Goats and Gappers

I like George Saunders. A lot. I think I've talked about this here before, but his short stories are a near-constant source of delight to me. His style is pretty easy to hook into: wildly unreliable narrators, usually using a precisely-sculpted illiterate voice, following whatever selfish, defensive desires they have to their logical (or insane) conclusions. If you have a chance, it's worth checking out the two stories that hooked me on him: Adams (which story is why I subscribed to the New Yorker) and CommComm (which is what made me go out and hunt down Saunders's books).

Anyhow, he wrote a children's book, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, which I picked up this break. It's pretty great -- illustrated by Lane Smith (of Stinky Cheese Man and other oddball classics), it's a great look at how well his style translates to kid's lit. (It was actually in the Young Adult section of the library, and is a little more of a youth's novella. C'mon, guys, let me count it!) The simple, unadorned language of Saunders' villains translates well to a book that kids can grasp and adults can enjoy, and the warped, glaringly flawed syllogisms that most of Saunders' dialogue is built on work beautifully in this medium.

At the end of the day, it's just a great yarn -- who among us hasn't, at some primal level, thought about prickly orange screaming balls that cover our goats and cause them to tip over and not give up any milk? Who among us hasn't hired strong men to carry our houses further away from the Gappers until we live in the swamp? Who among us hasn't had to paint all our food white? And who among us hasn't longed for a slim book that ends by explaining why Frip's fences constantly scream?

Anyhow, point is: Saunders for kids, while almost identical to Saunders for adults, is pretty grand, in the Sidways Stories from Wayside School tradition of things. Worth a detour if you've exhausted his fiction and essay collections!