The third in a series of ten lectures on David Wiesner: Tuesday (Part 1) – A Fantasy Blockbuster in a Picture Book

Last time, we talked about the artist who is known as the “mas­ter of word­less books”. His pic­ture book “Hur­ri­cane” has a lot of text and is actu­al­ly semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, pre­sent­ing the stan­dard of “per­fect child­hood”.Today, let’s read togeth­er David Wies­ner’s mas­ter­piece, “Tues­day,” which is almost a “word­less book.”

When we say this book is “almost word­less,” we mean there are only a few words left. How many? Let’s quick­ly flip through it. Let’s say the page with the pic­ture is page 1, the copy­right page is page 2, and the title page is page 3. Turn­ing to page 4, there’s text: “Tues­day evening, almost 8 pm.” Mov­ing through three folios, we reach page 12, which says “11:21 pm.” Then, skip­ping three more folios, we reach page 20, which says “4:38 am.” Then, after four more folios, we reach page 30, which says “Next Tues­day evening, 7:58 pm.” Turn­ing to the next page, the sto­ry ends with a pic­ture on page 32. Now let’s look at the text togeth­er:

Tues­day evening, around 8 pm

11:21 PM

4:38 AM

Next Tues­day at 7:58 PM

You see, it’s only 29 words in total, includ­ing num­bers, with­out punc­tu­a­tion, just record­ing time, so it’s not sto­ry­telling at all. What kind of text is it then? Imag­ine this: if this were a movie, would­n’t this text sound like nar­ra­tion? “Tues­day night, almost 8 pm,” tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock… time con­tin­ues, the sto­ry unfolds… then a scene plays out, and the nar­ra­tion comes again, “11:21 pm,” tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock… the sto­ry grad­u­al­ly builds to its cli­max. You think, it’s almost mid­night, a full moon night, in a remote town, should­n’t some­thing mys­te­ri­ous hap­pen? —Yes, *Tues­day* tells such a mys­te­ri­ous sto­ry. The whole book is pre­sent­ed in a movie-like for­mat; the text in the movie is like nar­ra­tion, in the book it’s like chap­ter titles. So this almost word­less book is rough­ly divid­ed into four chap­ters, plus the pro­logue, mak­ing it five parts.

Okay, now I’ll try to describe these five parts. Please note that there are no stan­dard answers in a word­less book; every­one may see dif­fer­ent things. So here, I’m just pro­vid­ing a sim­pli­fied ver­sion by A‑Jia, as a start­ing point for dis­cus­sion.

Let’s start with the first part. This part begins with the cov­er. The most strik­ing ele­ment on the cov­er is the clock tow­er, its hands point­ing towards almost 9 o’clock, indi­cat­ing it’s 9 PM. In the fore­ground are large lotus leaves, through which you can see a small part of a frog. Strange­ly, the frog is on the lotus leaf, while the leaf itself seems to be sus­pend­ed in mid-air. In the dis­tance, a house is lit up, and a large brown dog lies at the door­way, look­ing up war­i­ly…

Turn­ing to the next page reveals a pre­lude to the copy­right page. The image is ver­ti­cal­ly divid­ed into three long sec­tions, which are actu­al­ly three con­sec­u­tive shots. First, three frogs are rest­ing on lotus leaves with their eyes closed. These lotus leaves are close to the water’s sur­face, so they are not lotus leaves but water lily leaves. Then, in the sec­ond shot, the lotus leaf on which the dark-col­ored frog was rest­ing sud­den­ly ris­es into the air, and all three frogs open their eyes in sur­prise. In the third shot, the dark-col­ored frog ris­es high­er and high­er, and the green frog also begins to rise. The two frogs, one high and one low, seem to be com­mu­ni­cat­ing, per­haps say­ing, “How strange,” or “What’s going on?” In real­i­ty, there is a third frog that has­n’t risen yet, curi­ous­ly observ­ing from the side­lines.

The great­est plea­sure of read­ing such a word­less book lies in dis­cov­er­ing the details with­in the illus­tra­tions and then con­jur­ing up your own sto­ry in your mind. Turn­ing to the title page, the scene sud­den­ly becomes incred­i­bly qui­et: a still blue sur­face of water, a bloom­ing water lily in the cen­ter, a few lotus leaves beside it, and the lotus’s reflec­tion in the water. This tran­quil scene, com­pared to the three long, dynam­ic images just moments before, cre­ates a stark con­trast; the qui­eter it is here, the more you feel some­thing sig­nif­i­cant is about to hap­pen!

The first part, from the cov­er to the pro­logue and then to the title page, con­tains only a few illus­tra­tions, but already boasts many note­wor­thy details. Here, I main­ly intro­duce the per­spec­tive and meth­ods for inter­pret­ing these illus­tra­tions; it’s impos­si­ble to cov­er all the details. The lat­er parts are far too numer­ous to list; I can only pro­vide a gen­er­al out­line. To tru­ly enjoy this book, you must exam­ine it care­ful­ly your­self.

Okay, let’s move on to the sec­ond part, “Tues­day night, almost 8 o’clock.” This part uses four dou­ble pages. The first dou­ble page only has an image on the right page. It is three long hor­i­zon­tal blocks, which are also three con­sec­u­tive images. The cam­era grad­u­al­ly zooms in from a dis­tance, from sun­set to moon­rise. A tur­tle lying on a piece of drift­wood sud­den­ly rais­es its head, and you feel that some­thing strange is about to hap­pen.

The next three dou­ble-page spreads depict the frogs fly­ing from the pond all the way to the town. The tur­tle men­tioned ear­li­er, perched on the drift­wood, sud­den­ly retracts its head on the first dou­ble-page spread, watch­ing the frogs fly over­head with ter­ri­fied eyes. Most amus­ing­ly, the frogs on the lotus leaves sit proud­ly, eyes wide, look­ing very solemn, like gen­er­als going into bat­tle. On the next dou­ble-page spread, the frogs have flown to a place with tele­phone poles, and in the dis­tance, the clock tow­er on the cov­er can be seen. The night sky is full of frogs; nor­mal­ly, the sky is the birds’ domain, right? Look at the three close-up panels—the frogs are already flip­ping, swoop­ing, and chas­ing after birds, scar­ing crows into a fran­tic flight.

I high­ly rec­om­mend watch­ing Alfred Hitch­cock­’s 1963 film *Birds*. It’s a hor­ror film about birds sud­den­ly attack­ing humans. David Wies­ner like­ly saw this movie as a child (he men­tioned in an inter­view that he’d seen all of Hitch­cock­’s films). The scene of frogs scar­ing birds is prob­a­bly a trib­ute to Hitch­cock, but in *Tues­day*, the effect isn’t scary; it looks like a fun­ny prank, quite com­i­cal.

Turn­ing to the next dou­ble-page spread, the frog army has arrived in the town. The image is tak­en from the frogs’ side and slight­ly behind, look­ing towards the town. By this time, most of the hous­es are dark, indi­cat­ing that it’s quite late, per­haps close to 9 pm as shown on the cov­er. Why is it called an “army of frogs”? Main­ly because of their impos­ing pres­ence and the over­all atmos­phere of the scene. From this angle, the lotus leaves look like fly­ing saucers, inevitably evok­ing thoughts of an alien inva­sion.

Okay, let’s move on to the third part of the sto­ry. “11:21 PM,” the cam­era shifts to an inte­ri­or room. A man hav­ing a late-night snack dis­cov­ers the frogs invad­ing the town. Look close­ly at the man; he’s actu­al­ly a self-por­trait of the author, David Wies­ner, look­ing ter­ri­fied. But the frogs out­side the win­dow seem rel­a­tive­ly friend­ly; one even smiles and waves a small paw in greet­ing, “Hi!”—well, the frogs seem to find it amus­ing. Next, the frogs fly­ing close to the house encounter an acci­dent. They crash into bed­sheets and clothes dry­ing in the sun, some falling off lotus leaves. Look close­ly at the bed­sheets; the frogs that hit them still man­age to fly for­ward, so you can still see the frog’s raised shape on the sur­face.

The next two dou­ble pages are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. We see a group of frogs fly­ing into a house, some through open win­dows, oth­ers through the chim­ney. There are peo­ple inside; an old woman is watch­ing tele­vi­sion alone, but she’s already asleep. The frogs imme­di­ate­ly take con­trol. One frog even picks up the remote and is chang­ing chan­nels with its tongue; anoth­er frog is admir­ing a land­scape paint­ing on the wall in the upper right corner—is it start­ing to miss the woods and pond? Per­haps the most inter­est­ing detail is the cat in the low­er left cor­ner, stand­ing at the door­way on high alert, look­ing like it wants to attack but does­n’t dare.

In the fourth part, the big dog on the cov­er final­ly starts attack­ing the frogs. It’s “4:38 AM.” The dog first attacks a lone frog fly­ing close to the ground, which attracts an army of frogs that chas­es after the flee­ing dog. Just as the frogs seem to have con­quered the entire town and are com­plete­ly invin­ci­ble, turn the page, and sud­den­ly, the frogs start falling from the lotus leaves, some land­ing direct­ly on the rooftops. What hap­pened? As dawn breaks and the town wel­comes its first rays of sun­light, the mag­ic van­ish­es in an instant.

The next two dou­ble-page spreads depict an army of frogs that fell from the sky at dawn, hop­ping back to their pond. A close-up of a dark-col­ored frog is shown, perched on a lotus leaf, chin in hand, eyes wide with bewil­der­ment, seem­ing­ly won­der­ing, “What hap­pened?” The next scene shifts to the human world: a town lit­tered with lotus leaves, where a group of police offi­cers are inves­ti­gat­ing. A close-up of a detec­tive crouch­ing on the ground stares at the lotus leaves, his hat askew, as if he’s rack­ing his brains try­ing to under­stand. A large dog and a small cat are beside him, but nei­ther can speak. Only a man eat­ing a late-night snack, still in his paja­mas, is being inter­viewed by a tele­vi­sion reporter, but the police are clear­ly unim­pressed by his fan­tas­ti­cal tale, ignor­ing the frog-shaped clouds in the sky. Only the female reporter seems to be lis­ten­ing atten­tive­ly. Who is she? Here’s a lit­tle secret: that lady is Kim, David Wies­ner’s wife, a Kore­an-Amer­i­can sur­geon, haha…

The fifth part of the sto­ry, actu­al­ly the epi­logue, leaves a cliffhang­er: “Next Tues­day at 7:58 PM,” and some­thing else flies out of the barn—the pigs have tak­en to the skies too! What will hap­pen to the fly­ing pigs? To find out, stay tuned… Well, almost 10 years lat­er, David Wies­ner did indeed draw a book called *The Three Lit­tle Pigs*, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry.

Here I’ll give a quick, gen­er­al descrip­tion of the illus­trat­ed sto­ry of *Tues­day*. It’s basi­cal­ly about a group of frogs sud­den­ly pos­sessed by mag­ic who invade a small town at night. How­ev­er, I can assure you that what I’ve described is prob­a­bly less than a tenth of the orig­i­nal book. This is what makes word­less books par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing; you real­ly can’t tell the sto­ry, and read­ers need a lot of patience to read it them­selves. How­ev­er, read­ing this kind of book does require some meth­ods and some under­stand­ing of the author’s back­ground and thought process. Oth­er­wise, you won’t know what they were try­ing so hard to achieve, or what ben­e­fits chil­dren actu­al­ly gain from read­ing this kind of book.

Okay, that’s all for today. In the next episode, we’ll talk about why David Wies­ner cre­at­ed these kinds of sto­ries and why these kinds of books won the Calde­cott Medal.