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Picture Books

 "Sam and Dave Dig a Hole" is a title that exactly fits its story. Sam and Dave, two boys, head out with just a supply of apple juice and animal crackers. Dreaming of something extraordinary, they dig a hole.


Here is where the story gets strange. If you follow just the text, the events are straightforward. The kids keep adjusting their path--but it seems that nothing is "out there." But the pictures tell a different story. Always--just beyond Sam's view--there is an enormous diamond. Always, right before the discovery of the diamond, a wrong turn occurs. So the reader has an early (a first?) taste of dramatic irony.

This would just be a decent joke--but then the narrative takes off. We shift to the perspective of Sam's wordless dog. As Sam and Dave nap, the dog hunts for a bone--and his digging causes him to fall through the center of the Earth. Naturally, Sam and Dave (sleeping) fall *with* the dog.

On new terrain, Sam and Dave mistakenly believe that they are back home. It's only the dog who spots tiny changes; the flowers have morphed, and the color of the front door is slightly brighter. We end on this unnerving note.

I think this book is so "heretical," it deserves to belong to its own genre. It's like if Edward Hopper illustrated a picture book; each scene is haunted, and nothing is explained. Barnett and Klassen demand that the reader become a part of a collaboration; the reader constructs his or her own meaning.

All of this looks easy. The book is provocative--but with the lightest touch.






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