Overlook's Slightly Irregular Reissue
This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on December 7, 2006 Sign up now!
by Sally Lodge, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 12/7/2006
One day in 1887, a girl wanders outside and finds a mysterious house from China in her yard. Though what she had really wanted was a fire engine, she decides this will have to do. She enters the structure, discovering a variety of characters and adventures as she moves from room to room.
Such is the quirky plot of writer Donald Bartheleme's only children's book, The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine: Or the Thithering Dithering Djinn, illustrated with collages the author made from 19th-century engravings. Author of 11 other books and many short stories published in the New Yorker, Bartheleme (who died in 1989) won a National Book Award for this 1971 picture book from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Long out of print, Overlook Press has just reissued the title.
Associate editor David Shoemaker took on this book project when he came to Overlook a year ago. "It had been acquired by David Mulrooney before he left the company," Shoemaker explains. "He is a big fan of Bartheleme, as am I, and he had tracked down this book. When I arrived at Overlook, I jumped up and down asking to inherit the book."
The editor describes The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine as "an intriguing story built on a mountain of non sequiturs, which is the brilliance of it, with unique pastiche art. Bartheleme's prose here harkens back to some of the great children's classics, especially some of the British classics, like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This is a real adventure for young readers—it's kind of like finding one's way out of a maze."
Shoemaker believes that this title is an ideal fit for Overlook's children's list, which he says, like its adult list, is "steeped in nostalgia. Part of our day-to-day work here is searching out books that are out of print and should be back in print, books that often shouldn't have gone out of print in the first place. This book is definitely an example of that."
Overlook's children's backlist features such reissues as Walter R. Brooks's Freddy the Pig books, The 13 ½ Lives of Captain Bluebear and Rumo: And His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers and Jane's Adventures by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy. Future releases include reissues of Brooks's Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons; Three Cave Mountain by Swedish author Per Olov Enquist; and Erich Kästner's German classic, Emil and the Detectives, with a new introduction by Maurice Sendak.
Sales of The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine have, in Shoemaker's words, "picked up steam since the book's initial sell-in," and the work appears to have crossover appeal. "We're seeing it in adult as well as children's sections," Shoemaker says. Though he believes the book's "real home" is in the children's section, he acknowledges its appeal to all ages, especially to Barthelme's many adult fans. "This prose comes from a separate facet of Bartheleme's mind, but he did not try to switch gears and write down to children. It is definitely high prose. In fact, this book fits into the Bartheleme canon quite neatly."
