Remainders and Reminders (review)

from England. To save face, she takes off for the industrial Midlands of England to find the father of her child, who she foolishly expects wiU be pleased with the news. She imagines that where she is going wUl be as sensible and friendly as the small Irish vülage she leaves. The first friendly person she meets, though, is the ominous Mr. HUditch, a corpulent and over-mothered , middle-aged man whose social life outside of his cafeteria management job consists of befriending young vagrant girls. Unable to find the lawnmower factory where her boyfriend supposedly works, Felicia accepts more and more favors from HUditch, for without his help, she has to sleep on the street or in the annoying company of a group of reUgious enthusiasts. She grows increasingly suspicious about his character, whüe Uttle suspecting the full enormity of his past or the present danger to herself. Felicia's Journey is an unforgettable psychological thriller. Hilditch's quiet brand of evil is genuinely terrifying , and Felicia's painful naïveté in the face of it keeps us on the edge of our seats, wondering what wiU happen to her. ? Reviews by: Kristen Harmon, Seth Bro, Jim Steck, Steve Weinberg, Kris Somerville, Speer Morgan, Gordon Reynolds, Evelyn Somers, Reeves Hamilton, Carol Quinn, Willoughby Johnson, Brett Rogers Remainders and Reminders by Sam Stowers Pausing by the bargain stall and looking for a book to read while I traveled this summer produced a duo of learned essay coUections that are also of interest to a wider audience . One is a masterly introduction to children's books and the other a savvy guide to the tradition of firstperson essays. Over thirty years ago when Maurice Sendak first came to prominence with the pubUcation of Where the Wild Things Are, he was a rebel, the center of a debate about what was acceptable material for children. In Sendak's books the very young had genitals and didn't always wear clothes or think nice thoughts about their parents. They had chaotic emotional Uves and surreal minds, and they consorted with monsters. This caused Sendak's work to be a favorite target of would-be censors. Excepting the nudity, it was the stuff tamed by Jim Henson and used to furnish his empire, lîmes change, though, and reputations with them. This spring, Sendak achieved the American equivalent of apotheosis —and some of Henson's economic success—when he was bought out in a multi-million-dollar deal with Sony. Although his 1990 book Caldecott & Co. (214 pages, Noonday Press) looks a bit daunting with its thirtyplus short essays on almost as many illustrators and writers, it has much to offer anyone who loves chUdren's books or who started a career as a book lover as a child—which probably covers almost anyone who would run across this review. The Missouri Review · 279 The obscurity of some of the essays derives from their original occasion . The essay discussing Lothar Meggendorfer, who, Sendak tells us, "used the mechanized toy book to exercise his genius," first appeared in something called The Publishing Archive of Lothar Meggendorfer. One of the pieces on the nineteenth-century British illustrator Randolf Caldecott, whose work "heralds the beginning of the modem picture book," was delivered to a meeting of the American Library Association. Other pieces are about better-known artists, including Beatrix Potter, Windsor McCay and Walt Disney, and appeared in publications as well-known and widely circulated as TV Guide and Rolling Stone. One essay on Porter, the creator of Peter Rabbit, explores her late blossoming —she married in her forties —and describes how she taught herseU to draw characters by sketching the locals. Another defends Peter Rabbit as a microcosm of our own world, combining the gentle with the fierce and "rooted in living fact." The author's discussion of Windsor McCay, creator of Little Nemo, chronicles the rise and faU of Slumberland as it merged with reaUty over the decades that the strip ornamented the Sunday comics sections of American newspapers. Little Nemo's trips to Slumberland disappeared over the years, and McCay filled his strip instead with educational documentary drawings of the Brooklyn Bridge and...