The dynamic duo

 

Among the all-time great creative pairings, up there with the likes of Lennon-McCartney, or Frodo and Sam, must surely be the lesser-known Rylant-Howard. This is the author-illustrator team behind the Mr. Putter and Tabby children's chapter book series of stories. Because the genius and perfection of these books are so unlikely, I have a tendency to repeatedly forget about them. But fortunately I work at a library, so no sooner do I forget them than a copy of, say, Mr. Putter Pours the Tea falls into my hands, and, struck by the charming look of it, I read it yet again.

And I remember.

How a writer and illustrator made flawlessly charming masterpieces out of stories for young children about an old man with an old cat is a thing of wonder. And yet there it is. Every color picture is loose and clear and delightful to look at, engaging in its warmth in a way that oddly reminds me of the feeling in the drawings in "Winnie the Pooh". Mr. Putter's world is at once almost intensely mundane, but the color, character, and simplicity gives it a coziness that's wonderfully powerful.

 In the first book of the series an old man is lonely and has no one to have tea with or to tell his stories to. And, as the author tells us, he has good stories! So the old man decides to get a cat. At the pet store, to the old man's disappointment, they just have kittens for sale. He wants an old cat, old like him, so he gets sent to an animal shelter where he finds himself a proper old cat. 

And they are happy together.

And that's the whole story! That' it!

But then, what about this:

A woman sits quietly in a nice simple dress. It's hard to tell whether she is happy or sad. You can see the pretty countryside behind her.

That's The Mona Lisa, and though I have heard many people complain it is not nearly as good as it's cracked up to be, they are wrong.

I know I have shown you a lot of pictures of Mr. Putter and Tabby in my library, as above at the start of this missive, but I was curious if maybe I have already told you about how great these books are. So I keyword searched all of clerkmanifesto with the word "Putter", and I came up with the almost embarrassing 10 times I have shown some variation of the picture above. Then there was a post or two involving some kind of "puttering" on my part. There was a golf post that included a putter. And there were several posts in which I used some variation on the word "sputter". 

Not that I couldn't have told you about Mr. Putter again, if I had to. I am also surprised that these books have not yet been listed on my greatest books of all time list, in the options to your right here in the Internet. I will now duly add them in, and I hope you will join me in welcoming them to our honor roll.