by Moe Zilla

Created on: February 11, 2009

Anne Tyler was 64, and she'd already won a Pulitzer Prize when she decided to write a children's book. Timothy Tugbottom wears "a pair of faded pants that he wore every single day," it begins, setting up an obvious theme. Everyone's got a favorite pair of comfortable pants, so there's something universal about the response when Timothy's mother asks him if he'd rather wear the new pants that she bought him.

"No! No! No!"

Anne Tyler then lists out a big advantage of the new pants: they had six and a half pockets. (And to reinforce the point, illustrator Mitra Modaressi draws a front and back view of the pants - and adds arrows pointing to the location of every one of those six and a half pockets!) But then it's on to a page about Timothy's breakfast choices. Timothy's favorite cereal is Zappos, and when his mother offers him a muffin, Timothy's response is exactly the same.

"No! No! No!"

And Anne Tyler points out that this muffin was filled with delicious blueberries...

The mother smiles in the simple drawing, suggesting visually that Timothy is missing a tasty opportunity, and the theme is strong enough to carry the book. All the book's drawings are simple - and a little flat - but this could be a deliberate decision, letting the words drive the story while the pictures simply suggest one way to imagine its characters. When the drawing is a birthday cake, maybe it's an abstract representation of everything that cake symbolizes

Anne Tyler was famous for creating simple but quirky characters in books like "Breathing Lessons," "Accidental Tourist," and "Dinner at the Homesick Inn." Here she's showing the same reliance on her character's personality to create interest in the story. It's fascinating to watch her reduce her formula to its bare essence. In the social world of Timothy Tugbuttom, there are two best friends, named "Polly Peartree" and "Bobby Bagel" But when Polly Peartree has a birthday party, Timothy's refrain is the same. "No! No! No!"

Timothy wants the same story every night. Timothy doesn't want to leave his crib. "I don't like DIFFERENT," Timothy tells his father - though by now Anne Tyler has demonstrated her pattern clearly enough for even the youngest readers. It dawns gradually on Timothy, when he realizes his crib is too small to sleep in. He tries on the new pants and likes them. He tries the muffin with the blueberries. He goes to Bobby Bagel's birthday party.

And at the end of the story, "His father tucked him into his big-boy bed, which was very, very comfortable."

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.