Dispatches from the 70s #1

Ellen Raskin's Franklin Stein

Franklin Stein
had been sawing and drilling,
day and night,
hammering, hammering in the locked attic room.

His mother didn’t know what he was making,
his father didn’t know what he was making,
his snoopy sister Phyllis didn’t know what he was making.
No one else cared.

—Franklin Stein, by Ellen Raskin

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Front and back cover of 1972 edition of Franklin Stein

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Oh, my friends. If your only experience with Ellen Raskin’s work is The Westing Game, then you’ve got a lot of fun ahead of you. (And if you haven’t read that one, I highly recommend—it’s a great read in and of itself, but it’s also safe to say that it’s been hugely influential on contemporary children’s mysteries. There’s a reason that forty-four years later, it still gets cited as a comparison.)

Anyway, in addition to writing a handful of other chapter books, she also wrote and illustrated a bunch of picture books? I haven’t tracked them all down, but the ones I have read have been such fun, and hoo boy, I do love her artwork. Her cartoonier illustrations—there are other books with other styles and mediums—are filled with such detail and humor and a good deal of snark, and when combined with her words, which share the same qualities? WELL. Sign me up.

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Second spread in Franklin Stein, with text on the left that describes the various tenants of the apartment building, and a full-page illustration of the building on the right, with all of the various tenants displaying the behaviors that are described in the text. Also, Mean Landlady Twitch is on the way!

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It’s a super-simple story about a boy who has no friends, so he builds his own. At first, pretty much everyone is horrified by his creation—which he names ‘Fred’—calling him things like ‘dreadful’ and ‘revolting’ and ‘gruesome’ and basically everything in between:

They had never seen anything quite like Fred,
so he must be wicked, indeed, or worse.

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This spread—text at the top, illustration across the bottom; his parents and sister in the living room, surrounded by footstools that he’s built & Phyllis trying to peek through the keyhole to see what he’s doing—cracks me up. Having been an obsessive kid—and, let’s be honest, an obsessive adult—I can relate BOTH to Franklin for building all of the footstools and to the rest of his family for being exasperated.

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BUT. When Franklin enters Fred into a pet show, the judge proclaims that he’s ‘original, creative, artistic, superb!’, and then suddenly everybody loooooooves Fred, which feels to me like Raskin is poking fun at a very familiar, very human tendency.

I was just talking today with someone on Mastodon about reading and watching classics, and about peoples’ tendency to feel guilty if their tastes don’t line up with what we’re told we should like by teachers, critics, peers—and about how that’s ultimately silly, because there is no piece of art, regardless of format, that’ll appeal to everyone. About how staying curious and open to exploring the unfamiliar will always ultimately be more fulfilling than trying to march your way through someone else’s idea of What Is Good And Important.

Anyway.

He brings Fred home, and everyone in the apartment house is happier with him around. Except Phyllis, who is mad that one of the things Franklin used to make Fred is their potato masher, because she hates ‘lumpy mashed potatoes.’ And except Landlady Twitch, who thinks that Fred makes ‘her house look like a garbage dump.’

(But thankfully, Landlady Twitch’s opinion is moot, because due to the attention that Fred has brought to the house, no one has to pay rent until she makes the house less rickety-rackety.)

And Franklin, who, over the course of the events of the book, has made an actual human friend, remains unfazed: He’s already planning to make a friend for Fred, because ‘Everyone needs a friend.’

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Last two page spread, with the apartment house largely hidden behind Fred—who, I have to say, is wonderful, if a little alarming?—while Franklin and his new friend Elizabeth drive off in a little wooden car that Elizabeth made.

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On the very last page, though, it turns out that maybe everyone’s original side-eye was a little justified? Because we see Franklin and Elizabeth at the butcher, buying, ‘One heart, two lungs, two kidneys.’

Which, wow. If something could make me dig this book MORE, it’s the idea of this kid going full-on Dr. Frankenstein.

I’ve gone back and read and re-read this one multiple times over the course of the last few days, and it’s just such a pleasure every time. I keep noticing some new detail in the illustrations, and Raskin uses words and phrases that are a pure pleasure to read—silently, sure, but I found myself reading lines aloud just for the delightful mouthfeel. “Rickety-rackety house” and “sawing and drilling, hammering, hammering” and “atrocious, ferocious, ghastly giant monster” and holy cow, this wonderfully rhythmic, sneakily rhyming line wrecks me every single time:

“Ugly, ugly, ugly!” Phyllis repeated smugly.

Just like Fred, this one is a weird, wonderful joy.

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A quick note from me to you:

Hello, friends. Long time, no talk. I’ve missed you.

We’re headed into winter here, and my reading and writing took a hit when I started Getting Cozy—I dragged my spinning wheel out, started spinning and crocheting and spinning and crocheting, all while guzzling gallons of potato-leek soup and taking breaks to run outside and refill the birdfeeders which are constantly being emptied by our newest litter of hilarious teenage squirrels—but now I seem to have settled into some sort of rhythm. It’s amazing how long it can take to adjust to a new season?

Anyway, I hope you’re all well.

Oh! If you’ve also been following the rapid demise of Twitter, you might also have been poking around Mastodon? I’ve still got my Twitter account as a placeholder, but have largely moved over there. If you’re there as well, come find me!

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Two pages into this book, this song was immediately stuck in my head:

It has now been two days, and I’m still wandering around muttering, “What’s he building in there?” Thanks a lot, Tom Waits.

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Related:

Dispatches from the 60s #1

Dispatches from the 60s #2

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Hopefully I’ll be back sooner rather than months from now?

Regardless, much love,
Leila