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Book Junkie

 Today, I'm tipping a hat to Barbara McClintock, who released "Adele and Simon" around fifteen years ago.


"Adele and Simon" is seen as one of the top "seek-and-find" books in children's literature; it's a book where something new is "lost" on each page, and you have to locate the item.


The plot is simple. Adele is a little girl in Paris in 1900, and she picks up her tiny brother from school. But the brother--Simon--is a mess, with his hair uncombed, his shirt untucked, his shoes untied. As he runs all over Paris--through cafes, through the Louvre, past the spire of Notre Dame, down streets--he loses his drawing, his coat, his gloves, and so on. Amazingly, each and every item is returned to Simon at the end of the story.


This work is not a miracle of psychological insight, but it's hard to beat the drawings. McClintock used pen and ink, then she used water-color. A favorite, for me, is the chaotic scene in the grand, rather haunted museum.








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