THIS PAST Friday, walking into a bakery that happened to be a bookstore, I drifted to the section with the picture books, as is my habit these days. I let a book catch my eye. I take it in. It is funny to recall that when I was myself a child, I found such books facile—i.e., meant for other sixyear-olds—and put the kibosh on them after reading a whole story about a cat’s weekly routine: “On Monday, Susie drinks milk. On Tuesday…” Out of the child’s need to impress, I even preached to anyone who would listen about the supremacy of books with “a lot of words and where many things happen.” Time has made me easier to charm, or perhaps I see more clearly. There can be so much to admire in these children’s books: the whimsical art; the simple, taut sequences of words; the elegant gestures toward the ineffable.
Take this book from Friday. A kite adorns the cover, so there is no question of what comes next. In the logic of children’s tales, a child in want of a friend will find one, and a kite flying must be cut loose. But how? Twenty quick pages tell us. One morning, a boy wakens and, after a hearty breakfast, resolves to make a kite. A piece of string unwinds from one page to the next—voilà, the kite is done. Then the long days of waiting on which childhood is made, the air as still as the hour is empty. When the wind arrives, the kite does not take. It is at this point that the marvelous thing happens. Your kite, an elderly neighbor declares, is obstreperous.
So it Obstreperous. (Naturally, this is the title of the book and what drew me to it.) , the boy repeats. He paints a scowl on the kite that elevates it to near-sentience, with the intent to disobey. I plunge back to my former self, age nine, by which time Susie the cat was far behind me.
