We were first introduced to Chris Van Dusen's work by his book If I Built a Car, which I bought through a Scholastic catalogue from my son's preschool. My son was captivated by the imaginary car the little boy in the story designs - especially when it becomes a boat, a submarine and a plane. I was impressed enough to look for other books by him at the library and found Down to the Sea.
The back flap of the book says that the author/illustrator "always wanted to paint a picture of a boat in the top of a tree. When he wrote a story around that idea, Mr. Magee and Dee were born." I love the notion that Van Dusen took one fantastic situation and built a plot around it - and the result is funny, clever and really appeals to a child's appreciation of absurdity.
Van Dusen's rhyming text makes it fun to read out loud, and I especially appreciate his use of vocabulary. Most of his word choice falls within what a young child would recognize, but then he throws in language that would broaden most kids' vocabulary - Magee's packed lunch includes sweet pickled beets, whales in the story eat minnows, plankton and krill, and at one point Magee feels downhearted.
The plot itself is wonderfully silly - basically, Mr. Magee and his dog Dee, go for a boatride on the ocean, get shot into the air by a stream of water from a whale's blowhole, from there get swept by the wind into a tree, and are eventually rescued by a group of whales who use a spray of water to dislodge the boat. There are several points in the story where my son laughs out loud.
From my perspective, the illustrations are WONDERFUL. Van Dusen incorporates funky 1950s decor and clothing into his pictures - Magee wears browline glasses and a short-sleeved sweater tucked into his pants, he has a grooved aluminum diner table and dishes and vinyl kitchen chairs featuring that once hugely popular star pattern. Today's kids won't appreciate that it's "retro" but it gives a great look to the art. Van Dusen's color scheme is beautiful and bright, with creams, yellows, aquas, bold watery blues, and minty greens with pops of orangy-red.
Though his style is not photo-realistic, Van Dusen choice of vantage point for each of his illustrations seems informed by photography. On each page the point of view shifts - for one painting the "lens" is at water level looking up, in another it's overhead looking straight down, and in another the scene appears in cross section with the underwater world taking up most of the page. This shifting of the view point makes the illustrations very dynamic, and in addition, Van Dusen often places people or objects in the immediate foreground, foreshortening them to heighten the drama. Each picture is simple enough to be read - the plot details come through loud and clear - and yet he has worked in "extra" information that makes them fun to study and unpack. The lighthouse and old wreck mentioned several pages into the book are visible from the very first illustration, and then lobster trap bouys appear on a couple consecutive pages before you see the lobsters and traps, making it possible to notice new things on multiple readings.
My son was particularly delighted to tell me that Mr. Magee and Dee make a cameo appearance in If I Built a Car. This "trick" of incorporating your own past characters into your current book's illustrations is one that Mo Willems (of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Knuffle Bunny fame) has perfected to an art. But it's no less rewarding here, when a kid can realize the relationship and make a connection between two books. I once read that a way to help children love books and reading is to start every book by reading it's title, the author's and illustrator's names out loud. This helps emphasize that this is a work created by someone. In our house, we've taken that a step further, and routinely follow up on the books of authors or illustrators we particularly like, checking out multiple titles by one writer from the library. My three-year-old son will now ask, "What other books are by this author?"
Another "game" that this book would be excellent for is discussing how the characters are feeling based on their body language and facial expressions. In Michele Borba's book Building Moral Intelligence she talks about the fact that empathy is not necessarily inherent in children, and that it needs to be nurtured. One method she recommends for helping kids learn to interpret and articulate others' feelings is to have them look at a picture and describe how they think the people and animals are feeling and WHY they think that. This helps them become sensitive to non-verbal means of communicating emotions - so they can recognize these emotions in themselves and in others, making them more empathetic and aware of emotional exchanges.
I feel very lucky to have discovered Chris Van Dusen's books and I'm poised and waiting for his next publication!
