, dignified arrangements of turn-of-the-century houses to the epoch of right-angle multiple housing and fast-food enterprises.
A Birthday Wish (Little, Brown; $5.95) is equally textless—save for a greeting on the final page. But within its elemental comic-strip layout a series of hilarious sight gags are set up and sent home. Author-Illustrator Ed Emberley has never been a man to pull his punch lines, and his jokes are often a bit too raucous; but then so is the laughter that ensues from their close inspection.