The “terror” of Creepy Carrots! (in quotes on purpose) is kept to a manageable minimum here considering the absence of true peril or gotcha scares. For the most part, Creepy Carrots! is an age-appropriate psychological thriller, “terrible, carroty breathing” heard in Jasper’s bedroom is as threatening as these bogeymen get. The nods to the masters are subtle but detectable: the scene in which the carrots hide behind a shower curtain is a deliberate play on Psycho, while the not-carrot surrogates found in the shed – a chainsaw, a pair of hedge clippers – give an understated wave of acknowledgment to slasher flicks. These “carrot presences” were merely the awkward fold of a curtain or an innocent rubber ducky glimpsed too quickly.
This selective colorizing highlights the malevolent carrots, of course, but also is a visual grab that identifies the differentiations between what Jasper sees versus what Jasper thinks he sees. The long shadows of this horror/noir palette are interrupted with bits of orange, which, not accidentally, is a color often associated with danger. An oversized book, the reading experience mimics that of watching a film on a movie screen, as the big pages fill up the field of vision. Illustrator Peter Brown assembles his storyboard in grayscale, the frames bound by rounded back edging as if on a black and white contact sheet. Visually it recalls exactly that, an old episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” or “The Twilight Zone,” albeit with a tad less existential agony. If this sounds like a morality tale of an Alfred Hitchcock Jr. SPOILER ALERT: So too do the carrots, as the walls that are keeping them in are the same walls keeping their predator out. Still, his paranoia is in freefall and it’s not until Jasper goes to great lengths to construct a pseudo-internment camp around the carrot patch that he experiences a mental reprieve. Just a trick of the eyes! Product of a rampant imagination, they say.
In the bathroom, on the street, at the foot of his bed, menacing carrots spook him wherever he goes until a second hard look or parental intervention reveal the carrots to be everyday items. Jasper gorges on carrots growing in Crackenhopper Field with little thought for anything other than his own pleasure until… the carrots start following him home. The plot – written by author Aaron Reynolds – follows Jasper Rabbit as his greed leads to his own undoing. Gluttony, stalking, delusions, psychic deterioration – just the kinds of subjects fit for a Caldecott-nominated picture book! Indeed, the cover of this year’s Creepy Carrots! is marked with the embossed Caldecott Honor Book seal, proof positive that it meets the criteria to be considered one of “the most distinguished American picture books” of the year.
0 kommentar(er)
