Discovering Tiffky Doofky

Dear Annie,

I love Emily's discovery of the joy of reading to babies.  And I especially like that it ends with her very new family's creation of their first family literary reference.

I came upon a discovery of my own this past week, thanks to a well-read customer.

When a book starts ...

Tiffky Doofky, the garbage collector, went his rounds in a jolly mood.  It was first-rate weather.  He planned to wind up work in time to get to the Annual Picnic of the Oil & Vinegar Club over in Moose Hollow.

.. and it's by William Steig, you know an adventure is about to happen.  That's what so many of Steig's books are: characters happily immersed in routine suddenly faced with the extraordinary.

Tiffky Doofky is comfortable with himself:

The stink of garbage did not faze him.  He respected garbage.  The furniture in his home, the bed he slept on, the dishes he ate from, his footstool, his lamp, his umbrella, the pictures on his walls, all came out of the garbage.

A visit to the fortune teller Madam Tarsal shifts his world.

 She predicts that he will meet and fall in love with his future bride before the sun goes down.  "Nothing you do can keep it from happening."   He's a happy guy, but also a dog: "Tiffky Doofky's tail whacked the chair he was sitting on."

Steig's characters' paths to happiness are  never smooth.  Tiffky nearly hits a babushkaed bicycle-riding chicken: "Help me up young fellow, don't just stand there like a totem pole!"

She then tells him to follow a magic arrow and he ends up lost in an enchanted world. Steig helps us out with a parenthetical:

(The old biddy was really a villainous witch who detested Madam Tarsal, her fellow fowl, and always tried to foil her fortunetelling.  As Tiffky Doofky ran after the arrow, she cackled with evil glee.)  

The enchanted world frustrates the garbage man's quest: after a sequence of bad experiences, he falls from a cliff and meets a self-described lunatic with a butterfly net over his head.  All of a sudden, the enchanted world disappears and he's back on the road with his garbage truck.  Once again Steig takes us into parenthetical explanation:

(How the devil did this happen?  Well, the old biddy who had been holding him under a spell had to go home in order to lay an egg.  This egg demanded all her attention, and tired her.  So she turned herself into a pair of old sneakers, something she did now and then because she found it restful.  Tiffky Doofky had been forgotten, he was off the hook.")

Well, not quite.  Demoralized, he dozes off by the side of the road and is nearly strangled by a boa constrictor. An attractive female poodle arrives and shouts, "Dolores!  At ease!"  It's Estrella, a carnival snake charmer, and as the sun sets we have true love:

The book is titled, appropriately, Tiffky Doofky.  I learned about it for the first time last week, when a very engaging customer asked about -- it had been her son's favorite and she wanted it for her grandchild.   It's always a pleasure to find out about a good book that I can start carrying in the store.  And to find a hitherto unknown (to me) Steig is a special treat.

I love his meandering stories and his unassuming lovable characters.  So many of his details are perfectly placed.  A picture of the dump has a bucolic scene of sheep grazing in the fields beyond the stinking garbage.  When Tiffkey is lying at the bottom of the cliff, the dominant figures in the picture are four cows who "ambled by, nodding, chewing, and mooing."  Such a master craftsman.

Love to you,

Deborah

Will!

Dear Annie,

The entire extended family is dancing with joy, waiting for this little guy to wake up, grow a bit, and dance with us:

Will!

Will arrived early this morning, missing his uncle's birthday by a few hours.  You're now a five-person nuclear family.  I suspect Will's big sisters (how does that title feel to Isabel?) will start reading to him soon.  The new baby books, of course, and the three-child-family ones, and many many more.

We can't wait to meet him.  In the meantime, we will send him books and ooh and aah over his pictures, and cheer on his amazing sisters.

I offer you two quotes from children's literature, to celebrate the boy.

I've cited Ramona's wonder at having a baby sister in the three-child-family post, but here's a snippet again:

"Look at her tiny fingernails," Ramona marveled as she looked at the sleeping Roberta, "and her little eyebrows.  She is already a whole person, only little."

And from William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, a different context -- the missing Sylvester has been restored to his parents --but applicable to the birth of a baby as well:

When they had eventually calmed down a bit, and had gotten home, Mr. Duncan put the magic pebble in an iron safe. Some day they might want to use it, but really, for now, what more could they wish for? They all had all that they wanted.

I suspect you have all you want right now (except maybe more sleep...).   Enjoy tomorrow's homecoming, and all that follows.  We have guest bloggers waiting in the wings, and will be very happy to hear all about your five-person family whenever you come up for air.

With much love for all,

Deborah

Spinky and Gorky: two great guys

Dear Annie,

Mirette is so wonderful.  It was one of several Mom-gets-choked-up read-alouds in our family.  When Mirette steps out on the wire -- so daring!  so selfless! -- to help Bellini, I'd get teary every time.

Speaking of your posts, there's a great princess discussion going on in the comments back in "I only like princesses."  I know you know it's there, but I highly recommend it to our readers.

Today I want to visit two wonderful characters created by the late great William Steig.  Both guys, although for reasons beyond me, whenever I read
Gorky Rises to my girls, they insisted that I change him to a she. This is not easy at 5 in the afternoon, snuggled up on the couch with two small warm bodies and feeling a bit drowsy. I still remember the elbows that would dig into my ribs to keep Gorky female.

In any case, Gorky, who is a clothed frog, wants some magic in his/her life, so s/he mixes up

a little of this and then a little of that: a spoon each of chicken soup, tea, and vinegar, a sprinkle of coffee grounds, one shake of talcum powder, two shakes of paprika, a dash of cinnamon, a splash of witch hazel.

After adding a bit of father's cognac, s/he finally dumps in a bottle of mother's perfume.

That did it!  The thick stuff sank to the bottom of the mixing glass and [s]he had a reddish-golden liquid full of tiny bubbles that glinted like particles of fire.  This, obviously, was the magic formula [s]he had long been seeking.

Gorky falls asleep in a field holding the magic stuff and

Whatever had kept him[/her] fastened to the earth let go its hold and Gorky's slumbering body rose in the air, like a bubble rising in water, and moved off in an easterly direction.

S/he floats high and low, attracting the attention of many characters on the ground, rising through a thunderstorm, somersaulting above the head of cousin Gogol (yep), and going on into the dead of night.  By releasing the magic formula one drop at a time, Gorky manages to descend, landing on Elephant Rock in his/her own neighborhood.  One last drop transforms the rock into an elephant, released from rockdom after ten million years (shades of Sylvester and the Magic Pebble).  Gorky's distraught parents are ecstatic to have their child back, although it takes a little convincing for them to believe the whole story.  The book is a lyrical and sweet and loving adventure.  The only time, thankfully, that my children insisted on sex change.


Spinky Sulks, however, is on a completely different level of intensity, as is clear from the first page:

Spinky came charging out of the house and flung himself on the grass. He couldn't even see the dandelions he was staring at, he was so upset.  His stupid family!  They were supposed to love him, but the heck they did.  Not even his mother.

Spinky is angry for a host of slights, among them that his sister called him Stinky, and his brother disagreed with his assertion that Philadelphia is the capital of Belgium.  His siblings apologize.  Mom tells him she has loved him "ever since the moment he was born.  And even before that."  His father tells Spinky "he was one of the most popular of the three children."  But his sulk builds and builds.  We see him draped over a porch railing, turning away from family and friends, rejecting candy from Grandma -- all with a scowl and a frown.  This goes on for days, with Spinky holing up in a hammock, refusing to go inside.  He finally softens: "Maybe these people didn't know how to behave, but at least they were trying. Was it their fault they couldn't do better?"  He finds a face-saving way to end the standoff.

After that, Spinky's family was much more careful about his feelings.

Too bad they couldn't keep it up forever.

And for a delightful contemplation of the art of the sulk and Spinky's parallels to Achilles, see this article by Tim Noah in Slate.

Love,

Deborah