by Moe Zilla

Created on: August 27, 2010

She looks like an anime girl - but Lisa was actually drawn 40 years ago. Patrick Coombs wrote and illustrated "Lisa and the Grompet" way back in 1970. Yet his little girl character show's a spirit that's surprisingly independent. The book opens on the day when Lisa "got tired of being told what to do."

I had to wonder if this 1970 book was sending a '60s counterculture-style message of rebellion. Lisa decides to go outside, and eventually runs away from home. thinking "Every day everybody tells me what to do. I don't like it. I will go away all by myself. I will tell my own self what to do." No, she doesn't join a commune, but she does wander around appreciating the butterflies and the flowers. "Nobody says, 'Don't forget to bloom tomorrow'..." Lisa thinks to herself. And, "Butterflies don't yell."

The pencil sketches are sometimes tinted with pink,  but the layout is very simple. And it's a sweet and gentle story - at least, until the grompet shows up. "You sat on my front yard and squashed it," yells a tiny, hair-covered creature. (Or are those feathers?) And then the contrary grompet invents a new rule - "When you squash somebody's front yard, the least you can do is to ask them to tell you the story of their life." Then he says Lisa reminds him of his Uncle George, and starts crying.

It turns out the grompet's uncle had never told him to do things like eat his breakfast or take his vitamin pill. "So I just stood there and shrank," he complains. In fact, he'd run away from home because he was afraid he'd continue shrinking into nothingness - and because no one ever told him to go back. Soon they come up with a strange solution. The grompet asks Lisa if she'll tell him what to do. When he gets stuck under a mushroom cap, Lisa tells him to pull himself out, and then brush off his clothes.

"I love you," says the grompet, and soon Lisa has offer to take care of him back at her house. When Lisa's mother tells her to wash her face, Lisa passes on the same instructions to her new friend, the grompet. They eat their meals together, and the grompet sits quietly while Lisa practices her piano lessons. Ad the book ends with the grompet and Lisa saying "I love you" to each other - one more time.

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