Reviewed by Rusty Key Writer: Jordan B. Nielsen

Recommended for: Children (?) ages 10 and up for independent reading, or 7 and up if being read to (get ready to explain a lot of abstract metaphysical concepts to little Tommy), though I suspect this book will find its largest audience among those old enough to be lured in by the all-star author line up (guilty).

One Word Summary: Disappointing.

It was too good to be true. A collection of children’s short stories by fourteen of the most celebrated kidlit authors of our time! Kate DiCamillo (The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Because of Winn Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux, her every written word a gift!), Lois Lowry (The Giver, Number the Stars, The Birthday Ball, the woman who launched the Distopic genre!), John Sceszka (The Stinky Cheese Man, SpaceHeadz, crusader for middle grade male fiction!) M.T. Anderson (Ok, we ripped Game of Sunken Places to shreds, but Feed was fantastic!) Stephen King (You know him), all contained with several other marquee-dazzling names and shepherded by none other than Chris Van Allsburg (Jumanji, The Polar Express, Zathura). Surely this collection would be the exemplar of the greatest visionaries of children’s literature that planet Earth has to offer. These guys could kill an elephant with the weight of their combined Newberry Medals. Alas. The great mystery of The Chronicles of Harris Burdick is not the identity of the eponymous alleged illustrator, but how this noble project could have resulted in such a letdown.

There’s a ‘story’ behind this collection. In an introduction set forth by Lemony Snicket and an epilogue by Van Allsburg we are made to believe that some twenty-five years ago, a man named Harris Burdick walked

into the offices of one Peter Wenders, a children’s book publisher. Burdick had with him fourteen gorgeous illustrations, each titled and given an alluring caption. Burdick wanted to know if Wenders would like to see the stories that went along with these striking images. Wenders agreed enthusiastically and told Burdick to come back the next day with the full works, but that was the last he saw of the man. Harris Burdick was never seen or heard from again. Some years later Wenders showed the prints to Van Allsburg who was similarly captivated by them and became intent on sharing them with the world.

As it happens (sorry to ruin it) this back-story is a work of fiction in and of itself, though it’s hard to be thoroughly fooled by the pretense, as the eerily realistic, glossy style of the black and white illustrations is so apparently that of Van Allsburg himself. In 1984 the images and their captions were indeed published alone under the title The Mystery of Harris Burdick
and were meant as a sort of fuse to ignite the imaginations of young aspiring writers. What could be the story behind the tense picture of a man holding a chair above his head, about to strike a mysterious lump rising from beneath the carpet? What’s going on in that picture of the seated nun hovering some twenty feet off the ground? Discontent at letting these questions go answered, Van Allsburg enlisted the help of the afore mentioned heavy-weight authors to craft the tales that would fit the pictures.

The result that we have here in these fourteen short stories might alternately be titled ‘The Book of Orphans’ or ‘Maladies that Afflict the Young’ or ‘Gee, Aren’t Stepparents Awful’. It really isn’t the fault of the authors themselves that these links came together to form such a depressing chain, it’s not as if they were comparing plot lines along the way (I would suppose). Nor do the illustrations which inspired these works suggest anything overtly tragic. Indeed the opposite is true. “Burdick’s” illustrations are every bit the wonderment. In Steven King’s piece we see a house being propelled skyward by rocket boosters. In DiCamillo’s we have an open window set against a wallpaper of doves where one bird begins to come to life and peel itself from the pattern. Gregory McGuire was given the cover image, a luxury cruise liner smashing into the canals of Venice. But into that rocket propelled house King shoved a stepfather who was promising a savage beating to his step children, DiCamillo’s wallpaper covered the room of an abandoned girl dying of pneumonia, and McGuire’s Venice contains a boy trying to stop his vain stepmother from stealing his inheritance now that his father is dead.

Great fodder for inspiration these pictures may have been, all of them, but what we have, by in large, is a collection of shockingly depressing, borderline inappropriate stories that capture none of the joy that one might have hoped for. I cannot imagine the bulk of this material holding the interest of a young reader. There are exceptions. M.T. Anderson’s piece about a boy who discovers a startling secret about reality as he knows it (I won’t spoil this one for you) had a great wink at the end. King’s piece, though grim, contained the only ounce of suspense I felt while reading this book. Louis Sachar’s tale about the ghost of a ship’s captain that wanders the street of a coastal town looking for his boat was nicely chilling.

But (and I can’t even believe this myself) Lois Lowry and Jules Feiffer’s stories run neck and neck for the title of ‘most puzzlingly out of place’. Feiffer used his page time to create an allegory for the worthlessness of his own life where he appears to burn to death in his own house at the end. Lois Lowry’s story may be about a girl who can levitate, and then grows up to become a nun, but allow me to treat you to a few of Lowry’s descriptions of Mary Katherine’s ‘talent’:

‘None of them noticed that MK had an astounding talent.’ ‘She practiced. Alone in her bedroom, supposedly doing her homework.’ ‘Mary Katherine did not feel guilty or secretive about her peculiar skill…It was, for MK, more like a pleasurable, solitary hobby.’ ‘It was something she preferred to do alone.’

Are you blushing yet? Need I spell out the metaphor for you?

My heart ached to soar with exultation, to be thrilled by the incredible descriptive powers of these authors, their ability to capture essential truths of human existence and package those revelations for young audiences, as they have each done so many times before. Or at the very least I would have liked to have been somewhat charmed. Instead with each new story I found myself weakly hoping that it was going to start getting better soon. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what got into these guys.

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