Contemporary picture books are usually oversized. They are big, with big images.
However, in the 1960s, a number of smaller picture books were published, often by greats in the field. Let’s Be Enemies, written by Udry and illustrated by Sendak, was one of those. This Thumbprint (1967), written and illustrated by Ruth Krauss, is another of these. You could put this in a coat pocket or maybe, maybe, a back pants pocket.
Krauss was well-established by this time. (She had published A Hole is to Dig, which was incredibly influential, The Carrot Seed, and many others.) I mention this first to remind folks of her greatness, but also because this book seems…whimsical. A market risk. Something a beginning writer could not have found a publisher for.
The book is a series of images and brief statements. The images are made of purple thumbprints (as well as a handprint and what I would say are a couple of fingerprints) and thin black lines (I assume ink). The statements are short, poetic, and idiosyncratic, with intermittent punctuation and capitalization. I found resonances of e.e. cummings and William Carlos Williams: Modernist phrases that engage, challenge, and amuse.
For example, the first page reads as follows:
“This Thumbprint How do you do
Very well I thank you”
and a thumbprint with closed eyes, a smile, and scraggly legs bowing in greeting.
Most of the thumbprint images feature humans; there are also cats, dogs, and less easily classified creatures. Most are doing things kids do (“crying for his mother”) or things kids do but don’t realize they are doing (“discovering gravity”), or would appreciate.
There’s no plot. Instead, there is spectacle and joy. (This is kind of like someone took Ed Emberley’s Great Thumbprint Drawing Book (which came decades later) and made it personal art, instead of just fun decoration.
Good stuff…but strange.
