Amazing Grapes

"energetic, full of movement and character."

Jules Feiffer has illustrated children's classics, such as The Phantom Tollbooth, as well as writing and illustrating his own picture books. His line work is always energetic, full of movement and character. Amazing Grapes is no exception. The figures dance across the page or disappear into frantic scribbles.

The book starts in the real world as the three main characters, siblings named Shirley, Pearlie, and Curlie, deal with their father leaving and their mother planning a move to a new home, a new life. Mommy is shown to be disconnected from everything, simply staring out the window. Things quickly dissolve into swirls of surrealistic fantasy when Pearly and Curlie leap onto a two-headed swan to travel into new dimensions. The reader follows the two until they find Shirley, only to lose her again.

Eventually they discover where their mother has been all along. But the reunion is brief. Mommy sends them on a mission.

"How thrilling it must be to learn that you are chosen to embark on the mission of all missions! To reclaim Truphoria, restore that wonderland of all dreams coming true, that was gobbled up by dismal, depressing, and now, all but disappeared Ephemera!"

Kelly, a dog that's really a cat, is given to them to show the way, though the children would rather skip the mission entirely. Their goal beyond finding Mommy is never made clear in this fever dream of a book. What is Truphoria and how can it be reclaimed? The mother describes it as a wonderland.

"Where in, day by day, I witnessed the miraculous geyser of glorious goodness spout its shimmering shower! Raining flights of fancy upon us that turned dark into dawn, and doubts into dreams."

The reader never gets much of a sense of any of the dimensions, what distinguishes one from another. There is no real narrative arc to follow, no character development. The idea of the mission gets lost in the shifting realities the children face, interspersed with what Mommy is going through in her own dimensions. It all feels a bit like being inside someone's wild imagination, with nothing to moor the reader besides the theme song of "Amazing Grapes," which threads its way throughout the book. Being lost and being found is the theme, the logic, guiding the characters. It is precisely this sense of not knowing where one is, where one should be, that makes the plot feel like a tangled thread.

Some readers will find this all hard to follow. Others will take it page by page for what each offers and enjoy the ride. Younger readers may quickly get lost in the manic energy. Those who persevere will find the ending uplifting, a hymn not to religious salvation but another way to find one's sense of self:

"Yes, I was lost, sad and alone, adrift on a distant sea. I cried, I sighed, alone I'd moan, 'twas grapes that set me free."