Carry-On Books To Take You Up, Up And Away
The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread
One of my worst nightmares is being stuck on a plane without a good book to read. Happily, after much trial and error — and packing far too many books — I've finally realized what makes a perfect carry-on book:
You want a book — either fiction or nonfiction — that's complex enough to smother your annoyance when the guy in the row ahead reclines his seat into your lap, but not so intellectually challenging that it demands a dictionary. No plotless wonders with paragraph-length sentences; you need to be able to put the book down when the person sitting by the window needs to step over you to get to the bathroom.
Mostly you want something that's intriguing enough to make you forget that you're 34,000 feet in the air and, in your heart of hearts, you don't really understand how the plane stays up.
The books I've chosen meet these criteria beautifully, and, as such, they've all been awarded the Nancy Pearl Wanderlust Award for Great Airplane Reading.
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View scenes from 'The Arrival'
The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, hardcover, 128 pages
My next recommendation manages to tell a compelling story without using any words. Shaun Tan's book, The Arrival, is a picture book — but not one intended for young children. Author/artist Tan shares with us the wonder, excitement and fear that accompany a recent immigrant when he leaves his homeland and family to make a new life far away.
There's an aura of menace and looming danger in the pictures of the immigrant's country that is reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico's painting "Mystery and Melancholy of a Street," and you can understand why he would want to leave in search of a more welcoming, less fearful situation. Still, the two sequential pictures of the man sorrowfully saying goodbye to his wife and young daughter — the first shows the three holding hands; the second depicts the letting go — may just break your heart. Taking a ship to a new land, he finds himself in an unfamiliar setting, surrounded first by indifference and then — slowly — acceptance and friendship from those he meets.
Tan brilliantly universalizes the immigrant experience by making the country of arrival a surreal place that is as wondrously strange to the reader/viewer as it is to the immigrant himself. The buildings are weirdly sized and shaped; people travel by dirigible; what's produced in the factory where he works is nothing that either he or we can identify for sure; and the local animals are bizarre — though the vaguely Dali-esque, four-legged oyster-mouse creature who first befriends the immigrant looks adorable enough to be real.
Tan conveys so much in each of the pictures that every one — whether full page or smaller — calls out to be pored over. The power of visual art to tell a narrative tale that is both nuanced and complex has seldom, if ever, been demonstrated more clearly than here. Book groups for middle-school students and above (including adults) will find much to discuss.
Chester, by Mélanie Watt, hardcover, 32 pages
In literary criticism circles, you often hear the term "metafiction," which the Encarta Dictionary defines as "fiction writing that deals, often playfully and parodically, with the nature of fiction, the techniques and conventions used in it, and the role of the author." Well, when I read Mélanie Watt's Chester, I figured that I had come across perhaps the world's very first meta-picture book.
The book opens with Watt explaining that she's trying to write and illustrate a book about a mouse, a book that will begin: "Once upon a time there was a mouse. He lived in a house in the country." But her cat, Chester (aka the self-centered furball, according to Watt), won't let her get on with her story; he thinks that it's his book and he's in charge of creating it. (Chester, it should be noted, also thinks the letters in his name stand for: Charming; Handsome; Envy of Mouse; Smart; Talented; Envy of Mélanie; Really handsome.)
Red marker in hand (or paw), Chester goes about editing Mélanie's manuscript, with hilarious results. Just when the reader thinks Watt has gotten the last word, or at least the last picture (of Chester in a pink tutu — could there be a more biting insult to any self-respecting cat?), Chester comes up with his own revenge.
I can't imagine there's a 4- to 7-year-old out there who won't love this collaboration between author and subject, and amused adult readers will want to ask themselves just which of the two is the author and which the subject of this laugh-aloud book.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Okay, so you're ready for summer vacation. The bags are packed, the airplane tickets are in hand, the neighbor said he'd water your lawn. There's just one nagging question: What book should you take?
Librarian Nancy Pearl is here with some answers. They're what she calls great airplane reads. And this first book that I'm holding up actually has a man holding a suitcase. It's called "The Arrival," by Shaun Tan. Am I saying the name correctly?
Ms. NANCY PEARL (Librarian): You are. And this is a fabulous, fabulous book. It's a book without words, and yet it tells a really complicated story. It's a picture book, but it's not intended for young readers. And what it is is the story of a man who leaves his homeland to come to a new country. And you get the scenes in just wordless, wonderful, wonderful pictures of everything that happens when he says goodbye to his family. And there's one picture in there, Steve, where his wife and his daughter and he are all holding hands and then letting go. And that's a picture, I think, that just will break your heart.
And what Shaun Tan does in that book so wonderfully is really universalize the sense of what it's like to come to a new world.
INSKEEP: I suppose we should mention when we say that this is going to a new world, this isn't exactly someone going to New York, but you see the person in a harbor. The city behind the harbor looks kind of New York-ey. Here's somebody in what must be the immigration hall. It looks a little bit like Ellis Island. It's an extraordinarily strange version of New York, but this seems to be where the person is going.
Ms. PEARL: But it's surreal enough so that it both takes a common situation, the immigrant coming to America, and yet at the same time, because it's not quite the America that we know, it just adds that kind of surreal dimension to it.
INSKEEP: So the first in our stack about great airplane reads is about someone taking a long journey, and let's pick one of the smaller books here: Robin McKinley, "Sunshine." According to the blurb, it's pretty much perfect.
Ms. PEARL: I have rarely met anyone who's read "Sunshine" who has not loved it. It's the story of a young woman named Rae Seddon who is driving home one morning from making cinnamon rolls at her stepfather's coffee house when she runs into a group of vampires.
It turns out that she is going to be used as bait for this very enigmatic vampire named Constantine. Constantine overcomes his natural desires to do with her as vampires tend to do. And Rae discovers in herself the means to get them both out of this very sticky situation, and then her troubles really begin.
Now what Robin McKinley does in this book so well is mix the real and the fantastical. When you start the book, for the first 15 pages, there are like clues here or there that this is not the world that we really know, although everything is very familiar.
Cinnamon rolls, and then all of a sudden there's a line that says: But when the Voodoo Wars happened…and then you think, wait. What world am I in?
INSKEEP: So we've got two books in a row here that start with the real world and make it strange, make it new.
Ms. PEARL: Three books, actually.
INSKEEP: Oh, we've got another one. Which one?
Ms. PEARL: There's another one. "The Thin Place."
INSKEEP: "The Thin Place," Kathryn Davis, a novel.
Ms. PEARL: Now, what you want in an airplane book, you want a book that is complex enough that you're drawn into it so you can forget that you're having this elbow war with the person next to you over the armrest and you can overcome your anger at the person in front of you who's tilted his seat back into your lap. So you want a book that really grabs you and takes you away.
INSKEEP: And something that when you're forced to hold it about four inches from your face, because of that seat, it still reads pretty well.
Ms. PEARL: Right.
INSKEEP: You want a nice font - a nice, big font.
Ms. PEARL: And yet you don't want something so complex that when it's interrupted by those announcements of putting our your seatbelt, etc., that you're going to lose your place and never be able to recapture.
So you don't want plotless wonders, and "The Thin Place" is one of those mesmerizing, mysterious books that does exactly that. And this is how it begins.
There were three girlfriends, and they were walking down a trail that led to a lake, one small and plump, one pretty and medium-sized, one not so pretty and tall. This was in the early years of the 21st century, the unspeakable having happened so many times, everyone was still in shock, still reeling from what they'd seen, what they'd done or failed to do.
The dead souls no longer wore gowns. They'd gotten loose, broadcasting their immense, soundless chord through the precincts of the living.
So you get this beautiful writing, and you get this mysteriousness. And it's set in a small town near the Canadian border named Varennes, and Varennes is a thin place. It's a place that is where the border between the real and the inchoate, between the living and the dead, is very permeable.
INSKEEP: And should we draw anything from the fact that Kathryn Davis, the author, is recorded here as having received a Kafka prize?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PEARL: Indeed.
INSKEEP: The next book we have here is from Thomas Perry, "Metzger's Dog."
Ms. PEARL: The thing that should tell you everything you need to know about that book is that Metzger is a cat. Add to that that it's a thriller, and it's about some urban terrorists who are determined to take down Los Angeles.
INSKEEP: Do you mind? I just flipped it open at random here…
Ms. PEARL: Yes, please do.
INSKEEP: …and came to classic Raymond Chandler writing here. Chinese Gordon's body was hunched forward over the steering wheel, his right foot still on the gas pedal and his teeth clenched as the van knifed into the space between two cars and shot up the Harbor Freeway. Love it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
INSKEEP: Love it.
Ms. PEARL: And it's just a lot of fun. It's one of those getting-lost-in-on-the-airplane books.
INSKEEP: Well, let's travel through one more book in the stack. One more.
Ms. PEARL: Okay. The other thing is just a wonderful picture book, which if you're traveling with a four to seven year old, this is a book that I think that you would really, really like. Now we always hear the term, when we're talking about literary fiction, metafiction, which is basically fiction about fiction. But "Chester," by Melanie Watt, is the first meta-picture-book that I've ever run across.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PEARL: Not maybe there are others, but I have not found them. So the book opens with Melanie Watt, the author, explaining that she's trying to write and illustrate a book about a mouse, but her cat, Chester, does not care for that idea. He thinks that it's his book, and he is in charge of creating it.
So there's Melanie trying to write her picture book, and there's Chester with his red magic marker in hand, or in paw. Melanie thinks she's gotten the upper hand of Chester because she has a picture of him in a pink tutu. And this is a huge insult to Chester, who believes that his name stands for charming, handsome, envy of mouse, smart, talented, envy of Melanie, really handsome.
Chester comes up with his own revenge on Melanie. And I think what is so much fun about this is to get some four to seven year old talking about whose book is it, really? Is it Chester's book, or is it Melanie's? And who's won that battle between them?
INSKEEP: I already know what the kid's going to say to that.
Ms. PEARL: The cat.
INSKEEP: No. He's going to say it's my book.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. PEARL: Oh, that's right.
INSKEEP: Nancy Pearl, great to have you come by.
Ms. PEARL: Thank you, Steve.
INSKEEP: You can see illustrations from "Chester" and "The Arrival" and read excerpts of Nancy Pearl's other book recommendations at our Web site, npr.org. It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
And I'm Renee Montagne. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
