9:18 PM - Make Space For Bently
ããI found
air
jordan 12 I was looking for,William Joyce thinks the company of
writing and illustrating children's books is really a loony way to
make a living. You invest a great deal of time feeling like you are
still walking around in brief pants, he says. Other authors do not
have these issues. Mario Puzo gets to say, 'I wrote The Godfather .
'I get 'Tammy & the Gigantic Fish'.
ããBut then, looniness is
Joyce's brier patch. Artistically a match for N. C. Wyeth and
Howard Pyle, the 34-year-old author-illustrator has produced a
series of 12 books-four of which he wrote himself-including the
already classic Dinosaur Bob and A Day With Wilbur Robinson. Droll
and unfailingly good natured, they are as much about childhood as
they are for children. Once you enter Joyce's world, you'll never
want to leave.Plainly he has no such plans, no matter how loony he
finds his line of work. A new book, the lovely Bently & Egg
(HarperCollins. $15), is just out. Full of talking animals
antiquely attired and done in soft, Easter-basket colors, Bently is
every bit the equal of Joyce's earlier successes. In the works are
a sequel to Dinosaur Bob, a book about Santa Claus and the script
for a live-action version of Wilbur to be produced by Disney.Joyce
has been making up stories and illustrating them since he was 9,
when he entertained his Shreveport, La. peers with a tale called
Billy's Booger, about a boy who sneezes up this highly intelligent
little snotty man. All grown up, he sits in a studio just down the
street from where I swang from a rope swing when I was 6,
meticulously rendering the goofiest musings of my childhood.With
his way-back machine stuck somewhere in the deco '30s, Joyce
delivers a world where houses are always huge, because everything
is enormous when you're a child. Where moms and dads wear heels and
pearls and neckties and vests, but where children get to stay up
past bedtime. It's a world stocked with helpful robots,
banjo-strumming crickets and pet dinosaurs that play baseball, all
portrayed in the rich, slightly dreamy tones of the Technicolor
movies Joyce grew up watching on television, a medium that
influenced him every bit as much as Maxfield Parrish, Winsor McCay
or Maurice Sendak. In his work, as in the world of the tube,
nothing goes away, nothing dies.Joyce's new book is superficially a
departure from all that. Inspired by the pastel palettes of Beatrix
Potter and Robert Lawson, it chronicles the arduous efforts of a
frog, Bently Hopperton, who is determined to rescue his friend Kack
Kacks duck egg from the clutches of a loutish boy. Bently is
Joyce's most personal book. The frog, like his creator, loves to
draw. And his transformation from indifferent to devoted guardian
of the egg is plainly the work of a man with impending fatherhood
on his mind.But for all its sweetness, Bentlyis every bit as
zestful as its predecessors. Commandeering a hot-air balloon,
sailing a toy boat, crashing a garden party, Bently is never at a
loss. Jubilantly resourceful, he has a swell time being a
hero.Reading Joyce is like hanging out with that slightly raffish
uncle who came to town a couple of times a year, the one who drank
martinis and wore spectator shoes and always kept a few cherry
bombs at the bottom of his suitcase. He was the guy who taught you
that fun is the most important thing you can have.Likewise, the
lessons Joyce's books teach are about the recuperative,
regenerative powers of goofing off and having a goodtime.He's
revolted by the pressures on today's kids to prepare relentlessly
for adulthood. It's turned childhood into a job, he says. Now
they're talking about making school last all year. They want to
take summers away. These efforts, he's convinced, are ruinous. My
nephews, they're about 10, he says, and I had to teach them how to
blow things up.Illustration: Talking animals antiquely attired:
Joyce's zestful book bows nimbly to tradition;The most popular
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