7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #600: Featuring Ian Schoenherr
Sunday, August 19th, 2018
I’m doing something a little bit different today. I’ve not got a picture book for you this morning, dear Imps. I have a novel.
This is one of my favorite books this year, Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s The Book of Boy (Greenwillow, February 2018). I like it so much that I’m reading it a second time — this time, I’m reading it out loud to my daughters.
“This story, like another, begins with an apple,” the book begins. This is the tale, set in Europe in 1350, of a boy who can talk to animals. His name is merely Boy. He is physically disfigured and mercilessly mocked for it. He is called a hunchback, and when he meets a mysterious pilgrim, named Secundus, in the medieval town of France where he lives, his life changes forever. In fact, when Boy leaves with Secundus (Secundus is impressed with his ability to jump and climb) to help the pilgrim find the seven relics of Saint Peter — rib, tooth, thumb, toe, dust, skull, tomb — it’s the first time Boy ever leaves the only home he’s ever known. He pilgrims to the city of Rome with Secundus in the hopes that Saint Peter can remove his hump and make him a real boy.
“[V]isiting Greece underscored the human scale of the tragedy. It was happening to ordinary men, women, and children, no different than my family and neighbors. The visit left me determined to tell the refugees’ story with both accuracy and sympathy. They don’t deserve less.”
“I love working in full color, but I considered that this story would be better told in black and white, because it would give more emphasis to textures. Animus is about looking at things which are very familiar more closely, or in a different way (tree bark, stones, insects), so this was both a practical and esthetic choice. ”
“Honestly, I was resistant to doing a childhood memoir. I feel like there are a lot of them these days — and good ones. The world didn’t need one from me. My publisher asked me to at least think about it, and I did, crankily. Crank crank crank. But as soon as the camp angle occurred to me, all my crankiness went out the window. I knew I could make a funny book that would be a blast to draw and be different from what’s out there. I’m always telling people about the outhouse. The outhouse needed to be immortalized!”
