The Mystery of the Fool & the Vanisher

Sometimes I'll give a speech at events or conferences about children's books that break barriers. I'll talk about titles that don't neatly slot into award categories and, as a result, end up ignored and discarded in spite of their overall fabulousness. But for a couple months now I haven't found a new title to add to this talk. Leave it to Candlewick to publish something to fill this unspeakable need. Now the names "David and Ruth Ellwand" together are perhaps best known for the picture book Midas Mouse. Of course that book came out in 2000 and until now the duo hasn't worked on much of anything together in particular. The Mystery of the Fool and the Vanisher is therefore a kind of unexpected treat. Part mystery, part photographic journey, and part fairy story (creeeepy fairy story), the book is certain to suck in a certain strain of child and never ever let them go. No matter how much they might want it to. It's a story within a story. In the first tale David Ellwand discusses The South Downs and their legends of fairies and stones with perfect natural holes in their centers. In the midst of his travels Ellwand locates a mystery box that, when opened, reveals a plethora of treasures. One of these is an old wax cylinder that he has transferred to CD. What transpires then is the story of Mr. Isaac Wilde in both words and images. The mystery of what happened to Mr. Wilde and, along the same lines, Mr. Ellwand is at the heart of the duo's discoveries. Wilde has discovered a colony of creatures he cannot understand. And when threatened, these fairies respond with an object beyond the scope of human understanding. Peppered with authentic looking photographs of the Victorian age and contemporary prints, the book is a love story to both the art of the photograph and the nature of the "fey". Photography of the Victorian age lends itself to two kinds of children's stories. Either you capture ghosts on film as in Avi's The Seer of Shadows or you use them to capture glimpses of fairies. The fairy storyline would probably be all glitter, light, and fairy dust if left in the hands of anyone else. Under the direction of David and Ruth Ellwand, however, it becomes a distinctly dark tale. These aren't clap-your-hands-and-Tink-will-live fairies. These are the fairies of Little, Big and the dark legends that haunt humanity. They're Rackham fairies. The ones that probably bear us a grudge. To write this book correctly you need an author/artist that knows how to work a camera. A camera with a few more bits and pieces than your average digital toy. Ellwand's work on this book is effective and beautiful. So effective and beautiful, in fact, that adults as well as children will be fooled into thinking these images are actual old-timey prints. And for that matter I'm not convinced that the shot of Gibson Gayle and the workers who reluctantly aid the anthropologist crew aren't old. I mean, how many guys do you know these days with free flowing beards and (even rarer)

David Ellwand has always been fascinated by the Downs. This rolling landscape of open plains and beech trees, with its legends about faeries and other fantastic creatures, has always excited him. He never quite believes in the legends, but one day he discovers a flint stone with a hole naturally worn through the center, a stone which, when looked through, will allow him to see the creatures around him that cannot be perceived by the naked eye. One day, he follows a will-o'-the-wisp to the ruins of an old house near some flint mines, where he discovers a padlocked chest in an outhouse. He brings the box back to his studio, pries it open, and begins to document the contents. Within, he finds old phonograph records, which he decodes to discover the secret of the objects inside the box. The middle of the book is a transcript of the phonograph recordings, detailing the discoveries of Isaac Wilde, a photographer from the 1880s. The recordings explain that the contents of the box were collected by Wilde over the course of a mining expedition in the Downs in 1889. Wilde was supposed to be present to photographically document the scene, but as he hears from the residents of the area about the strange goings on and the myths of faeries, he decides to find out for himself if they are really true. He searches for clues of the faeries' existence, and eventually works to create a camera that could capture their images. Both the frame narrative of Ellwand's discovery of the box and Wilde's narrative about his experiences in the mines are accompanied by haunting images of the Downs and of the contents of the box. The photographs range in style from color prints to black-and-white to reproductions of older styles of photography, like silver-gelatin prints and daguerreotypes. This is no picture book--the images enhance the story in new and different ways. The book's layout and formatting are visually pleasing, and meant to attract the attention of the eye. The realism of the photographic illustrations helps heighten the sense of wonder at the finished product, and leads one to question if this account is fact or fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed this book--I read it in one sitting! The writing itself was clear and occasionally wistful, detailing Ellwand's fascination with the English Downs and exploring the intersection of the worlds of science and fantasy at which Isaac Wilde finds himself. A wonderful "picture book" for adults! Reviewed by: Candace Cunard