Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

“ONCE UPON A TIME … on the shortest street with the longest name
in the biggest palace with the HUGEST throne …”
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Just look at this castle, which can only come from the singular paintbrush of Rowboat Watkins. It is the first spread of Sally Lloyd-Jones’s Tiny Cedric (Anne Schwartz Books, February 2022).

This palace is the home of the “tiniest king,” whose name is Cedric, King ME the First. It’s the biggest possible palace with the “HUGEST throne,” and it sits on “the shortest street with the longest name.” (And since it’s hard to see the name of this road, given the size of that image, it’s: Don’t Even Think of Turning Here Because You Are So Absolutely Not Invited Boulevard.)

Tiny Cedric is irate about being small, so much so that he’ll take trips in his hot air balloon just so he can feel tall and cheer about all the “TEENY” people down below. He loves reading his morning newspaper, The Daily Me. (If you guessed that it is Cedric-centered, you’d be right.) He even goes so far as to make a new law (as depicted in a larger, more formal, decree-like font): “NO ONE CAN BE TALLER THAN ME!” This results in a long line of departures from the palace. Cedric even builds a big brick wall so that he “won’t accidentally see someone big!”

The problem, however, is that no one is left to serve him breakfast and deal with all of the other Royal Duties. No one except for the palace babies. The series of spreads that follow captures the children’s mischief and what results when toddlers are in charge. It is very funny, this chaos of misrule. There is a lot going for these spreads — the comic pacing, the expert compositions that make the mayhem easy to follow, the rewarding details, and lots more. Watkins also plays with scale throughout the book in smart ways. Our first introduction to Cedric (other than the cover), which is the book’s second spread, depicts him sitting on a wide palace couch. Cedric, with his wide and exceedingly horizontal orange hair, takes up a small portion of the couch on the book’s verso. A tiny ladder rests against the chair on the recto. This final spread isn’t pictured here today, but when you find a copy of this book, you’ll see that it’s funny stuff.

But of all these things, it’s the facial expressions and body language, particulary as depicting Cedric’s growing frustrations, that will have children howling. Eventually, though, Cedric’s little heart warms to the babies, and he surprisingly finds himself in a parental role: “Since the Royal Chef only knew sloppymush,” for instance, “the tiny king had to cook instead.” Cedric continues to play with the babies (and finds himself capable of cuddling!) when he allows all the parents to return (but only kneeling, “to be safe”), even if the children have grown taller than him.

Sally’s wry, entertaining text — I enjoy her asides, such as when she comments on Cedric’s new law: “This was silly, of course, because people grow whether someone likes it or not” — doesn’t explicitly, ham-handedly flag the warming of Cedric’s once-tiny heart; that would be too much. Children will get it.

Below are some spreads, and Rowboat also shares some sketchbook and preliminary images from the book. Rowboat writes: These are …

… some early sketches from the dummy when it was a square format book. The two drawings I originally sent to Anne Schwartz after she sent me Sally’s very funny text. And some random hair drawings from my sketchbook that I’d done about 10 years earlier. For no good reason. It’s weird how projects sometimes find you, and how things that seemed pointlessly fun in the moment might lead to something else a decade or so down the road. You know?

I thank him for sharing, especially since getting a peek into his sketchbooks is one of my favorite things on this good, green earth.

 

Some Final Spreads from the Book:


 


“Every morning, Tiny Cedric got in his hot-air balloon and looked down from the sky.
‘Everyone’s so TEENY!’ he cheered. ‘I’m all big and tall, and NOT SMALL!'”
(Click spread to enlarge)

 


“So Tiny Cedric made a law: ‘NO ONE CAN BE TALLER THAN ME!’ This was silly,
of course, because people grow whether someone likes it or not. So Tiny Cedric banished anyone taller than him from the palace. Which was everyone. Basically.”
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(Two images above: Click either to see spread in its entirety)

 

First Drawings and Early Sketches:


 


Test drawing
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Test drawing
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Rowboat’s Old “Random Hair Drawings”:


 


Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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Early sketch
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TINY CEDRIC. Text copyright © 2021 by Sally Lloyd-Jones. Jacket and interior illustrations copyright © 2021 by Rowboat Watkins. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Anne Schwartz Books, New York.

* * * Jules’s Kicks * * *

Note for any new readers: 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. New kickers are always welcome.

1) Pies. Again. (I think I have a pie habit I should maybe kick? Or maybe it’s okay to have some weekly pie?)

2) Marc Maron’s interview this week with Tony Kushner.

3) The guitar in Elliott Smith’s “I Better Be Quiet Now.”

4) Stumbling across this William Stafford poem. Which I love but forgot I loved.

5) A friend sending me this new song from Walter Martin:

 



 

6) Rowboat made TINY versions of Tiny Cedric. See below. Click on the image to look more closely at it.

 



 

7) My daughters. Always. Every week. Those two.

What are YOUR kicks this week?

P.S. I’m coming back here, after having already scheduled this post, to say I’m sorry to hear about the death of Ashley Bryan. May his friends and family find comfort in the countless lives he touched with his art and his books. I will surely revisit this book this week.