Picture book “Mr. Squirrel and the Moon” pays tribute to Chaplin!

   
In the Ger­man pic­ture book Mr. Squir­rel and the Moon, there are three very sur­pris­ing black and white pic­tures. They show an imag­i­nary prison with a beard­ed pris­on­er con­cen­trat­ing on embroi­dery — the visu­al effect is extreme­ly strange!
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Illus­tra­tion 1 of “Mr. Squir­rel and the Moon”

   
In the pic­ture book, the timid Mr. Squir­rel found the “moon” (a large round cheese) dropped at his doorstep. He was wor­ried that peo­ple would sus­pect he had stolen it, and as a result, he was thrown into a prison like this. In his imag­i­na­tion, this is the most ter­ri­fy­ing prison he could imag­ine — a strong man with embroi­dery in his cell.

   
The pic­ture book is gen­er­al­ly in col­or, but here it’s in black and white, part­ly to allow for a sense of imag­i­na­tion and part­ly to height­en the atmos­phere of hor­ror. But the fun­ni­est part is that the facil­i­ties in this cell are quite unique: each pris­on­er, young or old, has a bed and a toi­let. So, read­ers of all ages will find this scene sim­ply hilar­i­ous and hilar­i­ous­ly fun­ny, cre­at­ing a tru­ly comedic effect.
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Illus­tra­tion 2 of Mr. Squir­rel and the Moon

   
In the sec­ond pic­ture, the hedge­hog is stuck in the cheese, so Mr. Squir­rel thinks of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the hedge­hog will go to jail too; and the strong man is thread­ing a nee­dle.
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Illus­tra­tion 3 of Mr. Squir­rel and the Moon

   
In the third pan­el, goats and mice are also involved in the inci­dent, mak­ing Mr. Squir­rel’s imag­i­nary prison even more live­ly, and a toi­let is added accord­ing­ly. This time, the goat chews the nee­dle and thread, and the embroi­der­er stares at it from the side…

   
These very fun­ny and sug­ges­tive pic­tures actu­al­ly make me feel very famil­iar. I won­der where I have seen them before?

   
The oth­er night, while watch­ing a movie with my daugh­ter, I sud­den­ly saw this famil­iar scene. It turns out the three pan­els of embroi­dered pris­on­ers are from Char­lie Chap­lin’s Mod­ern Times! No won­der it felt so famil­iar.

    If you don’t believe me, com­pare:
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Enlarge­ment of the first illus­tra­tion in the pic­ture book
—— Try to com­pare ——
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A screen­shot from the movie Mod­ern Times

    
Let’s look at the sec­ond pic­ture of thread­ing the nee­dle:
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Enlarge­ment of the sec­ond illus­tra­tion in the pic­ture book
 ——Try to com­pare
——
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Screen­shot 2 of the movie “Mod­ern Times”
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Screen­shot 3 of the movie “Mod­ern Times”

   
Com­pare this to the third pic­ture:
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Screen­shot 4 of the movie “Mod­ern Times”

    
Watch the film clip in full: 

   
It seems that Ger­man painter Sebas­t­ian Meis­chmoser is also a “Chap­lin fan,” and he pays trib­ute to the silent film mas­ter through this par­o­dy. At the same time, judg­ing by the com­par­i­son of the posi­tion of the pic­ture book and the film, the painter seems to be hint­ing that the Mr. Squir­rel he paint­ed is very much the same as the ami­able, lov­able and fun­ny tramp played by Chap­lin.
 

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[Pic­ture Book Sto­ry Syn­op­sis]

   
This sto­ry tells the sto­ry of a cheese pan­cake that fell from a farmer’s cart. This object, resem­bling both a pan­cake and the moon, brings a series of trou­bles to Mr. Squir­rel, the hedge­hog, the goat, the mouse, and the bee. Final­ly, they man­age to return the banana-shaped moon (pan­cake) to the sky. As the ani­mals sit on tree branch­es and gaze at the cres­cent moon in the sky, their hearts final­ly set­tle.