Pictures Speak Louder Than Words in Patrick McDonnell's South

My mom and I went to the mall with a friend recently, and as we were leaving a flock of geese flew overhead in a graceful formation. "Goodbye!" our friend called out, waving toward the sky. "See you next year!" Yes, the time for migration is upon us, summer having slipped by all too quickly. It's the perfect occasion to read Patrick McDonnell's South, the simple, nearly-wordless story of a songbird that sleeps through his flock's take-off. What's a poor bird to do? Find a friend like Mooch.

Mooch is the altruistic feline at the heart of McDonnell's comic strip Mutts. The strip, which has run since the early '90s and was a favorite of Charles Schulz, frequently emphasizes the virtues of kindness and cooperation. One wouldn't expect a cat to come upon a little lost songbird and commit to spending as long as it takes accompanying him on a journey to find his flock, but that is exactly what Mooch does, and fans of the strip won't be all that surprised to see this particular cat make such a magnanimous gesture. Mooch has an especially generous nature.

South is printed on creamy paper and features full-color illustrations that focus on autumnal hues, then wintry. Bluish-black Mooch offers his paw, and a yellow wing accepts. Together they traverse a landscape of browning grass, fallen leaves, barren trees and, eventually, snow. One image of them trekking among stands of birches as a fawn looks on is especially serene. We get the sense that this is a very young bird; until he finally reunites with those who left him behind, he never makes any attempt to fly. I suspect he lacks confidence as a solo flier.

So he walks, and the progress is slow but steady. Poor Mooch can't even get a nap in, since his charge feels abandoned yet again when he tries to catch some Zs. But you won't hear any complaints from this steadfast cat, nor does his face betray any annoyance. He has a job to do, and he will see it through to the end. He knows a cozy spot waits for him by the fireplace back at home; rest can wait until then.

This is a lovely book for children and parents to "read" together. Of course, it isn't so much reading as studying the illustrations, which only occasionally contain a demonstrative word like "WEEP WEEP WEEP," which emanates from the songbird in particularly helpless moments. There is no true dialogue, and certainly no narration. That's for the reader to furnish, if he or she so desires. Picture books can be wonderful exercises in storytelling, with the structure of the tale already laid out and nothing left to add but the words. Then again, McDonnell's sparse book is complete as is, so it may be preferable to simply enjoy the pages together as a finished product.

However one chooses to peruse these pages, South is a beautiful little book, an ode to the unchanging patterns of life and the richness added when one embarks upon the journey with a friend.

The Gift of Nothing Is a Gift Indeed

Giving gifts is an enjoyable but sometimes frustrating exercise. There are times when a birthday or Christmas rolls around, and nothing seems quite the right fit for that very special friend or relative. This is the dilemma Mooch the cat faces in The Gift of Nothing, a sparse but tender picture book by Patrick McDonnell, creator of the comic strip Mutts. Mooch and his friend Earl, a Jack Russell terrier, are the stars of that strip, and they make the transition from the funny pages to children's book perfectly.

The majority of the book concerns Mooch's search for the perfect gift for Earl. First, he has to come up with the idea. Then he has to actually find it. His clever notion is to give the dog who has everything a bit of nothing for his very own. There's something very philosophical about this idea, and as Mooch searches the TV for inspiration and scours a shopping mall, the reader is bombarded with the busy-ness of daily life. A quiet moment is hard to come by in such a noisy, materialistic world. But in silence and simplicity, the gift of a lasting friendship can be appreciated even more fully.

While The Gift of Nothing has more words in it than some McDonnell books - particularly South, which essentially has no words at all - it is still very short on text. No page features more than two sentences, and in many cases, a single sentence is stretched across several pages. The book in its entirety contains just over 30 sentences, some of which are very short. A bit of the story is dialogue, but most of it is narration.

The illustrations are just as sparse as the story, with black and pinkish-red the only colors in use throughout the book. The pages themselves are flecked with black specks, giving the pictures a little more texture. (The paper, incidentally, is recycled, supporting the anti-materialist message.) Some pages feature only one object, such as when Mooch mentally catalogues all of Earl's possessions. One page literally features nothing. The shopping mall madness and the noisy television are nearly the only instances in which there is more picture than blank space.

The Gift of Nothing demonstrates several important points. That quiet time is something to be treasured. That relationships are to be treasured even more. That "There's nothing to do" or "watch" or "buy" is rarely a legitimate complaint. In simple, soothing terms, the book urges serenity, generosity and gratitude. Most of all, it encourages friendship. This is a smaller book than most, nearly square in shape, and it's simple enough, with certain words and phrases repeated, that beginning readers should have little difficulty with this one. It might work best as a read-aloud, though, even if it's the child doing the reading, because the gift of a good book is one of the most wonderful experiences a parent and child can share.

Jules the Cat Wants to Give the World a Hug in Hug Time

One of my favorite commercials is the one that features the line, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke." I've always found that a very friendly idea, just walking along down the street, handing Coca-Colas to everyone you meet. Of course, the cost and the issue of transporting all of those cans or bottles of pop would be prohibitive, but it's a nice notion, anyway. I found myself thinking of this ad when I read Patrick McDonnell's Hug Time, which features characters from his comic strip Mutts.

Jules, more commonly known in the strip as Shtinky Puddin', is an orange kitten with brown stripes and a white belly. He's small, but he has a mission: "to give the whole world a hug." His owner doesn't object to this idea but simply equips the cat with a sweater and sends him on his way. He starts with his friends, Mooch, Earl and Noodles, but it isn't long before he has branched out, hugging wild animals in town and eventually on other continents.

Hug Time, like the aforementioned jingle, is a little over-the-top. The journey upon which Jules embarks is an enormous one. Presumably the fact that he is a cat means he can simply stow away on the boat he uses to get from continent to continent on his tour of the globe, but how is he to find food when he is much too gentle to consider ever eating anything that could be a friend? Additionally, it seems a stretch that every predator Jules meets is willing to overlook his meal potential in favor of gratefully accepting the friendly gesture. And in terms of real-world applications, most parents probably would prefer that their children didn't hug every random person and animal they met.

But Hug Time is a fable, so it needn't be taken quite so literally. For instance, a smile will work just as well as a hug, and one needn't travel the world to distribute them. Just making an effort to be a little friendlier as a general rule is a good way to put the book's message into practice. After all, McDonnell says, "Start with the one who's closest to you." He encourages kindness as well as environmental awareness, printing his book on recycled paper and including descriptions of the Earth as "so precious, so fragile, so round" and "so big and yet so small".

Like his other picture books, Hug Time is fairly short on words, with no more than two sentences per page, but in this case, the text is presented in rhyming couplets. The illustrations are in full color, which helps to emphasize the diversity of wildlife in the world. Because Jules is so small, some pages feel like a Where's Waldo search, with the kitten hard to spot as he's locked into a hug with a much larger animal. All told, Jules hugs representatives of more than 300 species on his journey, including a gray squirrel, a blue whale, an elephant, a chimpanzee, a giraffe, a hippo, a tiger, a gnu, a panda, a peacock, a pudu, a wallaby, a wombat, a humuhumu fish and a polar bear. At one point, he even hugs a baobab, making him a true tree-hugger. McDonnell makes a special point of noting how endangered tigers are, and the implication is there with the polar bear as well.

Animal lovers should appreciate this book, and Jules' determination to hug as many creatures as he possibly can is a great way to get children thinking about stewardship of the planet. I still think that giving the world a Coke sounds like a pretty nifty idea. But a hug may be even better.