Review of the Day: Pretty Ugly by David Sedaris, ill. Ian Falconer

Pretty Ugly
By David Sedaris
Illustrated by Ian Falconer
TOON Books (an imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers
$18.99
ISBN: 9781662665271
Ages 4-7
On shelves February 27, 2024

If we are to embark on this review together, I think it only right and proper that I be clear with you from the start. And if that means revealing to your my own personal flaws and foibles, well then so be it. The fact of the matter is that sometimes a reviewer can only be candid in a professional review if they are candid with their readers. We are, to be frank, no better than the average reader. Our greatest advantage lies in the sheer quantity (rather than quality) of titles we imbibe. I read, on average, more than a thousand picture books in a given year. Just the act of doing that is bound to give a person opinions. You wouldn’t expect it otherwise. And one of those opinions I’ve acquired, after reading picture books from everyone from Donald Barthelme and Ted Hughes to Margaret Atwood and Jane Smiley, is that adult authors would do well to stay in their own lanes. I don’t care how many National Book Awards you hoist under your belt. The simple fact of the matter is that not everyone is cut out to be a children’s book author. Oh sure, you get the rare exceptions like a Neil Gaiman or a Toni Morrison sometimes, but by and large it’s the exception that proves the rule. So when they handed me a David Sedaris picture book, I was unimpressed. It has art by Ian Falconer? Well, that’s perfectly nice but quite frankly the bigger the illustrator the greater the literary flaws they must smooth over with their fame, that’s my motto. It seemed fairly clear to me that the man that produced Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk wasn’t going to be churning out any children’s literary masterpieces anytime soon.

Reader. I was wrong.

I hate being wrong. No, literally, I despise it. I really and truly enjoy basking in the delight of my own I Told You Sos, and this book, Pretty Ugly, wasn’t giving me any indication that I’d have to change my proverbial tune. What was the last Ian Falconer picture book you read that made you sit up and take notice? As for Sedaris, nothing about him leads you to believe that he’ll be the next Maurice Sendak. Has he studied the history of children’s literature in any capacity? Is he aware of subversive picture books, their long and storied past, or the meaning behind a great number of those Grimm Brothers tales we’re all so very fond of? You can’t look me in the eye and tell me he owns a copy of Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, you just can’t.* And yet after reading Pretty Ugly, does it matter? It’s been a long time since a picture book shocked me. Since it made me wake up and look around frantically and say aloud, “What just happened?!?” My guess is that the book banners won’t even notice this book until it becomes a hit. But whether it does or not relies entirely on you, the gatekeepers, and your children. And please believe me when I tell you that you have never, in all your live long days, experienced anything like this book before.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage, “Don’t make that face or it’s liable to stick that way.” Anna Van Ogre is every ogre parent’s dream. She stomps flowers, throws dirt, in the house, eats with her mouth full, and more. Her family positively dotes on her, but she does have this one habit they’re not crazy about. It turns out that Anna has the ability to make “terrible faces”, like a cute little bunny. Her mom warns her to be careful or her face will stick like that one day and, to her horror, the day comes when it’s true. After making the face of a veritable kewpie doll, Anna is thoroughly stuck. The solution? It’s simpler (and much grosser) than you think. Truly, beauty comes from within.

What kind of a picture book creator was Ian Falconer? The trouble is that he was one of those creators (now deceased) that had a lot of irons in a great many fires. A victim of his own talent, he created Olivia and instantly it became a wild success. So much so that for years he would do the other work that he was passionate about (set design, costumes, etc) and simply stoke the Olivia fire with the occasional sequel or two. Really, until he produced the picture book Two Dogs in 2022, I was under the distinct impression that he was bored to death with the whole idea of making picture books altogether. There’d been such a delightfully sly subversion to those early Olivia stories, though. It seemed a shame that he’d never thought to try new things. And while Two Dogs was nice, it certainly wasn’t his best work. So it seems particularly cruel that with the publication of Pretty Ugly we’re getting a glimpse of where he might have gone. This book upsets expectations in such a raw, jaw-dropping way that I find myself daydreaming over what else he might have been capable of. If he could do this much with a text from another author then it’s a crime that this second coming of Falconer was cut quite so short.

And what about David Sedaris? Again, I’ve read many an essay from the man and at no point have I ever read his opinions on the random children he sometimes encounters and thought, “Now there’s a guy with his finger pressed firmly to the pulse of the youth of today.” By all rights, this book should be awful. Not that Sedaris has ever been inclined towards the inherent saccharine attitudes his fellow adult authors seem unable to avoid. But by all logic he should have pivoted 180 degrees in the opposite direction and written something that thought it was being subversive but was just nasty. I acknowledge that I am giving voice to the very words that people are bound to lob against Pretty Ugly, but I would also maintain that this book is NOT merely nasty. It is nasty in all the best ways. This is the nastiness we used to get from the best works of Tomi Ungerer and (when he was feeling up to it) Maurice Sendak. This is a book with hints of William Steig and Quentin Blake and Roald Dahl. Sedaris has given us a joke at the end of this book that’s going to make the kids you read this story to (and make sure it’s a group of kids for maximum effective) scream and laugh all at the same time. It’s gonna blow their little freakin’ minds and they will LOVE YOU for grossing them out in this way. But who knew it was Sedaris that would give us that level of emotion? Not I, said the fly.

In the great pantheon of children’s literature, where do we set Pretty Ugly? It’s almost an aberration. A book that should have come out during the glorious heyday of Victoria Chess (I’m thinking of her work with David T. Greenberg on 1983’s Slugs). It seems ridiculous to see it arrive at a time when your average Barnes & Nobles is only interested in “classics”, sequels, and picture books with plots the consistency of sparkly goo. My greatest wish is that with its matinee headlining author/illustrator pairing, maybe there will be a Barnes & Nobles somewhere in this great country of ours that doesn’t bother to read through this book and will display it prominently. I can imagine kids flipping vacantly through dull book after dull book until they randomly pick this one up, read it through, and burst into surprised laughter (or, equally possible, horrified tears) at the ending. A picture book that unexpectedly incurs an unexpected emotion! What a notion! The equivalent of what you’d get if Edward Gorey and Tim Burton had a baby together (our heroine does resemble an alien from Mars Attacks at the end, you gotta admit).

What will happen if Pretty Ugly becomes a massive hit? I suspect author David Sedaris would be unpleasantly surprised. Perhaps he has not realized what a gamechanger he had on his hands when he submitted this manuscript. Over the years, Ian Falconer designed sets and costumes for some of Sedaris’s theatrical productions. It is the only reason anyone would have thought to pair the two of them together on a book like this. Yet as it turns out, this bit of professional kismet was precisely what this book needed. Sedaris needed Falconer to go to the visual extremes that he did with this text. And Falconer needed a text written by someone else to give him the push he so desperately needed out of his own comfort zone. They fit together, Sedaris and Falconer. We’re lucky we got them together like this when we did. The world would be a poorer place if we didn’t get to see one little girl pull her insides out for us, in all their slimy, gutsy glory. Be grateful that we were all at the right place in the right time for a book like Pretty Ugly to exist.

*[Addendum: After publishing this review I have learned that Sedaris DOES own this book, so, again, shows what I know]

On shelves February 27th

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2024, Review 2024, Reviews