Celebrating Tomi Ungerer

One of Tomi Ungerer's main preoccupations was the moon; that strange rock has a big role in "Fog Island" (2013), and, in Ungerer's final book, that rock is the spot where everyone lands once the polluted Earth explodes.

Much earlier in his career, in the sixties, Ungerer imagined a "Moon Man" who grabs the tail of a comet and comes to visit humankind.

People with pitchforks surround the fallen comet; a fireman arrives; an ice-cream vendor parks his truck near the swarming spectators.

Experts toss the Moon Man in jail, so that he might undergo some examinations. But MM's body shrinks with the waning of the actual moon; and, in his fractional garb, he is able to slither through the bars of his prison-window.

Eventually, MM discovers a scientist who has built a rocket to send to the moon; the scientist *would* use the rocket, but he has grown too rotund to fit into the capsule. MM solves this problem (when he matches the slender half-moon). MM takes the capsule and travels back to safety, back to MM's home.

The idea of eccentric outcasts helping each other is also something we see in "Rufus"; the "tourist" returning home makes me think of Adelaide, the flying kangaroo.

Ungerer won a movie deal with "Moon Man"; as for the book itself, it was called, by Maurice Sendak, "the best in years, for kids."

Who would disagree?

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