Dandy

Written by ame Dyckman, illustrated by Charles Santoso, Little, Brown BFYR, 2019, picture book Fiction for ages 4-8

Daddy Lion discovers a weed in his perfectly coifed suburban front lawn and he knows what he must do. He rushes to get his clippers, but when he gets outside to the offending plant…he’s too late. His toddler daughter Sweetie is already there and has befriended the weed, even naming her Charlotte.

Daddy’s attempts to sneak past Sweetie and take care of that weed grow increasingly desperate and wild, and the other daddies in the neighborhood are keeping the pressure on—because once one lawn succumbs, they all will. But Sweetie is always one step ahead of Daddy. When he finally has the opportunity to get just what he wants, he is forced to question if it’s really the right thing. And he doesn’t have long to decide because Sweetie’s due home any minute. Can he break her heart? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

I love this book. I did a slightly dramatic reading to my niece when she was five and she was moved to tears. My nephew, a tornado of a toddler at three, sat patiently through the whole story and as best I could tell was really feeling Daddy’s struggle. (Isn’t it interesting how readers don’t always identify with the same characters in the same ways? Each of those kids was bringing their past experiences and their ideas about who they were and who they want to be and using that to define what was good or not in the story. Adults do, too. How many of you reading this are thinking, “Kill the weed! Save the lawn!”)

Sorry, I thought we needed an otter break after that dark thought… Anyway, there’s so much to learn from Dyckman’s text and Santoso’s illustrations and how they play with each other.

Characters

Right off, you know these characters’ ages, and priorities. Sweetie is very young. One of the first things she says, “A flower,” is an incomplete sentence, making her sound childlike, youthful. The gigantic round eyes as she says it helps with the youthful impression, too. And Daddy, in allowing himself to be thwarted proves himself a doting father.

Plot

The plot has a fantastic rhythm. Dyckman employs the rule of threes, although she then takes it even further. When Daddy’s clippers prove ineffective against Sweetie’s dandelion devotion, the other daddies on the block pop over to nudge Daddy not to give up. The next three attempts grow increasingly…outlandish. A shovel, then a lawnmower, then a goat, all for one little weed. Each of these attempts gets two pages—a spread. Then the daddies show up again and insist that Daddy Lion “Get serious!”

And then the rhythm changes. It’s no longer a steady drum beat of try, thwarted; try, thwarted; try, thwarted. Now it’s trytrytrytry. It’s clearly more frantic and the illustrations show how absurd Daddy’s tools have become. This series of “tries” are done all on one page in spot art, and then we turn the page and it’s a full-page spread that shows Daddy’s defeat. You might think of those four spot arts as the drum roll and the spread as the flourish at the end, after which we get a moment of quiet, a pause to catch our breath.

After that, of course, it’s the Flight of the Bumblebee, all bets off, chaos reigns. I won’t tell you how it ends, but I encourage you to read and consider the pace of the plot, and the physical feeling of rhythm that’s created by the word repetitions, the regularity of words per page, and the way the page turns are arranged and how you’re allowed to breathe, or not, before each turn. Especially during the climax, you really don’t pause before turning, you are compelled to move forward to discover what comes next.

Voice

I was moved recently to consider the voice of the narrator. I originally heard what I can only describe as a gentle gangster. Kind of Tony Soprano for the toddler set. When I examine this idea, I find that it’s not the text alone that puts me in mind of gangster movies. It’s how the text combines with the illustrations—all the daddies looming over Daddy Lion and insist he take out that weed.

While the narrator voice seems to represent Daddy, Sweetie has her own voice and personality. Nearly every single line she speaks ends with an exclamation point. The only other punctuation of her dialog is a question mark at the end. Sweetie is enthusiastic and hopeful and trusting. Her dialog and her big, round eyes say it all.

To be clear, the text is very simple. It never even describes exactly what Sweetie or Daddy are doing. It mentions “nap time” and “snack time” but it doesn’t say Sweetie is having a campout with the weed. It gives the reader and listener lots of space to discover this story visually and in their own minds. This kind of simple narration that leaves so much to the pictures and to the imagination can be incredibly fun.

Illustrations

One reason the simplicity of the text works so well is because the illustrations are doing a lot of storytelling. The pictures create the humor, and are made all the funnier because they contradict the simplicity of the text. “He tried during nap time,” is the only line on the page that shows Daddy exaggeratedly sneaking out of Sweetie’s room, then racing behind his lawnmower, grass clippings flying all around him. Then on the next page the repetitive line, “But Sweetie was there. ‘Hi, Daddy!’” is on the next page, which shows Daddy grimacing and swerving his lawnmower suddenly to avoid running over Sweetie’s camp site. Here, too, there is a clash between the words—which are brief, simple, and the dialog is enthusiastic—and the picture—which shows big movement and big emotions, and a bit of trickery on Sweetie’s part.

Another thing I love about the illustrations in this book is how they employ both repetition and variety to nudge readers’ emotional reactions. Early on, the three spreads showing Daddy’s initial attempts to cut the weed follow a pattern: left page shows Daddy sneaking out using a series of spot art, right page goes full bleed and shows Daddy looking very big (and increasingly surprised) as he quickly tries to hide his current attempt to take out the weed and Sweetie looking small and happily innocent. But after the first three methodical attempts and then the frantic attempts after the daddies “suggest” he get serious, the illustrations become less repetitive. At this point the perspective changes almost every picture. We see Daddy from up high, from a distance, up close. It keeps us a little off balance, almost like shaky video footage. Variety in imagery helps maintain reader interest and when done to its best affect, it has a way of hammering on those emotions the creators most want us to feel, whether it’s sadness, frustration, humor, or anything else.

End Papers

One last thing that I find so charming about this book is the end papers. They aren’t the same at the front and the back. I won’t spoil the fun, so go buy it or check it out from the library. It’ll be worth it! Consider how end papers and illustrations on title pages can extend the story beyond the book pages and how they can enhance the reader’s experience.