Review of the Day: The Spaceman by Randy Cecil

The Spaceman
By Randy Cecil
Candlewick Press
$17.99
ISBN: 9781536226164
Ages 4-6
On shelves now

It is downright alarming to realize that your new favorite picture book author/illustrator has been creating books since at least 1996. It is worse if you’re a children’s book specialist who prides herself on her picture book memory, and you’ve come to crushing realization that you’ve been reading said “new” author/illustrator for literally years and years and year. Run through the list of Randy Cecil’s books on his website and it’s downright embarrassing how many you’re going to see and coo over. “He did the art for How Do You Wokka-Wokka?” “Oh, HE’S the one who did Lucy!” “Dusty Locks and the Three Bears was him?!?” But maybe I’m not so totally off. The thing about Randy Cecil is that he has an elastic style and never really does the same book twice. If you compare the first book he ever illustrated to his latest title, The Spaceman you’re going to find them to be enormously different. Charming? Inevitably. But different. For my part, there is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Cecil actually gets better and better with each book he does. His last book, Douglas, was very good, earning itself multiple starred reviews, sure. But for my part, he’ll have a hard time ever topping The Spaceman. Quiet, unassuming, delightful, funny, and with just enough science fiction in there, I’m just gonna say it: I love this book. You know who else is going to love this book? Kids. All of them. Without question.

There was nothing about our planet that seemed out of the ordinary to the spaceman. Not at first, anyway. With a job that primarily consists of taking soil samples, he was caught unaware by the beauty of a flower in the midst of his work. Not paying attention, he failed to notice the large black bird that flew off with his spaceship until it was winging its way, away from him. Now he’s marooned on a strange planet and must find the spaceship or all is lost. Still, sometimes when things look their worst, it gives you the excuse you need to stop, look around, put aside your assumptions, and enjoy where you are.

I have read The Spaceman multiple times. I can remember scenes from it with a crystal-like clarity I usually only reserve for a very few books in a given year. Yet if you had asked me, point blank, to tell you whether or not the book had text or was wordless, I think my initial instincts would have been to say, “wordless.” I don’t know why. It is NOT wordless by a long shot. And not only does it have text, but the text is actually written in the first person from the point of view of the spaceman himself! What’s more, he has a rather elegant and eloquent method of speech. I don’t encounter sentences like, “But all my thinking came to naught,” or, “A little unrefined perhaps, but charming nonetheless,” in picture books half as often as I should. It’s that little dash of formality that just lifts the entire book above the pack, to my mind. And consider how fun it would be to tell this tale to a child in the style of Richard Attenborough or something along those lines. However you choose to do it, the book’s readaloud capabilities are strong. Even just reading it in my head I knew precisely where to put the cadences when I came to a line like, “But then again … one does have one’s responsibilities.” But perhaps my confusion stems from the fact that visually the book creates multiple iconic images that just stick in the little gray cells of the brain.

Mr. Cecil has, in recent years, has pared his books down a smidge and focused much more on the little heroes. A mouse in Douglas. A small dog in Lucy. The titular heroes of Horsefly and Honeybee. When he illustrates the books of other people, that’s when he’ll draw huge things like dragons or dinosaurs, but given his druthers, he seems to feel more comfortable reducing everything down to essentials. This little spaceman is no exception, though there’s something unique about his look. Maybe it’s the fact that he resembles, as one co-worker of mine pointed out to me, a Muppet. It’s something about those ping-pong-like eyes, the shape of the nose, the expression on his face, and maybe the way he rages against his fate, little fists waving in the air, like a tiny King Lear or Job. For my part, what I like best about him, I think, is how his entire face changes when he smiles. For the first half of the book he has a rather somber expression on his face. His mouth may gape in wonder from time to time, but it isn’t until he falls into a pond and just lies there, floating, that Cecil imbues him with this huge grin that stretches from one side of his punim to the other. It’s delightful. Much along these lines the cover of this book, by the way, is far cleverer than you might realize at first glance. If you look at him, you can see that Cecil has drawn the spaceman’s mouth so perfectly that like the Mona Lisa you can believe him to feel whatever emotion you want. And yes, that’s right. I just compared The Spaceman to the Mona Lisa. My regrets? They are few.

I’d be amiss if I didn’t say a couple words about the color palette too. As I’ve mentioned, Mr. Cecil has spent the last few years making books about little animals and creatures. And while the aforementioned Horsefly and Honeybee was brightly hued, the more recent books like Douglas and Lucy were black and white. It can actually be quite hard, sometimes, for an illustrator to convince their publisher to put out a colorless book, so I commend Mr. Cecil’s ability to do so. Nonetheless, you can’t look at The Spaceman and not think that here we have a book that is destined to be colorful. From the spaceman’s own Oompa-Loompa orange face to the red of the flower that initially entrances him and the butterfly that takes him on a ride, color is key to the storytelling. According to the publication page, Randy Cecil has painted this book in oils. His technique then leaves distinct brush lines on the page, giving everything an almost tactile look and feel. Who knew that oils could be so funny? Mr. Cecil is able to wring a lot of visual humor out the spaceman’s eyeballs alone. And later in the book, there’s even a wordless four panel sequence that’s as adept as any Buster Keaton film. Perhaps that explains in part why I remembered the whole book as wordless. Visually, it can be just that strong.

When you’re a kid, you sometimes end up with responsibilities. Adults think that this is a good thing. You may disagree from time to time. You’re also rather small, and maybe sometimes you just want to stop for a moment and stare at a flower or play with a dog or swim in a pond. And maybe there’s also something in this little spaceman’s story that is going to appeal to children far beyond the tale itself. After all, many of us may remember when we ourselves were small and the world (including its dogs) seemed massive. A lot of picture books try to show, rather than tell, how we should stop and smell the roses. A lot of picture books fail in this endeavor. The Spaceman in contrast, does not fail. It knows precisely how to tell a droll, funny, charming little story in precisely the right way. Randy Cecil has been holding out on us, folks. A contemporary classic (and I don’t use that term lightly) this is a little bit of interstellar storytelling that is bound to remain in your brain long after you’ve closed its cover. Sublime.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

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