A Silly Story

A Silly Story
Mercer Mayer ~ Parents' Magazine Press, 1972

I only owned two books of Mercer Mayer's books growing up. The first Little Critter, Just For You, and its follow-up, Just Me and My Dad. I fell in love with even more of his books through the library and visits to my local bookstore. Once the internet came along and I acquired a child of my own, well, the Mayer floodgates opened and I've been collecting ever since.

Many of the Mayer books I own now are reprints of the originals, and I specifically focus on those stories written between his first book, A Boy, a Dog and a Frog, in 1967 and Herbert the Timid Dragon in 1980. Those are the books he created during my own youth and hold the most nostalgia for me. This little sweetheart of a book is very evocative of the deep, rich look of his early works done in ink, pencil and watercolor, many starring varying versions of the what must have been Mercer in his youth.

Once I had a silly thought
while sitting in the shade.
What if I'm not me.
Perhaps I am a rock,
a dog, or a tree.
thinking I am me...
What a silly thought.

I remember being little and having these same feelings about most everything. Back when I was still putting the pieces of reality together. It's such an ever-present feeling for children while they are imagining what is real and not real and where their place in the universe is. Funny to think that I connected so deeply with what are essentially stories about little boys (save Liza Lou), and that I would go on to have a little boy who'd love them just as much.

Full circle, I suppose.

Also by:
Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp
One Monster After Another
Professor Wormbog in Search for the Zipperump-A-Zoo
Me and My Flying Machine
Beauty and the Beast
A Special Trick
Bubble Bubble
Little Monster at Work
One Frog Too Many
How the Trollusk Got His Hat
AH-CHOO
The Bird of Time
OOPS
Herbert the Timid Dragon
Professor Wormbog's Gloomy Kerploppus