Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, “Wildwood” (2012) [literature]
And how children enjoy the macabre
Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter for the band, The Decemberists. The Decemberists are well known for their folk-tale-inspired lyrics (more on this below) and live shows that border on theater; they often stage reenactments of ancient sea battles or sing shanties with their audience in full participation.
Carson Ellis is an illustrator, most famous for her picture books, but also dabbles in editorial illustration and has won Grammy awards for her album cover art.
Colin and Carson are married and they teamed up to make a 541-page young-adult fantasy novel, Wildwood.
Carson’s award-winning album art for The Decemberists:
And more album art:
On Wildwood
This book is a joy to read. (I read it at the same time as my-then 11-year-old sister and we both loved it). The project started when Meloy and Ellis started by creating a fictionalized version of Forest Park (right in their backyard in Portland), and then building a story around it.
The overall narrative is beautiful; the action begins when two teenagers try to rescue a baby that’s been kidnapped by crows and are lured into a magical version of Portland’s, Forest Park. The adventure continues when the teenagers run into a series of strange (mostly anthropomorphized) creatures in an epic power struggle for control of the forest.
The writing is stunning; it’s lyrical and emotional and full of quirky words and allegory. It oozes Colin Meloy. The Decemberist’s lyrics act the same way, but with the book, we get more time, a lot more time, to immerse. The material is undeniably macabre and dark in places, but still, in true Decembrists style, it remains creative, fantastic, and curiously upbeat given the subject-matter. (Decembersists songs tell stories of drowning, rape, murder, and kidnapping, to name a few. This cheeky article covers “Every Felony Committed in Decemberist Albums.”)
More than anything, for me, it’s the integration of the illustrations catapult this book into a complete work of art. The content and the imagery are so well-intertwined and the level of detail suggest how viscerally connected Carson Ellis felt to her imaginary world. In the Atlantic’s profile on the pair’s collaboration, Ellis says, “I do think there's a kind of telepathy that happens… this kind of round-the-clock collaboration where we were always hashing it out and always talking about it… I can sort of picture in my head what Colin is picturing in his head when he's writing a scene—a lot of the time anyway. And I think when he's writing he can picture how I would draw it, which is kind of neat.”
Art from Wildwood:
On children enjoying the macabre
“I think kids can handle really dark material and in fact I think they really love it and long for it. So, I think I was aware of that and wanted that to be a real part of the tone of the books,” Meloy said in an interview with NPR. I’m excited about this book existing in the world, and receiving such critical acclaim (even if a bit of controversy) because it is another vote for the idea that kids have the capacity to go deeper and darker (an idea I wholeheartedly subscribe to).
Nat Hentoff writes in his profile of Maurice Sendek, author of Where the Wild Things Are,
“far too many contemporary picture books for the young are still populated by children who eat everything on their plates, go dutifully to bed at the proper hour, and learn all sorts of useful facts or moral lessons by the time the book comes to an end. The illustrations are usually decorative rather than imaginative, and any fantasy that may be encountered either corresponds to the fulfillment of adult wishes or is carefully curbed lest it frighten the child. Many of these books, homogenized and characterless, look and read as if they had been put together by a computer.“
But there are a handful of amazing writers and storytellers who have been pushing back against this tradition. I love what Maria Popova has to say on to topic. “Perhaps more than anything else, this respect for children’s inherent intelligence and their ability to sit with difficult emotions is what makes the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm so enduringly enchanting,” Popova aptly writes. More than half of all Disney movies since 1937 have featured a primary character with a dead, missing, or single parent. E.B. White, in an interview for the Paris Review, famously said “anybody who shifts gears when he writes for children is likely to wind up stripping his gears.” JRR Tolkein, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, wrote extensively about there being no such thing as writing for children.
Maurice Sendek has perhaps carried this message into modern public discourse most full-throatedly when parents, publishers, and reviewers clutched their pearls upon reading his book and watching the subsequent movie adaptation (by Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze). He was very vocal about not tolerating parental concerns about the book or movie being too scary. In fact, he told parents who think that to “go to hell.”
I reap the benefits of this long-running campaign; I was one of those kids that loved creepy and, in some ways, have never stopped being one. I devoured Roald Dahl as a child (The Witches and The Twits remain two of my favorite books of all time and I re-read them each at least once a year). Where The Wild Things Are was my favorite book. I read it until the pages were so worn they fell out… and then I kept reading. For “pick your favorite artist week,” my classmates choose the likes of Monet and I chose Edward Gorey. I keep a tome of Hans Christen Andersen fairy tales and another of Grimm’s fairy tales next to my bed and often force friends to pass it around and admire the illustrations or take turns reading sections. I still get something new from Alice and Wonderland each time I revisit it. Coraline is one of my favorite “princesses.”
I hope, and believe, we’re only going to get more of this kind of work in the future.
More to buzz about:
Decemberists very nice band website: http://www.decemberists.com/
Leslie Jamison on the how the evil stepmother canon in pop culture played out in her journey of becoming a step-mother: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/magazine/in-the-shadow-of-a-fairy-tale.html
New Yorker profile on Edward Gorey: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/edward-goreys-enigmatic-world