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"Henry and Mudge: The First Book"

A horrifying tale of parental negligence. Friendless, without siblings, little Henry pleads with his folks. "Can I have a brother? A sister?" And the parents say, "Sorry," blithely, but actions speak louder than words, and one wonders how Henry's heartless parents really feel. Desperate, Henry asks for a dog, and the troglodyte parents are about to give their reflexive no--when they decide: Fine. He can have the dog. (Why this turn-around? Perhaps there's some self-interest here? But then the parents seem to show no interest in the dog, or in Henry, for the rest of the story.)

A stranger comes to town. A good children's book often gets kids thinking about adjectives. (I sometimes think the main point of lower elementary school is sorting. You want kids to sort by attributes. Straight fur, curly fur. Short, tall. Pointy ears, droopy ears. Sorting is cognitive labor. It requires kids to communicate. It requires kids to be conscious and observant, and to stretch their vocabularies. In the "dog pound" section of "Henry and Mudge," you might recall the lost-button drama from "Frog and Toad.") Henry's neediness knows no bounds--and perhaps his pickiness in the dog pound points toward greater, deeper emotional needs that are going unfilled. There's Mudge, who has the right ears and the right fur--but, goddammit, he's too fucking short. Now, for the first time, we see Henry imagining himself into another creature's perspective. He puts himself in Mudge's shoes. Aha: Mudge is a puppy and will grow! Because small living things grow! (Scientific discoveries! You might think of the boy in "The Snowy Day," here, slowly realizing that heat causes snowballs to melt.)

Henry meets friends and allies in his new odyssey with Mudge. There are the grassy meadows, the long roads, the rocks, the rain. The residue of milk chocolate and lemon shampoo takes on new significance; it's now a way to lure Mudge into bed. (Without being gross, I have to point out that this here is a love story.) Previously, the understandably traumatized and unstable Henry spent his walks to school imagining various torments--bullies, ghosts, tornadoes. (All seem to be stand-ins for his chilly, forbidding parents.) Now, Henry walks to school thinking about vanilla ice cream. But any boy-meets-girl (or boy-meets-boy, etc.) chronicle needs some complications. And, again, I think the parents prove themselves to be villains here. They allow Mudge to run out of the house--and far, far away, into the fields. (They didn't lock the door? And they don't acknowledge their mistake, or apologize for it, to Henry?) Henry must again empathize. His first thought is that Mudge has willfully abandoned him (as living creatures seem to enjoy abandoning Henry, throughout his life). But a mental exercise allows Henry to deduce that the big old dog is likely just lost. And: calls and screams and calls and screams. Reunion. Happy ending.

Might we continue to worry about Henry? Is the source of his current strength an unhealthy example of codependence? Does Henry need to learn to fight for himself? These questions didn't deter some people from handing Cynthia Rylant a "Dr. Seuss" Award. The weeks speed along. As sands in the hourglass, these are the days of our lives. Henry keeps an iron-clad watch on Mudge, and Mudge is content to sit alongside his jailor. And we enjoy this moderately-uneasy truce with the wrathful, unpredictable gods. Till next time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nICGfru6Du0

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