Frankenstella and the Video Shop Monster

Send for the De-Construction Crew! This large format picture book text has echoes of narratives such as Not Now, Bernard and Little Red Riding Hood. And maybe that’s the old house on the hill from Psycho recurring at least three times in increasing stages of conflagration. What’s more, it’s on the back cover, so it’s probably Significant. The pictures employ frenetically busy collages in which numbers fly all over the double-page spreads, making use of old bus tickets, maps, train timetables, travel brochures, match box labels and the like. The maps are of foreign parts and the languages are mostly European. These fragments are from past times, as indeed are the large blocks of background composed of lined paper – old style computer print-out sheets and pages from ledgers with handwritten columns of £.s.d. While late middle-aged readers (and reviewers) might recognise these, they may well feel ill at ease with the noisy impact of the brashly coloured pages. Children steeped in the giddy maelstrom of Kids TV will be far more comfortable, and probably less distracted from the plot.

For there is a plot. Stella and her Mum visit the video shop to pick up a movie since there’s nothing but the World Cup on. Stella knows there’s a monster in there. To the leering amusement of the video shop assistant, the monster duly gobbles up Mum, who doesn’t believe in monsters. Stella grows and grows, and then grows some more until she has become Frankenstella, chasing the monster over land and sea, taking in the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Brighton (?) Pier and London buses en route. Finally, finding the pace too hot, the monster burps out Mum, covered in green slime and still not believing in monsters. Pretty much end of story, which has been told in prose decorated by some flashes of witty and uncompromising language. At last, Mum and Stella share a settee, watching what seems to be the World Cup. Only a sad purist would note that Jack Charlton (on the screen) is wearing his Leeds United strip rather than the England shirt.

Will children go back over the book again and again, exploring the details of the collages? I just don’t know, and doubt whether too many adults could make an informed guess. I was tempted all the time to ask, ‘But does it mean anything?’ which I know is the wrong question, but can’t help asking of a picture book for young readers. Artists’ games are great fun, as Anthony Browne showed us long ago. But do these games lead anywhere? Of course, children ‘read’ pictures differently from us grown-ups, but if there’s a narrative, shouldn’t there be some interplay between image and text? Find a copy, find a child, and Discuss.