1965: SHADOW OF A BULL by Maia Wojciechowska with illustrations by Alvin Smith
When Manolo was nine he became aware of three important facts in his life.
This one is not bad, guys! Manolo Oilvar is twelve years old and the son of the most famous bullfighter in Arcangel, Spain. Manolo’s father, now deceased, has achieved mythic status in his hometown, complete with a swirling cloud of bullfighting tall tales and a statue in the center of the town. It’s a classic “kid feels pressure to live up to the expectations of his dad” story, where Manolo is under tremendous pressure to become a bullfighter himself, and as his dad was twelve when he came onto the scene as a bullfighter prodigy, Manolo’s being asked by the bullfighter superfans to deliver pretty quickly. Manolo, as you’d expect given traditional story structure, does not want to be a bullfighter because he doesn’t want to kill a bull - reverse Ferdinand! - and wants to be a doctor instead. It’s a pretty simple story, over in about 150 pages, but it’s well done and keeps moving; there’s a particularly affecting scene where Manolo prays to the Virgin Mary to make him brave before his first attempt at bullfighting. The most interesting thing for me was, basically, learning how bullfighting worked, what the moves were, what the terms were - Wojciechowska includes a helpful glossary of bullfighting terms in the back - and what the crowd wanted to see.
So, pretty decent Newbery winner, not life-changing but very enjoyable and a fast read. Who cares. Let’s talk about (guitar cue) El Toro.
El Toro (guitar cue) is one of the best early reader series currently out there today. There are four of them, and I am eagerly awaiting the next installment from inker/author Raul the Third and his colorist/partner Elaine Bay. The premise is relatively simple: El Toro is a bull, and also a luchador, in a cartoonish Southwestern world where anthropomorphic animals can do lucha and run taco stands and the like. They are written as graphic novels, with word bubbles that flip rapidly between English and Spanish; there are minimal efforts to translate in either direction, but a young reader can put together the definitions from context clues pretty easily. The humor is very silly and fun - both my daughter and I have laughed out loud at multiple gags in the books - and in many ways, these feel like a spiritual successor to Mo Willems’ brilliant Elephant And Piggie series (and Raul the Third even plugs his books that way on his own site). There's one key difference, though: here's an example of a page from one of Willems’ books:
When Willems wrote the Elephant And Piggie series, he deliberately stripped down as much of the book's presentation as he could. There aren't any backgrounds, and every character, especially the two leads, is generally pretty easy to draw; I have no real drawing ability, and even I can do a recognizable Gerald or Piggie. Willems wanted young readers to draw Gerald and Piggie - a classic uptight/fun-loving comedic pairing that Willems would have had experience writing for on children's shows like Sesame Street - going on their own adventures. It works, and it’s very sweet, to boot. In contrast, here is (guitar cue) El Toro:
Or this one:
Or this one:
Mo Willems’ art is deliberately stripped down and accessible, but Raul the Third is deliberately maximialist and over-the-top absurd, in keeping with the generally over-the-top absurdity of having talking animals perform the famously over-the-top absurd art of lucha. It is a Mexican game show crammed into a picture book. All sorts of sight gags and Simpsons-esque punny signs are scattered throughout the artwork, and readers will go back through all of the great illustrations not just for the dual language vocabulary and candy-coated colors from Elaine Bay, but for the jokes and references that they’ll need a few tries to spot. I love it, and I love El Toro as a character, since he is the world’s greatest luchador but also generally lazy and kind of dim and needs to rely on the guidance from his trainer, the rooster Kooky Dooky, and his fellow luchadores like La Oink Oink or Lizardo. They are delightful, and I enjoy reading and rereading all four of these books to my daughters. Is El Toro the greatest early reader series on the market right now? No, it’s actually the second-greatest.
The Noodleheads are two anthropomorphic macaroni noodles who also go on adventures. They are the subject of seven different early reader books like Noodleheads Take It Easy:
The illustrator and children’s author of the Noodleheads stories is Tedd Arnold, whom you may also recognize from other childrens’ books like Parts or the Fly Guy early reader series. Unlike his other works, Arnold co-authors these books like Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss, a husband-and-wife team of traveling live childrens’ performers who, adorably, appear to have learned how to design a website in 1993. They’re now retired, but Hamilton and Weiss made a living traveling to schools and libraries and teaching children about folklore and the art of oral storytelling, and learning centuries-old storytelling traditions themselves in the process. One of those traditions is the noodlehead story.
Yeah, apparently “noodlehead” doesn’t just refer to the twin anthropomorphic macaroni noodles Mac and Mac. It is also a very specific type of folk tale: a folktale about an idiot for whom things nevertheless kind of work out. Mister Magoo crashing his way through a construction site and turning out fine. The Stupid family, in The Stupids Die, thinking they’re in Hell because the power went out, and then forgetting about it the second the power comes back on. Serendipitous fool stories exist in every culture on Earth: every pun and dad joke and slapstick bit you’ve ever seen is at least two thousand years old, and the “noodleheads” of these new early readers books were once called Guifa in Italy, or Nasreddin Hodja in Turkey, or Juan Bobo in Puerto Rico, or Jack in England. These storytelling motifs and tropes have been catalogued exhaustively by historians, and Arnold/Hamilton/Weiss include an afterword in each of the Noodleheads books detailing all of the motifs that were incorporated into the goofy adventures you just read. When Mac and Mac need to dig a hole in their backyard, but don’t know where to put the dirt, so they dig another hole to put that dirt in, which then leads to them digging a chain of holes in their backyard for hours, that’s the German classic “A hole to throw the earth in,” catalogued as J1934 in the 1982 motif index to folklore collections for children by Margaret Read MacDonald.
These aren’t just goofy stories that make my kids laugh (and that make me laugh); this is ancient comedy history for a new audience, with all of the same lessons that we can learn from comedic stories, even silly punny slapsticky stories. As Hamilton and Weiss explain in their curriculum guide for writing noodlehead stories:
“World folklore is rich with stories of fools (referred to as either ‘noodle’ or ‘noodlehead’ stories). Because we’ve all been caught not using our brains at one time or another, everyone enjoys a good numskull tale. It reminds us we're not alone when we hear a story in which someone else is the fool! Children love these ‘noodle’ tales, and the excitement and sense of fun they engender can be channeled into writing activities. We suggest you read the brief introduction to our Noodlehead Stories: World Tales Kids Can Read and Tell and then, in your own words, share the important points we make with your students. We feel it is especially important to point out that these stories should not be told in the spirit of making fun of others, but in the spirit of laughing at the noodlehead in all of us. Tell your students a silly thing you’ve done. Ask them if they’ve ever done something really foolish. Then read your students some ‘noodle’ stories…[When writing stories of your own,] Remember that noodlehead stories are not meant to be told for the purpose of making fun of others. They are told in the spirit of laughing at the noodlehead in all of us. Don’t use words like “stupid” or “dumb.” Try to use humorous words like ”silly,” “nincompoop,” “ninnyhammer,” or “numskull.””
The world is bigger than you think, and you’re not alone in it, you ninnyhammer. But the real reason my family loves the books is not really because of the goofy jokes or the history that these stories draw from - which my daughters don’t even really recognize anyways - but rather, for the creation of a truly great literary villain: Meatball.
Yes, Meatball. Always greeted by Mac and Mac with utter contempt. The archnemesis of these two innocent macaroni boys. Meatball is actually a pretty normal dude - I mean, for a meatball - but he knows two idiots when he sees them, and he never passes up an opportunity to have a little fun by getting one over on Mac and Mac. Sometimes that means “predicting the future” and telling them that they’ll die in one minute, which truly horrifies Mac and Mac, but after a few minutes, they realize that they’re hungry and that dead people can’t be hungry. Sometimes Meatball tricks Mac and Mac into giving him their lunch money by telling them he’ll buy them a boat. And often - more than once in the seven Noodleheads books - Meatball finds a way to steal Mac and Mac’s pie. I’m sorry guys, I hate to take his side, but Meatball is so real for this one:
Do you know how many times my daughters and I say “I have an idea…a pie-dea, you might say”? With the exact hand motions that Meatball uses - point up, turn ninety degrees, point your other arm out to the side? What are you doing, why are you still reading this essay, go to your public library right now and get some books. If you want to introduce your children right away to the history of comedy, grab Noodleheads. If you want a brilliant and loud and intricate world and to teach your child two languages at once, grab El Toro. And, uh, I guess there was that other book about bullfighting that wasn’t bad, if you have time you can probably check that out too.
Newburied is a series by Tony Ginocchio on the history of the Newbery Medal and a whole bunch of other stuff related to it. You can subscribe via Substack to get future installments sent to your inbox directly. The next installment will cover the 2007 medalist, The Higher Power Of Lucky by Susan Patron.