Last week, I took part in the yearly tradition of going to the city-wide
book sale and diving through tables piled with a hopelessly
disorganized assortment of books in hopes of discovering a few buried
treasures. I always seem to leave with an overflowing box, half of whose
contents I will probably never get around to reading. But among those
randomly selected titles, there are usually a few especially notable
finds. Past examples include A Boy, a Dog and a Frog, which turned me on to the charming six-book series of wordless books by Little Critter creator Mercer Mayer; Anguished English, a collection of hilariously tortured sentences and paragraphs; and an early edition of Fellowship of the Ring containing a warning from Tolkien not to purchase unauthorized versions.
When I saw the cover of Crickle-Crack,
bearing the unmistakable mark of a Serendipity book and featuring a
squirrel, which is arguably my favorite animal, I suspected I might have
found this year's winner. Back in the days when my idea of reading
consisted of looking at the pictures and making up my own story, I had a
considerable collection of the distinctive morality tales by Stephen
Cosgrove, irresistibly illustrated by Robin James, but I don't recall
encountering this one before. Having been drawn in by my familiarity
with the series and affection for the animal on the front, I read the
note at the bottom of the cover: "It's important to know when to say
'no'." Even better! I thought, expecting a lesson in assertiveness along the lines of Sherman Crunchley,
the Laura Numeroff book about a doormat dog who finds a creative way to
tell his father he doesn't want to take over as sheriff.
It
soon became clear that the lesson within wouldn't be quite as applicable
to my life as I'd thought. Rather than being a story about the need for
gumption, it's a tale of temptation. It bears a considerable
resemblance to the biblical account of Adam and Eve, since Squeakers,
the bushy-tailed protagonist, falls into trouble when a mysterious voice
calls for him to eat the buds on the Crickle-Crack tree. The lesson
isn't so much about obeying authority as it is avoiding things that may
look attractive but are actually dangerous and detrimental. Though it
doesn't come right out and say it, the predominant purpose of the book
seems to be to steer kids away from drugs, with the friendly reminder on
the cover recalling Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign from the late
80s, which is when this book was published.
When Squeakers
comes upon the tree, which grows in "twisted profusion" in a semi-hidden
part of the forest, he decides to see for himself whether these buds
are so dangerous. After his first taste, he is disappointed to find the
bud unsatisfying, but a sense of euphoria kicks in shortly thereafter,
and he decides to skip school and binge on the buds, with disastrous
results. The story is pretty straight-forward, the message heavy-handed,
but then that is true of all of the books in this series. As a fable
encouraging certain behavior from children, it seems to hit the mark
pretty well. It's the illustrations that really grab me, though, with
almost every page depicting the furry gray squirrel with enormous brown,
shining eyes, a fluffy tail and a cheeky grin. Of course, he's not
always smiling; we see the effects of the Crickle-crack buds in a couple
of rather disturbing pictures, particularly one in which his parents
help him home from school as he stands woozily, a sickly frown on his
face and bags under his eyes.
I'm not sure if Crickle-Crack
is quite the catch those books in the first paragraph were. But I still
get a kick out of this charming squirrel, and while I don't think I'm
in much danger of becoming addicted to drugs any time soon, this story
provides a healthy reminder of the dangers of temptation, so perhaps it
was a serendipitous find after all.
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