“A lot of picture books go off this idea that a kid sees something, kind of assumes it’s scary, and then overthinks the whole situation until realizing, “Oh, that kid-like shape wearing a coat is, in fact, a child as opposed to some kind of giant goblin. Don’t know why I didn’t assume it was a kid first, but such is life.”
This is one of those books.
I have to admit, the neighbor kid who isn’t a goblin is still a little…chud-y. And he says his mom doesn’t want him to have snacks in his tree house as they will attract bugs. Which, as one picture shows, they do. This kid, who is sort of balding and wearing an oversized sweater is surrounded by little gnats swirling around his head.
Also, earler in the book some movers are hired, and the name of their company is Break-It-Brothers Moving.
This got me thinking, maybe this child has some sort of perceptual disorder passed down by his parents. That would explain his visions of monsters everywhere, and it would explain why adults would hire a moving company that sells itself on the fact that they break stuff.
You know, a better book would be about these parents moving. They have too many knick-knacks, paddywhacks and the like. So what the mom does is she hires this moving company, but then she meets with the owner and slips him some cash under the table to “accidentally” break some stuff. The items selected are up to him, she doesn’t care, she just needs them to have less crap. Part of the exchange is that the movers understand the husband will call extremely upset and the wife will also have to pretend to be a bit outraged. And what she’ll do is OVERPAY the movers up top and then they will “refund” some of the money, which is really the extra pay, to compensate for the broken objects.
Naturally, in the course of discussing what’s really important, tchotkes or the memories to which they are tied, the mover and the wife become very close, and when she sees the mover’s stark apartment (almost devoid of objects because he moves things all day and hates clutter) they fall instantly in love, or whatever the instant form of love looks like, anyway. They carry on an affair, but then they have a fight because the wife wants to leave some things at the mover’s place, and naturally he freaks out about it. Then she says something like, “Is that how you see me? Just more clutter in your life?” She’s wagging a toothbrush she wanted to leave as she says this.
The affair doesn’t last. The wife goes back to her husband, and the story ends with her feeling like her only life options are to be discarded detritus in one man’s life or saved clutter in another’s. She thinks back to her college days and the poetry she wrote and the powerful messages of female empowerment contained within, and she thinks how if that college student could see what became of her, god, it would just be so depressing. She digs through boxes in the garage to find her old notebooks. She knows those poems are in there somewhere. She knows that college student is still somewhere inside.
That said, I wondered if the artist of this book was the Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs dude, and it totally was. With cross-hatching like that, you can get me to pick up just about anything.”