by Sam Juliano
Life has come and life has gone.
Time has gone by
with no one to tend it,
happiness in its past,
for it will never feel love again. -Anne Crawford
Driving through a remote, swampy backwoods in the deep south, two young men, brothers Tim and John Branner find themselves stranded after their car gets stuck in a furrow. John ventures forth to find a pole to help pry them out and stumbles upon a pigeon infested plantation house that appears uninhabited and in serious disrepair. Upon entering the house the boys see dust and spider webs everywhere, pervasive evidence that people haven’t lived in the gloomy manor house for quite some time. Unpacking sleeping bags, the two young men resolve to spend the night, and proceed to ignite the fireplace. The cooing of the pigeons continues to wrangle John. This is the basic mise en scene of a television adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s 1934 short story “Pigeons from Hell” which is rightly considered to be the greatest hour of the early 60’s anthology Boris Karloff’s Thriller, and the one that even those with hazy memories seemed to recall vividly. The episode is drenched in atmosphere, and the seemingly long-abandon manor house in a remote wooden swamp zone develops a life of its own, albeit with a terrifying twist.
Julie Fogliano and Lane Smith, through aching elegiac prose and ravishing art with a spectral underpinning, transform a derelict house into a dimension of memory suffused with a blurred point of view, one paying homage to life forces that once made this benign structure the center of the world. Bereft of the consternation generated by the usual perception of evil spirits who find refuge in forsaken dwellings, A House That Once Was largely disavows the malevolent possibilities inherent in a place no longer tempered by humanity in favor of piecing together evidence based photos and objects that fuel interrogative word pictures. The author’s tone is deeply melancholic if tinged by hope and a celebration of a life once richly lived. Through searingly descriptive verse, minimalist and haunting Fogliano gives her award winning master illustrator Smith the opportunity to apply fantastical and metaphysical heft to what would on first glance to be an ordinary find, quite the flip side of the story of the woodcutter’s children published by the Germans Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812. Few picture books in modern times have as seamlessly woven word and image from collaborating artists to establish such literary and pictorial chemistry, though it is clear enough all the way back to the first double page spread that Fogliano and Smith are simultaneously interpreting each other’s vision.
To the author’s stark announcement Deep in the woods is a house that once was but now isn’t a home Smith forges a phantasmagorical application of saturated wooded foliage with red-orange and violet to convey just as deep in the woods this former home introduced in line sketch. Smith’s alluring and textured colors in the service of Fogliano’s meditative language hearkens back to the former’s Caldecott Honor winning solo work masterpiece, Grandpa Green, a life-cycle pictorial chronicle that projected sadness and loss. Adult readers may opt to immediately explain to their charges the color bursts, first seen in ultimate incarnation on the stunning end papers and frontispiece before the more pastoral if just as sublime refinement on the opening more markedly pastoral tableau, to the incorporeal line drawing of the soon-to-be-explored house being approached. Smith doubles up with another resplendent tapestry dominated by brownish reds and those inimitable brush flicks Smith has mastered time and again. Fogliano soon enough reveals the coed detectives who Tiptoe creep up the path, up the path that is hiding. A path that once welcomed. A path that is winding. A path that’s now covered in weeds., and a seasoned reader may recall Hew Morgan’s “There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone” from Richard Llewellyn’s coal mining saga How Green Was My Valley. Smith, who explains the dual illustrative technique (complicated and painstaking) he employed in this book on the concluding copyright page: “The ‘present day’ illustrations were made with India ink, drawn on vellum with a crow quilt pen, then pressed while wet onto watercolor paper creating a blotted line effect. The colors were painted in oil over gesso then scanned and added digitally under the ink-line” and the results are of the eye-filling delight variety. A once white door is in creaky disrepair as the children approach and Fogliano employs terms like “stuck between coming and going” and “A door that is closed but not quite” to denote abandonment can never render physical closure. As the children advance only the omnipresent bluebird greets their clandestine arrival.
The author suggests that the open space that once housed a glass window is tantamount to an invite for those with inquisitive spirits, juxtaposing what once was and what is now: A window that once opened wide. A window that has no window at all. A window that says climb inside. The boy climbs in following his sister and realize a creaking structure, eyeing a scene of disarray, with overgrown pot plants, a mouse looking through a gnawed hole in a family portrait, broken bookshelves, cracked vinyl records and paint peeling off the walls. For the first time Fogliano hints at mortality with The someone who once was is someone who isn’t. The someone who once was is gone after asserting there is no live person to resent their whispering. Amidst a cobweb-strewn scene where spiders and ladybugs have taken up residence the juvenile investigators examine faded family photos bean can paintbrush holders and newspaper clippings under the watchful eye of the feathered caretaker. The author-poet heightens the volume with some piercing questions: Who was this someone who ate beans for dinner who sat by this fire who looked in this mirror? Who was this someone whose books have been waiting whose bed is still made whose pictures are fading? The multi-faceted queries continue in the kitchen where an olive oil jar, and scattered sardine, syrup, mustard and juice canisters are strewn about, all modest revelations that inform these dogged sleuths what propensities the family members favored. Fogliano ends her stanza with a ghostly proposition: Who was this someone who left without packing/someone who’s gone but is still everywhere?
After the girl eyes a painting of ships a hypothesis is formulated, one that is ushered in by Smith’s second illustrative technique – “the imagined scenes were painted in oil paint on hot press board and scanned along with paper collage elements that were combined digitally” of which the first is a man with a sailor slant, distinguished by a long beard and glasses who dreamed of sea adventures through a telescope through the window of a room adorned with sea vessel paintings. With the conceivable possibility the answer to the questions could be a woman, author and artist go back outdoors to envision a forest clearing where a finely dressed lady is painting a squirrel, whose real-life equivalent is scampering down a tree. Smith’s wooded hamlet offers a sumptuous canvas. In furthering the perception of the family dynamic, the writer wonders if a cat slept by the fire and if a daughter danced to the music from her 45s, and then on the following page a boy “who built planes and dreamt nightly of flying.” Then to expand the possibilities suggestions include a baby, cowboy, queen or king, but as if to stave off the inevitable it is posed that perhaps they ran off and forgot to say goodbye. The illustrator’s makeshift plane is followed by a shipwrecked island and the Eiffel Tower, both with the trappings of the location and both magnificently created with the aforementioned collage technique.
And if all else proves futile, there is always the long-shot possibility that some of the family are lost and might not even have their house keys and they search through and imposing forest in wishful thinking mode much like the follow-up proposition that the house could be waiting for its occupants. The house is displayed in its heyday as a well-maintained domicile, sharply contrasted with the modern day testament of a run down shack. In the end the author suggests an eternal vigil by a structure with a human quality: Or maybe it loves to just sit and remember stories of someone who we’ll never know. And maybe it likes it out there in the forest with the trees coming in where the roof used to go. Rebirth is broached by the bird nest tended by the mother, a house fixture. The children return to their own warm and cozy house, where dinner awaits and the final contrast with the deserted house has tearful ramifications.
Fogliano and Smith have imbued this project with their A game, proving that the perfect artistic vision isn’t mainly exclusive to a single. A House That Once Was immediately takes its place as one of the most quietly resonating and beautifully crafted picture books in the history of children’s literature. Calecott committee members should have this one on their laps till the final bell, though the Newbery committee should also be looking hard at the author’s wrenching, probing lyricism.
Note: This is the second entry in the 2018 Caldecott Medal Contender series. The annual venture does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running. In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration. It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 25 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender. Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end. The awards will be announced in late January, hence the reviews will continue until around the middle of that month.