Come Meet Muffin

Joyce Carol Oates

Now, there are only three things about a picture book intended for the five-and-under set that would make me read it. It would either have to be written by one of my favorite authors, published by a press who are known for publishing works of exceptional literary value, or in some way rabidly controversial. Well, two out of three ain't bad, and Come Meet Muffin fits the first two. I'm relatively sure that Come Meet Muffin is the first children's picture book published by the redoubtable Ecco Press, and it was certainly the first written by the redoubtable Joyce Carol Oates, a woman whose Nobel is long overdue.

While getting text from JCO is always a pleasure, there's really not much you can do with writing style, or chronicling the decay of society, in a twenty-eight page picture book that's only got a sentence or two on each page. (I'm sure by now someone has made an attempt to write a dissertation called Muffin's Journey and the Decline of the Modern Housewife. That person, however, is not, and will never be, me.) Nope, this is a little story about a stray cat who gets adopted by the Smith family, hops out the window one morning to guide some deer back to their mother, and gets lost. (Can you see the dissertation forming in the mind of a desperate grad student? I knew you could.) It's simplistic, straightforward, and, well, aimed at the five-and-under set. What makes it so lovely is not, surprisingly, Oates' text, but the wonderful illustrations of Mark Graham. There is a richness and a depth to them not normally found in children's picture books. Well, not when I was a kid. Maybe things have changed.

In any case, another book I'll be picking up a permanent copy of for the kids' room.