by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 06, 2009

The text is all handwritten - and the illustrations are all murky sketches. Artist Timothy Basil Ering sets a wild tone for his first book, "The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone." The Pasadena-based artist fills each page with color, but those colors are usually grays and browns. And it's appropriate for the story of a boy searching junk piles in Cementland...in hopes that he'll find a treasure.

"He found greasy toaster ovens, broken TVs, and wet smelly socks," Ering writes. "But no treasure." (I began wondering if Ering hates Pasadena as much as I do, and if "Cementland" was just a metaphor.) There's a locked green box, with a note urging "Put my wondrous riches into the earth..." But the colorful packets in the box contain only tiny hard specks, and nothing has happened after the boy plants them in the ground and waits for a full three minutes.

It's a story that has a strange origin - maybe the unique craziness of Los Angeles. Ering liked to create nonsense phrases, including Frog-belly-rat-bone, according to the book's jacket. "Then one day I sat at a tiny picnic table in the children's garden in Pasadena and began to sketch a scarecrow." The two moments of creativity merged, and "I knew at that moment that Frog Belly Rat Bone had found a home." And in 2003 they reached the world, in the colorful pages of his book.

Frog Belly Rat Bone is an enormous scarecrow - shaped liked a monster - that the boy builds in the junkyard. There's wires, pillow stuffing, and wet, smelly socks - producing a creature which is fat and green. The little boy contributes a crown, but it turns out his monster is polite and friendly. (Just like everyone in L.A.) "My dear boy - you have found some wondrous riches," he says. And he watches over the seeds through the gray and shadowy night.

The boy's face is never seen - he's got stick-figure arms poking out of a red-and-white striped shirt. But in the way that gives more focus to the wonderful monster he created. "Frog Belly Rat Bone, one two three. The specks in the earth are protected by me." He chants in the night to frighten the thieving animals. And then his wiry arms (and smelly socks) frighten them away.

The end result is that Cementland is filled with colorful vegetables and flowers. (Maybe they should celebrate with some flower-covered floats.) But more importantly, there's finally some bright colors in this dark children's book - just like the monster's rhyme promised.

"Frog Belly Rat Bone, one, two three... You must be patient and then you will see."

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