The Animal Family (Michael Di Capua Books)

I first read The Animal Family back in 1968, I think. It's a quiet little book and I loved it, then, mostly for one of its characters, the land-loving mermaid. Secure in my own family, I don't think I realized the book's lessons about the essence of families. It was something I took for granted

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back then. In reading it again recently I find that it (or I) have grown. There is a lot to this short, small, squarish children's book that can be read in a single sitting, a lot of wisdom that a reader can carry with them to help make this a better world.

First published in 1965, written by teacher, poet Randall Jarrell with chapter decorations by the great Maurice Sendak of Where the Wild Things Are fame, the book is intended for the readership of 9-12 year olds.

It is the story of a family who find each other by chance. Rather than being a family born together who share similarities, they connect despite their differences and in celebration of their differences.

This story does not bowl a reader over with action or suspense or trials and tribulations. It unfolds during the every day life of the characters, a life which always seems to be very special because the differences between the characters make what is ordinary to one person seem astonishing and marvelous to another.

The story begins with a lonely hunter living in a rustic cabin on a rugged seacoast at the edge of a great forest.
Jarrell's poet soul shines through in his prose as he describes the cabin, "He had carved some of the logs of the walls and some of the planks of the chairs into foxes and seals, a lynx and a mountain lion. When he sat at night by the logs blazing in the fireplace, the room looked half golden with firelight and half black with the shadow of firelight, and the logs would roar and crackle so loudly that they drowned out the sound of the waves on the beach below."

One night the hunter hears a beautiful voice singing in a strange language from somewhere out near the seal rocks in the cove. Gradually, over time, his patience wins the singer's trust and he becomes friends with the mermaid. She is a curious and open-minded mermaid indeed and eventually defies all the conventions of her people, falls in love with the hunter and goes to live in his cabin on the land.

The mermaid and the hunter are different in nearly every way. She lives totally in the moment and finds concepts like "mistake" or "boredom" or "crying" completely foreign. She can't imagine why he doesn't like to be out in the rain or why he is willing to wait so patiently for a fish to swim up to his hook. Her emotions are different and she, like the others of her kind, is used to "just swimming away" when things are unpleasant. He doesn't care for her taste for raw fish while she finds cooked things distasteful and detests sweet things like berries and honey most of all. "They're ugly, ugly! All gummy and blurry! How can you eat them?"

The hunter carries the mermaid when they travel over longer distances but she learns to pull herself along on land quite comfortably. "When she came from the sea to the house she would leave a trail of crushed grass and flowers through the meadow, and she would smell of them for a while; but she herself had a sharp salt smell, like the spray of a wave as it breaks across your face. Her blue eyes and dark skin shone, and her teeth, when she smiled, were as white as foam."

Other differences like clothes and household tasks are puzzling at first but nothing is so puzzling as fire. At first she thinks that the red hot coals in the fireplace are bright corals and the hunter has to show her how hot they are and that they can burn. She teaches him to speak her language but it is very difficult for him and she learns his language more quickly. She teaches him to speak Dolphin and Seal as well in case he ever falls overboard when he is out fishing.

They exchange their stories and customs and memories, sharing their differences as though they are treasures. The hunter and the mermaid were so different from each other that it seemed to them, finally, that they were exactly alike; and they lived together and were happy."

The hunter remembers when his parents were alive and he begins having sad dreams at night that are about having a child that he can teach as his father taught him. It grieves the couple that they cannot have a child but one day when the hunter accidentally comes between a small bear cub and its mother and is forced to kill the mother bear to stop her from mauling him, the problem seems to be solved. The hunter brings home a baby. Once again the mermaid and the hunter adjust with the help of love to the differences in their family. They have to contend with a big appetite and bearish manners like bees following a hungry and sticky baby into the cabin. He outgrows his place at the table and he frightens the mermaid badly when she finds him almost dead in a cave when autumn comes. She has never heard of hibernation. The bear grows into a big, big sleepy, hungry, clumsy funny family member but the joys he brings to them with his very bearishness are so precious to the hunter and the mermaid that they never once think of his ways as a problem.

Another family member comes along when the hunter brings a lynx kitten home from the forest one day. The lynx also helps to fill the cabin with delight and love, especially when the bear is sleeping during the winter. He teaches the mermaid about purring and kneading and even though they don't appreciate his special gifts of rabbits and birds deposited at the foot of their bed they love their lynx pet very much. They accept his differences and he theirs. The bear and the lynx accept each other, too.

One day, a sort of miracle happens and while the bear and the lynx are out playing they discover a small lifeboat that has washed up on the beach and inside of it they find a very young boy. He is so young that he doesn't know to fear the animals and they bring him to their family, the mermaid and the hunter. When the hunter investigates he finds that the boy's mother is dead inside the boat and he buries her. They raise the boy and he grows up happily with the lynx and the bear, learning their secrets of living. He learns how to be a human being from his father, the hunter. His new mother, the mermaid, teaches him how to swim as well as a seal and how to speak in the melodious and liquid speech of the merfolk. Once again , the beautiful elasticity of a family proves its magic and the little boy fits in seamlessly.

There is beauty on every single page of this book. Jarrell's poetic vision is one that sings to me. He comes up with such wonderful visual imagery. Picture a cap that the hunter makes for the boy. The mermaid sews blue jay feathers on it until it is completely covered in blue, and wearing it, the boy's "head matched the sky."

Jarrell's sensitivity and imagination offer so much wisdom without being preachy. I found myself wondering how human beings can be so petty and uncreative as to focus our hearts and minds on differences, making of them problems rather than the diverse and fascinating joys they are meant to be. In the book he shows again and again how easy it can be to get along and how much can be overcome, if love and friendship, patience and understanding are our guiding desires.

I love this book. I think it is a book that should be read to a child and discussed...perhaps not so much discussed as marveled over together. I think that many of today's children will expect more action than this book provides. It is mostly concerned with the geography and action of the heart. Its pages are filled with simple homey pleasures and the everyday discoveries found in our best relationships. I think that its simple and philosophical tone can be made more enjoyable by reading it aloud with one's arm wrapped lovingly about your child listener. I think if you share your delight in the art of the book, the poetry of its images and the gentleness of its concepts you can win over the most action hungry child and in doing so can also help them to develope their own sense of artistic appreciation. I think it might be powerful enough to help instill a lifelong mindset that embraces tolerance and makes it as natural as breathing...especially if the adult reader who shares its message takes its wisdom to heart as well, following the paradigm it suggests.

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