The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone (Candlewick, 2003)
by Timothy Basil Ering
I have a feeling this is one of those books that you either adore to hyperbolic proportions or is completely off your radar.
I’m in the hyperbolic proportions camp, but it’s still a book I forget about. And then when I remember, I wonder how I forgot?!
So this is an origin story, one that starts in Cementland and ends in gritty beauty.
The first spread is so perfect. A wide shot of Cementland, described as a dull, gray, endless place. A boy, arms open and striped in red, stands at your attention in the midst of all that gray. All of the lines and the stress and the mess lead you right to him.
This red-striped fellow believes treasure hides among the heaps of junk in Cementland, and in a triumphant moment finds a box bursting with color. Bright colored packages, but filled only with tiny gray specks.
Hundreds of them. Not wondrous riches.
He plants anyway. And after two or three minutes, nothing happens.
While he’s gone, thieves root and loot the plot. So this boy–this treasure hunter, gathers smelly socks, scraggly wires, and of course, a crown, and dubs his creation Frog Belly Rat Bone, the monster who will protect the specks.
They are a duo with a mission and a patched together friendship that pays big rewards.
That’s why Timothy Basil Ering’s use of texture is the only possibility for this type of storytelling. The art is the story. It’s stitched up. It’s not slick. It’s piled up and layered and cobbled together just like Frog Belly Rat Bone himself.
There’s warmth in the mess and intention in the scatter. It’s as beautiful as that treasure that the red-striped boy finds. And creates.
“…[W]hen I first made the dummy book for Frog Belly Rat Bone, naturally, I beat up some wood and sewed it all together. It gave it that nostalgic, cobbled-together look that’s just plain interesting to me. I wanted it to look like it was made the same way the little boy in the story makes Frog Belly, with just raw hand-stitching and splashes of paint.”
(That’s from here, which is a great read!)
It’s definitely one I want to share early in the year with our fourth graders who are the school’s expert gardeners. It would pair well with The Curious Garden (for obvious reasons) but also classic unlikely friendship stories. Isn’t a trash-made monster-thing with picky underwear a pretty unlikely friend? I’m thinking about Amos and Boris and Leonardo the Terrible Monster.
Giveaway Update: Thanks for playing! I’ve picked the winners, but I’m going to wait until my order comes in from the bookstore to share the spoils. We had to special order a few titles. Did you know your local indie will do that for you?! And then you get to go back. Stay tuned!
Tagged:
candlewick,
color,
texture,
timothy basil ering 
WILD BOY: THE REAL LIFE OF THE SAVAGE OF AVEYRON, by
Mary Losure, ill. by
Timothy Basil Ering (
Candlewick, March 2013)(ages 10+). In the last years of the 18th century, a boy -- about ten or eleven years old -- was captured in rural France. He'd been living on his own -- foraging in the forest, naked and running on all fours -- and no one knew where he came from. Ultimately, he was taken to Paris for study, where scientists tried to "civilize" him...
WILD BOY offers a fascinating look at one boy and human nature and what it means to be civilized -- a compelling and thought-provoking read.
By Phoebe Vreeland, The Children’s Book Review
Published: February 26, 2010
Snook Alone
By Marilyn Nelson (Author), Timothy Basil Ering (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 5 -10
Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: Walker & Company (January 2011)
Source: Library
How might you discuss subjects like longing and faith with young children? Marilyn Nelson has given us a gem of a spring board with the book Snook Alone. She has chosen the ideal protagonist for such a lofty subject: the faithful dog. Masterfully illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering, the story takes us to a faraway atoll in the Indian Ocean where Abba Jacob, a contemplative monk, spends his days in silence, prayer and work shadowed by his rat terrier Snook. As the monk rises early to sit for prayer, Snook curls up behind him, closes his eyes, and takes in all the sounds of the island in early morning. While the monk tends to his chores, Snook faithfully shadows his master, dutifully hunting rats and mice. The two even share the monk’s modest lunch. “Each day was a striped flag of silence, work, food, silence, work, silence.”
Click to enlarge
That is, until one day when Abba Jacobs travels by motor boat to a nearby island to catalog the flora and fauna. Snook goes along for the “micing.” A storm comes up and Snook is abandoned alone on the island. Here begins his great adventure. The terrier fares quite well as a survivor, yet all the while longing for the return of Abba Jacob. Snook, as we know, is an expert listener. The painting of him poised, alert at the sea’s edge listening for Abba Jacob is heartbreaking. “Every molecule listened for his friend.” Who has not witnessed the intensity of a dog waiting for the return of his master? Pure faith. Deep concentration…meditation.
As author Marilyn Nelson says, the book can be read on two levels. On the surface it is an adventure story—Robinson Crusoe with a dog cast away. This gives the book great boy and nature lover appeal with the interaction between Snook and the native animals that have never seen such an “exotic” creature and vice-versa. The interaction between Snook and a sea turtle laying eggs on the beach proves epiphanous for Snook and fosters the seed of compassion in him.
Illustration by Timothy Basil Ering
Abandoned, Snook eventually becomes quite feral—“a wolf-size cloud of stink”—yet he never stops longing for the return of his friend. Abba Jacob’s silence has been replaced by the constancy of the wind, the rhythmic sound of the surf and by the love inside Snook. In essence, Snook’s deep longing becomes the presence of Abba Jacob and the
Hundreds of them. Not wondrous riches.
There’s warmth in the mess and intention in the scatter. It’s as beautiful as that treasure that the red-striped boy finds. And creates.
