I was down at Elliot Bay Bookstore the other day trying to impress a girl, and while we were looking around at the books, I stumbled across a strange looking one entitled, Varmints, by Helen Ward and illustrated by Marc Craste. The story deserves some explanation.
Back home in the Spokane Valley, there exist small, furry creatures whom the locals affectionately call marmots. In fact, underneath a bridge in downtown Spokane, I believe there’s actually a mural painted on the tunnel, glorifying the lives of the small rodents. People regularly see them in parks, often scurrying about eating some sort of grass, maybe playing, or causing some sort of mischief. They’re cute, in a really strange way. On the continuum of cuteness, marmots are located in between rats and gerbils, I’d say.
Actually, I knew a girl in Spokane who had this weird thing where she could commune with marmots. They’d come up and sniff her and eat nuts and whatnot from her hand.
But I digress. The thing is, when I was in Elliot Bay, I saw the word “varmint,” and through some awkward neural misfire, my mind registered, “Marmot!” Happy to see some reference to these inland northwestern creatures, I picked the book up.
It’s a children’s book in every manner except one: you would probably never read this to your children. It’s dark, complicated, and definitely has an agenda (and it’s not to teach you your ABCs). The book is large, probably a foot long and nine inches wide, but these dimensions are perfect for the large, epic art that graces the pages. The story goes something like this: a happy band of creatures who love nature get overrun by city-dwelling beasts. That’s it.
It’s simple, of course. But it’s really touching. I wish I could describe the story line, but that would be wrong; you should read it for yourself. And I also wish I could upload some scanned pages, but that would be illegal, and even worse, it’d be wrong. The book really is worth buying.
I’m sort of digesting it right now (who would’ve thought that you need to digest a book that’s probably twenty pages long?). But I think I’ll make a blog post with my reaction to the work more fully described; I realize the last few posts I’ve made have been rather, well, boring and tedious. But I was on Spring Break, so my mind was focused on other things, I’m afraid.
Thought you might like to know that it is about to be announced that Varmints is one of the recipients of the Green Earth Book Award this year. Very cool book (and extremely cool movie too).
This is now a short film, too. I saw it last night. It was very touching, and I, too, am still digesting the story.
I saw it as a metaphor for how the earth was very pristine and natural, then polluted to the point of being unable to sustain human life and eventually returning to its natural state.
I think it could also be taken as more of a religious metaphor. The “good” were rescued from a horrible destruction and taken to a perfect place.
Whatever the point, and if it’s a metaphor or not, the film was intriguing, and I plan to buy the book. Glad to hear it won a Green Earth Book Award.