ABOUT THE WEIRD IN THE WILDS

The second book in the Tales of Triumph and Disaster series by Printz Honor Recipient and National Book Award Finalist Deb Caletti.

Something must be done. Vlad Luxor continues to rule the Timeless Province with a cruel hand, and now he’s screaming about Inners and Outers, Others and Us. It’s all getting worse and worse, except for one amazing change: This time, Henry has friends to help him in the face of pure evil. And as everyone knows, with friends by your side, you can tackle anything.

Well. Maybe not anything.

Because when the meanest boy in school is turned into the stinkiest, weirdest creature ever, Henry, Jo, Apollo, and Pirate Girl are asked to do the impossible. Breaking this spell will force them to go on their most dangerous, frightening adventure yet–through the Wilds, the Forest of Knives, and a lodge in the woods belonging to the most terrible bully of all . . . Vlad Luxor himself.

Henry has no choice but to take the first step . . . into a mission that may be doomed from the start.

The Weird, Wacky, Wonderful World of Public Domain Images

As you may already know, all of the images in both The Weird in the Wilds and A Flicker of Courage are from the public domain. This was my intent when I began the books, as I didn't think anything like that had been done before. Hunting for images was like disappearing into the magical Wilds itself - I could vanish for hours into certain texts, or become caught up in intriguing choices. In The Weird in the Wilds, the sources came from as many varied places as A Flicker Courage: photo collections from the Library of Congress, Amazing Stories magazine, and antique biology texts. Some of the more intriguing titles: The Comparative Anatomy of the Domesticated Animal, 1908 (Large Brain or Small One); A Short Treatise on Boots and Shoes, Ancient and Modern, by Walter H. Goater, 1884 (Shoes You Can Explore the World In); Physical Training for Business Men by Harrie Irving Hancock, 1917 (Very Tiring Exercise); Alphonse Bertillon’s Synoptic Table of Physiognomic Traits, circa 1909; and Early Experiments with X-Rays (yikes), 1896.

In the same way that the children get especially lost in certain lands of the Wilds, I got especially lost in certain sources. Comic books, like Jungle Comics, Specter Comics, and Ace Comics (where I got one of my favorite images, Savage Steve), were as involving as they were when I was a kid. Those ads in the back were especially as intriguing as ever - ads full of strange toys and large promises. While I still kind of wanted a Tellzall 9-in-1 Timepiece of Adventure, with a glow-in-the-dark compass, weather forecaster, signaling device, and the world’s smallest ballpoint pen, I definitely DID NOT want an actual monkey sent through the mail.

I fell in love, hard, though, with a particular source, so much so that I tracked down an original two-volume set of books for my antiquarian book collection. Marvels of the Universe, Volumes 1 and 2 are a stunning pair. With leather spines and the titles embossed in gold, they’re seriously weighty duo, featuring all of the Marvels of the Universe magazines, bound together. How can you NOT be thrilled and full of curiosity with the title alone?! And inside, sure enough, there are all the wonders of the universe, everything from comets to dinosaurs to incredible plants and astonishing animals. These books are wonder, wonder, wonder on yellowed and musty-smelling pages. Most wonder inspiring of all - each article is filled with weird, sometimes creepy, but always magical photographs, and interspersed throughout are full color-plate images that are striking in their strange, old beauty. I used some of the Marvel subjects for inspiration for the plants and creatures the children would find in the Wilds, used one of the photographs for the book, decided against a few others because they were just too eerie or wouldn't fit design-wise, and gazed longingly at several that I wished I could frame. What treasures.

Occasionally, frustratingly, I couldn’t find what I was aiming for, no matter how hard I looked, and so I had to create it myself. For the first image that appears, The Saddest Pencil You’ve Ever Seen in Your Life, I sharpened a pencil to its tiny stub, inserted teeth marks, and then photographed it. My husband’s dad’s fishing hat got a makeover and a photo session, too, for The Lucky Hat That Makes You Catch Fish. Jason’s Special Nightlight was also purposefully shot as poorly and tactlessly as possible. The weirdest and grossest and most stomach-turning photography I did, though, was for Sardines, Squished in a Can. I actually tried several brands, and had to spend a lot of time getting the lighting right, while also trying not to get queasy at the sight of those fat, gelatinous fishes. Okay, so maybe I’m not a huge sardine fan, but it was still a hilarious way to spend part of a work day.

Finally, there were those special photos that I came across that I loved so much that they inspired the text, rather than the other way around. The Sarcastic Mr. Cutting, from the Bain News Service collection of 1910 -1915 was one of those. He became Apollo’s swimming instructor, because he was just too charmingly eccentric not to be a part of things. The Bain collection was also the source of the Five Enormous Balloons Ready to Lift, from a hot air balloon race in St. Louis in 1910, as well as the wrestling photo of One of those Humiliating Positions That Forces You to Say Uncle. The other photo that inspired the text was Ms. Esmé Silvooplay’s unusual interpretive dance at Jo’s mom’s celebration of love, a 1910 photo from the Library of Congress. The thought of those two long-forgotten, photographs appearing in a children’s book of today just delighted me. And that is really the aim of all the images: delight. Delight, and marvel, and wonder.

Music and the Hidden Lyrics in THE WEIRD IN THE WILDS…

“It’s night, now.  In the darkness, the strings of little white lights glow over the dance floors. Surrounding the partygoers are the things that make every person similar and that we all experience – the sky we live beneath, the ground we all walk on, the wilds around us; love and friendship and growing up, struggles and seasons and music.  

Around them, too, are the things that make us different and singular.  Henry thinks the sky is indigo, and Pirate Girl sees it as more bluish-black and Apollo spots a shooting star but Jo doesn’t notice.  Mr. and Mrs. Dante step on one another’s shoes and bump into the table while dancing, spilling someone’s drink, while Sir Loinshank Jr. and Francois Rinaldo waltz with the elegance of swans on a summer lake.  Rocco taps his toes out of sync with the rhythm, and Coco wiggles her hips wildly, and Henry’s elbows poke this way and that, and Ms. Toomey can’t hear the beat at all, but she feels it in the soles of her feet, and one tree leans and whooshes this way, and another leans and whooshes that, but they are all, every one of them, still dancing.”  

In A FLICKER OF COURAGE, the first book in the TALES OF TRIUMPH AND DISASTER series, Henry and his friends (Apollo, Jo, Pirate Girl, and his dog, Button) must face not only his own horrible parents, but the evil leader in their province, Vlad Luxor, who has just turned Apollo’s annoying little brother, Rocco, into a naked lizard. In order to break the spell, they have to make a trip up the awful Ruler’s Mountain. But what actually breaks the spell at the crucial moment is empathy. In THE WEIRD IN THE WILDS, Vlad has turned even more terrible and evil, trying to separate the people of the province into Inners and Outers, Others and Us. After he casts a spell on an awful bully, Jason, who makes fun of Jo’s mother and her loving stepmother, Miss Becky, and their upcoming Celebration of Love, the children must travel through the terrible, wonderful, frightening Wilds, once again facing Vlad and his cruel sidekick, Mr. Needleman. Once again, though, it is something unexpected and newly learned that truly breaks the spell: an understanding of the power of love and the beauty of our differences. I wanted to write about the the timeless things we could still count on in dark times, things like empathy, kindness, compassion, and friendship. And another one of those things: music.

Music features heavily in the storyline of The Weird in the Wilds, showing itself as a powerful and unifying part of joy. So, as inside-joke for the parents, grandparents, and teachers who might be reading the book aloud, I hid snippets of lyrics from various eras. There are twenty-one of them. If you manage to spot them all… Well, pretend a giant bunch of balloons releases from your personal corner of sky.

Here’s two of the hidden lyrics to get you started (as well as a note on one of my other most-favorite images in the book, Particularly Stylish Attire).

A note on those leisure suits…

While I was searching for an image of disco attire that Grandfather Every might have worn, I came across this fantastic Lew Magram leisure suit ad. As soon as I saw the names of the suits (The Bombay Cooler, The Bengal Lancer, grr!), I knew I had to include it. Plus, I loved the idea of Grandfather Every, the most senior spell-breaker alive, shaking his groove thing. One of the tricky parts about using public domain images is making absolutely sure that they indeed are in the public domain and can be legally used. I knew this was an ad but couldn’t see the source, and so, with the stubborn determination my family could tell you more about, I tracked it down to (drumroll, please!)… A 1971 Playboy Magazine! Insert ads featuring cigarettes, booze, Brut Cologne, and Telly Savalas, here. Since the Lew Magram company is still in business, though, our erstwhile (and thorough, and ever-so-patient) legal team tracked the company’s long and twisty history to its current owners. It was another odd work day when I made the call to their legal team, who probably didn't normally get inquiries about men’s leisure suit ads from fifty years ago. Luckily, they granted permission, and I will forever feel that the efforts were worth it. The emails that went back-and-forth to my editor and team at Penguin alone were priceless - an entire thread reads: UPDATE ON OUR LEISURE SUITS! I don’t know how to explain my devoted draw to this one, particular image. I don’t think it’s the choker, or the lemon-colored safari suit, or the half-wink and devil-may-care mustache of the guy in peach. Maybe The Bengal Lancer just works some kind of magic after all.