What I'm Reading Now

It's clear to me that Jerry Pinkney often thinks about mercy.

Pinkney's great triumph--"The Lion and the Mouse"--has a powerful lion showing mercy to a tiny irritant. The lion could crush the mouse, but instead sets the mouse free. (Pinkney suggests that it's this act--as least as much as the mouse's later craftiness--that inspired him, and moved him to complete a re-telling.)

In a later volume, a sort of companion piece, Pinkney re-tells the story of the Grasshopper and the Ants. My understanding is that some versions of this piece have a sour ending. The ants have toiled all year, and the grasshopper has goofed off. In winter, the ants will not make room for the grasshopper in a warm den. Let the grasshopper reap what he has sewn!

Pinkney rejects this ending and has the queen ant invite the nervous grasshopper for tea. It's an extraordinary moment, because the ant doesn't explicitly state that she is saving the grasshopper's life. And she doesn't give a lecture about being prepared. She just says, "Join me for tea." This is all she needs to say.

Pinkney--the best kind of weirdo--worried about drawing ants to scale. A grasshopper is so much larger than an ant, if you were a realist, you would need to make the ant a tiny, tiny speck on the page. Wisely, Pinkney abandoned realism. I'm delighted by the ant's shawl and tiara, and by the grasshopper's habit of strumming on a banjo even while one of his many legs reaches out toward a porcelain tea cup. I'd have this particular page as a print, if I could find it.

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