Dishing it out

The Adventures of Dish and Spoon
by Mini Grey

Wanna see me dish out some tableware puns? Sure, you say, fork 'em over! But this story goes all to pot, so I have to pan it. Hah! I'm bowled over. Even my knife jokes are cutting edge.

Hahahaha! I'm so forking funny.

But I'm mad at Grey. Traction Man was so off-the-wall hilarious, probably anything she tried next would fail to live up to my inflated expectations. But this melancholy take on the “Cat and the Fiddle” nursery rhyme had me seriously confused about her intentions. Is it a love-conquers-all fable or a satire of the American Dream?

Let me back up. The story picks up where the rhyme ends; Dish and Spoon run off on a warm June evening and leap into the ocean, a Liberty Dollar moon glows as they drift off:

I didn't know
where we were going,
and I didn't care.
I knew Dish
would take us there.

They wind up in New York in what appears to be the Depression era, where they strike it rich with a Vaudeville act. You know they're rich because dollar bills float down like confetti and there are still more shiny coins around to drive home the point that money suddenly matters. A lot.

Not to mention the expensive look to the book itself: full bleeds on every page for Grey's signature mixed-media creations, with their gleefully warped perspectives and exaggerated characters. Very nice. But I digress.

So money, being the root of guess-what, leads them into all kinds of trouble. They borrow from loan sharks, portrayed as knives, and then rob a bank. Dish gets broken; Spoon does hard time in Alcatraz.

When they reunite in what appears to be London 25 years later, they resume their Vaudeville career, though admission is free – in case you missed the whole point about, you know, money.

First, some nits to pick:

1. Vaudeville's days were pretty much waning by then. Radio or movies, yes. Broadway, definitely;
2. The steering wheel is on the right side, which would be the wrong side in America, no?
3. A hatbox says Tiffany's. Not only is it beige instead of blue, but Tiffany's doesn't make hats;
4. A Macy's hatbox is all wrong. Macy's only went upscale in the '80s. In the '30s it would've been too lowbrow for the ritzy pair;
5. From New York, Dish is suddenly tied to railroad tracks in what appears to be Arizona (tip-off: a saguaro), and by the next frame they're back in the city to rob a bank;
6. The Spoon does 25 years in Alcatraz, the notorious maximum-security prison (!) in San Francisco. Never mind the first-time-offender thing. San Francisco? Alcatraz?

In short, just about every idiotic cliché about America is somehow squeezed in here, and none of it's funny. This is a Brit's-eye view of life in America, grasping at some larger truth about that outsized country across the pond.

The one message my persnickety son does get from it, to be fair, is that Spoon loves Dish even if she's been smashed and glued back together. For a kid who screams whenever ink smudges or a page crinkles, it's good to see that broken things -- including hearts -- can be mended and cherished.

Even so, I'm vowing revenge on Grey's unsympathetic depiction of Depression-era America. Maybe I should counter with one about selfish teacups who hoard sugar during London's Blitz.

Okay, it's a kid's book. I should lighten up, right? There's something wrong with me that I deconstruct a picture book. I guess I like my verisimilitude straight up, thank you very much.

Rating: *\

Comments

[brettdl]

I was wondering why all the cultural themes were mixed up. Now I get it.

[Kelly]

I liked this one better than you did, Anne, but I'll share the story my son got out of it:

If your love is a reckless risktaker, you should follow her to the ends of the earth. He thought the spoon should have found a new dish :)

[Anne]

Ha! I love it. And I totally agree.