William
Steig's CDB! Aug-10-2006
Creative Letter Play
In my recent 52
Projects interview, I made the quip in response to
Jeffrey Yamaguchi's "Any good summer creativity prompts?" question
that my suggested "family-friendly prompts are brought
to you by the letters C, D, B." Unknown to most, that
was an embedded joke that combined a Sesame Street callout
with a reference to William Steig's 1968 classic children's
book titled CDB! (which translates to "See
the Bee!").
I first read Steig's CDB! decades ago when I was
in elementary school and it left such an indelible
impression on my young mind that I never forgot the creative
way the author used letters that sounded like words to tell
stories through the pages of the book. Deciphering what was
happening in the story required creatively 'thinking outside
the box' to translate the given letters into words to explain
the illustrations on each page. It was okay if you got stuck
too
— the answer key to all of the stories simply awaited
at the end of the book.
Here's some examples:
On page 8 a hen sits contentedly on a nest of
eggs. The letters above her say "D
N S 5 X." which creatively translates into the words "The
hen has five eggs."
On page 13 a boy is pointing down
at his pet dog with the admonishment "I M A U-M B-N. U
R N N-M-L." which translates into "I am a human
being. You are an animal."
Page 15 shows a deer standing
in a bush of green foliage with the caption "D D-R S N
D I-V."
which of course means "The deer is in the ivy."
The book is filled with word-puzzling pages like this that
will undoubtedly delight most seven-year-olds. It certainly
delighted me. And because I never forgot the title letters
CDB! and its unique usage of letters for words, I
know this book was influential in the forming of my own love
for puns and creative
word play.
After the 52 Projects interview was published I started thinking
more about the CDB! book and wondered if my local library had
a copy of it. I learned that they did, so I went and checked
it out on Tuesday and spent some time going down memory lane.
The copy they had was the revised format edition from 2000,
where all of the original black and white illustrations are
now rendered in watercolor.
I was amazed to learn as I read the inside of the jacket
cover that the author, William Steig, was born in 1907 and
wrote CDB! when he was in his 60s. It also noted:
"William Steig has been creating award-winning books for
children for more than three decades. Included among these
are Sylvester
and the Magic Pebble, for which he won the Caldecott
Medal, The
Amazing Bone, which was a Caldecott Honor book, and
two Newbery Honor books, Doctor De Soto and Abel's
Island. Most recently,
he wrote and illustrated the best-selling Pete's
a Pizza and
illustrated Arthur Yorinks' The Flying
Latke."
The author's notable accomplishments reinforces
two things to me about living a rich creative life: 1) we're
never too far along in our lives to accomplish great things,
and 2) our creative minds will stay sharp if we continue to
make use of them through all of the seasons of our lives.
N Q, for this wonderful lesson, Mr. Steig. •
© 2006 Chris Dunmire www.chrisdunmire.com.
All rights reserved. |
