Little Animals That Wear Clothes - KEEP OUT

His stories often begin in the midst of things, as if the reader is already captivated.  The action is mysterious, exciting, perhaps unnerving.  The illustrations present a puzzle that can only be solved by reading the text.  A children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg won’t fit into a pleasing
little pattern.

He doesn’t write books about “little animals that wear clothes” going off to their first day of school.  He calls that type of literature “bibliotherapy” because it comforts children and parents.  Books like that, Van Allsburg says, represent a collaborative effort among writers, illustrators, editors and marketers to find a commercial audience.

“Is that art?” Van Allsburg asks.  “I’m not trying to comfort children.  I’m trying to excite them, trying to share with them what mystifies me.”

The Caldecott winning author and illustrator of Jumanji, Zathura, and The Polar Express says he is moved by art that grows out of subtle things—points of view, lighting, facial expressions.  He tries to make art like that.  He estimates that three-quarters of his work is driven by something he’s seen.  “When I tell myself the story, I’m actually seeing it happen,” he says.  

A Van Allsburg story depicts odd things taking place in a familiar world.  The author says his narrative impulses are strongly influenced by what he was exposed to as a child; The Twilight Zone, for instance.  While his work leans toward fantasy, he has no interest in stories where the entire reality
is fantastic.  

“There are some features of reality that are weird to me,” he says, “and they just find their way into the narrative.”

He began drawing for a rather “prosaic” reason.  He was a sculptor working in a studio in Providence, Rhode Island, and, on winter evenings, his landlord shut off the heat.  It was simply too cold to work, so he went home and started drawing.  He then started writing because he wanted to complete the stories begun by the pictures.  

Van Allsburg aims for lucidity and simplicity in his prose style and lets the pictures handle the emotional, subtextual elements.  “A very good story for a picture book should not work well on its own,” he explains.  “There should be things missing from the story that are presented in the pictures.  Both things should be inadequate by themselves, and that’s what makes a good picture book.”

The idea for Van Allsburg’s first book, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, originated in the library of the Rhode Island School of Design, where he was teaching art classes:  “Back in a very remote dust-covered part of the stacks, I found some old English landscape books with black and white photos of English gardens.  That was something very enchanting and spooky to me.”

He wanted to draw pictures of those gardens and discovered that his “picture-making ambitions” could run the story.  He toiled away through the writing.  As the images flowed through is mind, he created a narrative to solve the problems they posed:  “There’s a boy running through the topiary garden.  Why is he running?  He’s chasing something.  Add a little dog.  Who would own such a strange garden?”

Van Allsburg enjoys creating books that cannot easily be placed in particular time period.  His world is one that is slightly set apart.  He is not interested in contrivance and sentimentality.

He was perplexed when one of his early stories, Two Bad Ants, received some criticism for being too conventional.  The ants in question temporarily desert their colony to live in a sugar bowl, but when they discover that life outside is dangerous and unknown, they return home to safety.

“Some saw it as a justification for conformity, but the ants had made a bad choice,” Van Allsburg says.  “My point was that having a clear sense of what the best place is for you will bring you happiness.”

That’s why little animals that wear clothes never make an appearance in a Van Allsburg book.  He knows that writing such stories will not bring him happiness.  His purpose is clear—to create books that move and mystify him.  His millions of readers are thrilled to go along for the ride.