Book Ende

Yesterday was Kenneth Grahame's birthday. I first discovered his most well-known work, The Wind in the Willows, in college. If you aren't familiar with it, it is a children's book based on stories he used to tell his son about the adventures of Mr. Toad and his friends, Ratty, Mole, and Badger. The original illustrations were done by a man named Ernest H. Shepard whose name you may recognize from his illustrations in The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne.

The Wind in the Willows falls into a special category that I call "quiet books" along with Crow Call by Lois Lowry, Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo, Blueberries For Sal by Robert McCloskey, The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf- even Tolkein's The Hobbit would fall in this category. Their colorful characters, clever, well developed plot, and brilliantly simple illustrations stand the test of time against frenetic, action-packed books with bright, busy illustrations.

That doesn't mean nothing ever happens in a quiet book. Mr. Toad's jail break is hardly nothing. But in the midst of the action, the author has woven "inns" along the way where the reader feels the plot slow, and can stop to take a breath- Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings, The Weasley's home in Harry Potter, and Badger's house in The Wind in the Willows:

"It seemed a place where heroes could fitly feast after victory, where weary harvesters could line up in scores along the table and keep their Harvest Home with mirth and song, or where two or three friends of simple tastes could sit about as they pleased and eat and smoke and talk in comfort and contentment" -Wind in the Willows

Quiet books are also very good at economizing words. No one wants to read three paragraphs when three sentences would have done just as well. As Dr. Seuss reminds us "the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads." Picture book authors have this down to a science. Most picture books are under 500 words and think of the complexity of story and depth of character in works like Great Joy by Kate DiCamillo, and Strega Nona by Tommie dePaula. The most brilliant example of how big ideas can be communicated with minimal words is Shaun Tan's recent book about immigration, The Arrival. There are no words in this book and yet it is practically flawless in its narrative flow.

A big part of what makes a book "quiet" is it's ability to be still. The plot may not always move forward, and when it does so, it may not be quickly and yet you loose nothing from the story. On the contrary, you gain texture and atmosphere that put meat on the bones of a plot. In The Lord of the Rings we meet the character of Tom Bombadil when the hobbits are in a dark place at the beginning of their journey. Tom serves (amongst many other things we won't go into here) as an "inn" to refresh both the hobbits and the reader. The description of his person, his home and his land help to further flesh out the world of Tolkien's imagination- a world where a table filled with "yellow cream, honeycomb, and white bread and butter" is the best possible table to come home to.

I've only looked at quiet children's books in this post because that's the focus of my blog and my work. But quiet books are certainly not limited to children. If you've ever read any fiction by Wendell Berry, you know what a quiet book is. So, if you're feeling a noisy world closing in, pick up a quiet book, and let it do it's work...