Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear
By Lindsay Mattick
Illustrated by Sophie Blackall
$18.00
ISBN: 978-0-316-32490-8
Ages 4-7
On shelves October 20th
What is it with bears and WWI? Aw, heck. Let’s expand that question a tad. What is it with adorable animals and WWI? Seems these days no matter where you turn you find a new book commemorating a noble creature’s splendor and sacrifice on the battlefields of Europe. If it’s not Midnight, A True Story of Loyalty in World War I by Mark Greenwood or Stubby the War Dog: The True Story of WWI’s Bravest Dog by Ann Bausum, it’s Voytek, the Polish munitions bear in Soldier Bear or, best known of them all, the inspiration for Winnie-the-Pooh. With the anniversary of WWI here, the children’s literary sphere has witnessed not one but two picture book biographies of Winnie, the real bear that inspired Christopher Robin Milne and, in turn, his father A.A. Milne. The first of these books was Winnie: The True Story of the Bear That Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh by Sally M. Walker. A good strong book, no bones about it. But Finding Winnie has an advantage over the Walker bio that cannot be denied. One book was researched and thought through carefully. The other? Written by one of the descendants of the veterinarian that started it all. Add in the luminous artwork of Sophie Blackall and you’ve got yourself a historical winner on your hands.
Now put yourself in Harry’s shoes. You’re suited up. You’re on a train. You’re headed to training for the Western Front where you’ll be a service vet, aiding the horses there. The last thing you should do is buy a baby bear cub at a train station, right? I suppose that was the crazy thing about Harry, though. As a vet he had the skills and the knowledge to make his plan work. And as for the bear, she was named Winnipeg (or just Winnie for short), and she instantly charmed Harry’s commanding officer and all his fellow soldiers. During training she was great for morale, and before you knew it she was off with the troop overseas. But with the threat of real combat looming, Harry had a difficult decision to make. This little bear wasn’t suited for the true horrors of war. Instead, he dropped her off at The London Zoo where she proceeded to charm adults and children alike. That was where she made the acquaintance of Christopher Robin Milne and inspired the name of the world’s most famous stuffed animal. Framed within the context of author Lindsay Mattick telling this story to her son Cole, Ms. Mattick deftly weaves a family story in with a tale some might know but few quite like this.
Right from the start I was intrigued by the book’s framing sequence. Here we have a bit of nonfiction for kids, and yet all throughout the book we’re hearing Cole interjecting his comments as his mother tells him this story. It’s a unique way of presenting what is already an interesting narrative in a particularly child-friendly manner. But why do it at all? What I kept coming back to as I read the book was how much it made the story feel like A.A. Milne’s. Anyone who has attempted to read the first Winnie-the-Pooh book to their small children will perhaps be a bit surprised by the extent to which Christopher Robin’s voice keeps popping up, adding his own color commentary to the proceedings. Cole’s voice does much the same thing, and once I realized that Mattick was playing off of Milne’s classic, other Winnie-the-Pooh callbacks caught my eye. There’s the Colonel’s surprised “Hallo” when he first meets Winnie, which struck me as a particularly Pooh-like thing to say. There are the comments between Harry’s heart and head which reminded me, anyway, of Pooh’s conversations with his stomach. They are not what I would call overt callbacks but rather like subtle little points of reference for folks who are already fans.
I was struck my Mattick’s attention to accuracy and detail too. The temptation in these sorts of books is to fill them up with fake dialogue. One might well imagine that the conversation with Cole is based on actual conversations, possibly culled together from a variety of different accounts. Since Mattick isn’t saying this-happened-like-this-on-precisely-this-date we can enjoy it for what it is. As for Harry’s tale, you only occasionally get a peek into his brain and when you do it’s in his own words, clearly taken from written accounts. Mattick does not divulge these accounts, sadly, so there’s nothing in the back of the book so useful as a Bibliography. However, that aside, the book rings true. So much so that it almost makes me doubt other accounts I’ve read.
As for the text itself, I was mildly surprised by how good the writing was. Mattick makes some choices that protect the young readers while keeping the text accurate. For example, when little Cole asks what trappers, like the one who killed Winnie’s mother, do, Lindsay’s answer is to say, “It’s what trappers don’t do. They don’t raise bears.” Hence, Harry had to buy it. She also has a nice little technique, which I alluded to earlier, where Harry’s heart and mind are at odds. The heart allows him to buy Winnie and take her overseas. The mind wins in terms of taking her to The London Zoo in the end.
I like to put myself in the place of the editor of this book. The manuscript has come in. I like it. I want to publish it. I get the thumbs up from my publisher to go ahead and then comes the part where I find an illustrator for it. I want somebody who can emote. Someone just as adept at furry baby bear cubs as they are soldiers in khaki with teeny tiny glasses. But maybe I want something more. Maybe I want an illustrator who puts in the rudimentary details, then adds their own distinctive style to the mix. I’m willing to get an artist who could potentially overshadow the narrative with visual beauty. In short, I want a Sophie Blackall.
Now I’ve heard Ms. Blackall speak on a couple occasions about the meticulous research she conducted for this book. The Canadian flag she initially mistakenly placed on a ship of war has been amended from an earlier draft (the Canadian flag wasn’t officially adopted until 1965). She researched The London Zoo for an aerial shot that includes everything from the squirrel enclosure to Winnie’s small block of concrete or stone. Blackall also includes little visual details that reward multiple readings. A scene where Harry departs on the train, surrounded by people saying goodbye, is contrasted by a later scene where he returns and far fewer people are saying hello to their loved ones. One soldier has lost a leg. Another greets his much larger son and perpetually handkerchief clutching wife. Another doesn’t appear at all. And finally, Blackall throws in beautiful two-page spreads for the sake of beauty alone. The initial endpapers show an idyllic woodland scene, presumably in Canada. Later we’ve this red sky scene of the ship proceeding across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. For a book about WWI, that red is the closest we come (aside from the aforementioned missing leg) to an allusion to the bloody conflict happening elsewhere. It’s beautiful and frightening all at once.
In the world of children’s literature you never get a single book on the subject and then say, “There! Done! We don’t need any more!” It doesn’t matter how great a book is, there’s always room for another. And it seems to me that on the topic of Winnie the bear, friend of Christopher Robin, inspiration to a platoon, there is plenty of wiggle room. Hers is a near obscure tale that is rapidly becoming better and better known each day. I think that this pairs magnificently with Walker’s Winnie. For bear enthusiasts, Winnie enthusiasts, history lovers, and just plain old folks who like a good story. In short, for silly old bears.
On shelves October 20th.
Source: F&G sent from publisher for review.
Like This? Then Try:
Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower
By Greg Pizzoli
Viking (an imprint of Penguin Group USA)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-670-01652-5
Ages 8-11
On shelves now
I was listening to a favorite podcast of mine the other day when the panelists began discussing the difference between heist films and con man films. A heist film is one where the entire movie is a build-up to a great and fabulous heist. Ocean’s 11 and that sort of thing. In the children’s book world this would be The Great Greene Heist. A con man film is different. There you have a single individual, and not necessarily a heroic one either. Catch Me If You Can is a con man film. And on the children’s book side? Honestly, we don’t have a lot of them. Maybe Pickle by Kim Baker but that’s a stretch. It really wasn’t until I laid eyes on Greg Pizzoli’s Tricky Vic that I could appreciate what I had been missing all these years. Told with a relaxed easygoing style, Pizzoli takes one of the world’s most notorious individuals in the con game, and refuses to humanize him. Here we see a character that was larger than life. Makes sense that he’d try to sell a structure that was in many ways his equal.
In 1890 he was born Robert Miller, but that didn’t last. Names came and went and by the time he was an adult, Miller was a professional gambler turned con artist. His preferred method of payment was gambling on transatlantic ocean liners but then along came WWI and Miller, now calling himself Count Victor Lustig, needed a new occupation. Through a little low level trickery he got the blessing of Al Capone and then set about bilking the easy rich. But his greatest feat, and the one that would put him down in the history books, was his successful con of “selling” the Eiffel Tower to prospective buyers. Though in time he was eventually caught and jailed (in Alcatraz, no less), Vic’s odd life shines a spotlight on those individuals willing to get ahead on our own greed and misplaced hope. Backmatter includes an Author’s Note, Glossary, Selected Sources, and a note on the art.
Every great picture book biography finds something about an individual that is interesting to child readers. In The Boy Who Loved Math it was Paul Erdos’s sheer enthusiasm and childlike goofiness. In The Noisy Paintbox it was Kandinsky’s ability to translate sound to sight and back again. And in Tricky Vic it’s shamelessness. Kids don’t often encounter, in any form, adults that unapologetically do wrong. Vic ultimately pays for his crimes, and in many ways that’s the only way you can get away with what Pizzoli is doing here. You see, the trouble with con man storylines is that they’re just too much fun. You can’t help but root for Vic when he pulls the old Romanian Money Box scheme or when he cons the great Al Capone himself. Really one of the few objections I’ve heard lobbed against the book is a question as to whether or not kids will have any interest in an obscure two-bit criminal. But like all great nonfiction authors for kids, Pizzoli knows that children’s biographies do not begin and end with Amelia Earhart and Abraham Lincoln. Sometimes kids appreciate far more the biographies of the people who didn’t go about with halos hovering around their ears. There’s room on our shelves for the baddies.
Now when Greg Pizzoli debuted with his picture book The Watermelon Seed two years ago, there was nothing to indicate to me that he had any inclination to go the nonfiction route. “The Watermelon Seed” utilizes a three-color print job and distinctly retro aesthetic. That aesthetic remains intact in Tricky Vic but Pizzoli but the technique has been cranked up to eleven. In “A Note About the Art in This Book” at the back, Pizzoli says that the illustrations seen here were “created using pencil, ink, rubber stamps, halftone photographs, silkscreen, Zipatone, and Photoshop.” The end result is a book that straddles the line between those picture books actually concocted in the 1930s and a distinctly contemporary creation.
Dig a little deeper and Pizzoli’s illustration choices go beyond mere novelty. The choice to render Vic’s head as a thumbprint has so many different uses. With a mere change in tone or color, Pizzoli can render his personality and character different from one page to the next. This chameleon of a man couldn’t ask for better representation. But much of the success of the book lies in how it tackles the question of Vic as a bad person. Pizzoli’s choice to make Vic expressionless throughout the book is key to this. Because kids aren’t exactly reading about a role model, it’s important that Vic never look like he’s having too much fun. Remove his mouth and eyes and voila! An instant blank slate on which to project your storyline. Let the facts speak for themselves.
And speaking of facts, in no time in our nation’s history have picture book biographies for children fallen under as much scrutiny as they do today. Time was the D’Aulaires could write varying fictional accounts of everyone from Pocahontas to Abraham Lincoln and win Caldecotts for their efforts. These days, the debate rages around how much an author is allowed to do and the crux of that debate centers on made up dialogue. I am firmly of the opinion that made up dialogue is unnecessary in a children’s book biography. However, when handled creatively, there are exceptions to every rule. And “Tricky Vic” is, if nothing else, vastly creative. If you read the book the actual text is all factual. There is some mucking about with the timeline of one of the major events in Vic’s life, but Pizzoli comes clean about that in his Author’s Note in the back, and I give a lot of credit to folks who fess up plainly. Getting back to the text, look a little closer and you’ll see that there is some made up dialogue but Pizzoli keeps it at a minimum and gives it its own separate space. Little speech balloons between the characters will occasionally crop up at the bottom of the pages. The feeling is that these are interstitial fictional bits that simply support the rest of the text. A reader doesn’t walk away from them thinking that they’re strict representations of the past. They are, instead, a little colorful complement to the text to give it a lighter bouncier feel.
I recently conducted a Salon in my library on children’s nonfiction picture book illustration and historical accuracy. During the course of the talk we discussed Vincent Kirsch’s work on Gingerbread for Liberty and the times when a bouncier, more light-hearted feel to the illustrations best fit the text. In Tricky Vic Pizzoli isn’t going for a meticulous reconstruction of past events in his art. He’s going for something with a historical feel, but with fun built in as well. The design elements are what really step things up a notch. I also loved the factual sidebars that complemented the text but never dominate. As kids read they encounter sections talking about Prohibition, The Tower’s Critics (the folks who hated it from the get-go, that is), the Hotel de Crillon, Counterfeiting, and Alcatraz. The end result is as dynamic as it is informative.
I wonder vaguely if this book will receive any challenges from concerned parents living in the mistaken belief that Pizzoli has penned a How To manual for little budding criminals. As I mentioned before, the line between celebrating your biographical picture book subject and simply reporting on their life is thin. The beauty of Tricky Vic, I think, is that his life is just as wild and weird as any fictional character. There is value in showing kids the fools of the past. I don’t think anyone will walk away from this thinking Vic had it all figured out, but I do think a fair number of them might want to follow-up on Pizzoli’s Selected Sources for a little independent reading of their own. And if this book encourages just one kid to rethink their attitude towards nonfiction, then this title has earned its place in the world. The gorgeous art and great writing are just gravy. For one. For all. Un-forgettable.
On shelves now.
Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.
Like This? Then Try:
Other Blog Reviews: 100 Scope Notes
Professional Reviews: The New York Times
Interviews: Greg Pizzoli discusses his technique at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.
Greg Pizzoli has ripped the lid off of what is possible in non-fiction children’s literature and it’s housed in a thoughtful, beautiful package. I love that you stressed the author’s honesty in this tale of dishonesty. Here’s to wild and weird.