13 Words (review)

The unexpected pairing of Snicket and Kalman produces a surprising result in this serenely surreal picture-book story built around a baker's dozen of thirteen initially unrelated words. It all starts with a "bird" (Word Number 1), who's "despondent" (Number 2), despite receiving a lovely "cake" (Number 3). Her friend the "dog" (Number 4) therefore travels in a "convertible" (Number 6) to a "haberdashery" (Number 9) run by a "baby" (Number 11) and returns with a present for his avian buddy that's then chronicled in song by a "mezzo-soprano" (Number 13). It's a completely loopy and Dadaesque project, and yes, it's peppered with sophisticated vocabulary and arbitrary turns of events, yet the result is quite charming. One may imagine this the result of a narrative challenge, and certainly teachers will use this to inspire writing assignments that draw from a collection of random words, but it beams with the happy, nondidactic modernist invention of Gertrude Stein or Margaret Wise Brown. Kalman's art suggests the matter-of-fact fantasy of magical realism but with sunny practicality instead of nocturnal dreaminess, while the joyous, springtime intensity of the palette suggests the work of Pierre Bonnard. Not only does the art provide the text's trilby-wearing dog, ladder-painting bird, and so on, it also populates the quirky world with intriguingly labeled boxes, fascinating motorists, and splendidly odd passersby (a tambourine-playing angel, a courtly man bowing to a sugar-pink bird, an ostrich peering sternly at a young lady in garden-party white). Partner this up with Winter's Gertrude Is Gertrude Is Gertrude Is Gertrude (BCCB 1/09) to demonstrate that the modernist legacy of playful narrative is alive and well.