Details

Mole Music, written and illustrated by David McPhail, Henry Holt and Company, 1999

I’m guessing that many of you are familiar with this book, but in case you aren’t, it is a wonderful, sweet story about a mole who realizes something is missing from his life and decides to learn to play violin. At first he is unable to make a single pleasant sound on the instrument. He keeps at it, and after a week he can play a note. He keeps practicing, and learns to play another note, and eventually a simple piece. After many years of practicing, he is an accomplished musician, dreaming of music while he digs tunnels during the day and dreaming of changing the world with his music while he plays his violin alone underground at night. The thing he doesn’t realize, but which the illustrations make clear, is that the people above ground can hear him, and his music has a profound impact on the world around him.

I love how the words and illustrations work together in this book. The text provides Mole’s perspective, only, while the pictures reveal the deeper story. I love, too, the little details you might not catch the first or second time through—things that reward you for looking a little more carefully. The music, for instance. The snippets of music floating up through the oak tree that connects Mole’s burrow with the world above him are not just random notes sprinkled over a staff. They are quotes from real pieces, and they add their own dimension to the story.

The first “simple song” Mole learns to play? “Simple Gifts.” His next piece is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Later on, when he has gotten really good and dreams of playing for an audience, the illustrations contain excerpts from the 4th movement of Brahms’ Symphony No. 1. The music that inspires soldiers to lay down their arms is the opening from the 1st movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“The Pastoral”)—a movement Beethoven inscribed with the title, “Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country.” And while the soldiers embrace in brotherly love, Mole is playing the"Ode to Joy" theme from the 4th movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. ("Your magic reunites/What custom strictly divided./All men become brothers,/Where your gentle wing rests.") Finally, at the end of the book Mole plays everybody to sleep with Brahms’ Lullaby before he goes to sleep, himself.

Knowing these pieces and how they fit with the text and illustrations is not necessary for understanding the book, but I love what they add to it, and that David McPhail carried his art to that detail. And that’s what I love about a good picture book—it is a piece of art in a simple, accessible, relatively inexpensive form.

From Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life, compiled by Carole F. Chase:

“Why do you write for children?” My immediate response to this question is, “I don’t.” Of course I don’t. I don’t suppose most children’s writers do…

If it’s not good enough for adults, it’s not good enough for children. If a book that is going to be marketed for children does not interest me, a grownup, then I am dishonoring the children for whom the book is intended, and I am dishonoring books.