This weekend I was digging through some old books when I rediscovered one of my childhood favorites, Arm in Arm by Remy Charlip (1969). It's not a story book. It describes itself as "A Collection of Connections, Endless Tales, Reiterations, and Other Echolalia." I'm not going to look up the word echolalia, but the rest of that means that it's full of little poems and stories that often end the same way they begin, or don't end at all. As a child I especially enjoyed its late '60s-minded randomness. And its delicate illustrations on sparse pages cracked open the design-appreciating part of my little brain.
A book review would be about 28 years late so I just wanted to share with you my favorite sequence. It's a two page spread that depicts a parade of stuff that rhymes. Not only did it blast my young mind, I was also extremely entertained by the mini-saga of the fat lie and the cherry pie. In panel 4 the fat lie makes a face at the pie...
The pie retaliates in panel 5 with some growling...
The lie cowers for the remainder of the story until he winds up next to a "good cry" which seems to delight him...
As a kid I was so fascinated by this endless tale that I performed my own version from behind my couch with the aide of puppets made of construction paper and popsicle sticks. Anyway, click on the image below to see the whole thing...
In the meantime I think I'll make like the striped tie and climb a pie til I lie on the night sky.
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