Weasels by Elys Dolan (review)

You may think that weasels just hang around doing weaselly things all day, but Dolan reveals the truth in this droll picture book: “What they really do is … plot world domination!” Spreads reveal a teeming nerve center of wall to wall technology and a multitude of coordinating weasels, all ready to take over the world—until the countdown to world domination is interrupted by a power outage. “But technical difficulties won’t stop a weasel,” and the crew scurries around to find the fault, investigating the problem in the lab, checking the Rube Goldbergian connections in the machinery, until finally the little coffee-serving weasel discovers that he pulled the plug out when he tripped over a cord. Countdown is swiftly resumed, and the weasel takeover changes the world.

The complex weasel domain resembles some of Arthur Geisert’s elaborate piggy realms and technologies, while the goofy humor and text-spattered art hits some of the same notes as Mélanie Watts’ Scaredy Squirrel. The medium is simple line and translucent paint in gentle, noncompeting colors, with the toasty brown of the weasels predominating against the ivory brackgrounds, the better to focus on the multitude of activities that fill each oversized spread. Small intricate dramas peppered with speech bubbles abound across the scenes, often in neat horizontal layers (the towering machines have railinged levels, each abuzz with busy weasels), as weasels obsess over coffee, slack off to play “World of Woodcraft,” and work feverishly over test tubes and electrical wiring to solve the problem. Yet compositions are cleverly rhythmic: an initial sequence of thumbnails builds up the pace to the packed scenes, and the blackout spread effectively counterpoints the frenetics of the surrounding visuals.

As usual with such multi-ring circus spreads, there’s much pleasure to be had in hunting down all the individual stories and piecing together the odd ongoing plotline (the introduction of a new specialty coffee drink fails miserably), and that’s a joy that middle-grade fans of Geisert and Watts will immediately embrace. However, Weasels offers even broader appeal through its humor, which is laced with absurdity that links it to recent surreal comedy such as Monroe’s Monkey with a Toolbelt (BCCB 6/08) and steeped in a campiness and affectionate satire that suggests cartoons and pop-culture memes. The note is set right from the cover’s tagline of “Megalomania has never been so furry!”; as the action progresses, the monocled archvillain weasel Bondishly strokes a white mouse, a helpful sign on the machine states “This is the machine,” the science lab includes delightful 1950s-serial style rayguns and transmogrifiers, and even the font has a dot-matrix machined look that evokes old-school conceptions of computerized text. Kids well up into middle school will snicker at the random and bizarre comedy in elements such as the installation’s drawing board (which offers proposed solutions ranging from the use of a coathanger to buying a new machine) and the persistent weasel grandstanding through the spreads determined to apply his big drill to anything in his way (“Without this drill, I am nothing”). In a move that echoes cinematic end credits that reveal the characters’ futures, the closing spread shows vignettes from the now thoroughly weaselized planet, with weasels raising a weasel flag à la Iwo Jima, a weasel ensconced on the British throne, a pair of weasels looking in satisfaction on the newly weaselly Sphinx (“Much better,” one says proudly), and a steaming cup of coffee bearing the Starweasels logo.

The result is an appealing combination of sophisticated yet goofy humor and undemanding text that will draw many youngsters, and the book’s appeal to a wide age range makes it an excellent choice for older and younger kids to share and snort over together. Weasels is just the mammalian madhouse to move kids from Anno to the anarchic. (See p. 307 for publication...