The sixth in a series of ten lectures on David Wiesner: Mr. Waffle – Why do children need to read science fiction?

Last time we talked about David Wies­ner’s “The Secret of the Sea,” which won him his third Calde­cott Medal.Today we’ll talk about anoth­er mas­ter­piece by this mas­ter of word­less books, “Mr. Wuf­fles!”, which won the Calde­cott Hon­or.

Broad­ly speak­ing, this is David Wies­ner’s fifth word­less book, fol­low­ing *The Great Flight*, *Tues­day*, *The Sev­enth Dream Fac­to­ry*, and *The Secret of the Sea*. While *Tues­day* con­tains a few words—timekeeping notes—*Mr. Waf­fle* also has a few sentences—dialogue with­in speech bub­bles with­in illustrations—not nar­rat­ing the sto­ry. There­fore, both should be con­sid­ered word­less books. After its pub­li­ca­tion, *Mr. Waf­fle* received praise from pro­fes­sion­al book crit­ics, who called it David Wies­ner’s best work to date! How­ev­er, like­ly because he had already won the Calde­cott Medal three times, he only received a Sil­ver Medal in 2014.

How­ev­er, in terms of cre­ative tech­niques and the abil­i­ty to tell sto­ries through illus­tra­tions, David Wies­ner has indeed reached a lev­el of con­sum­mate skill. In this book, “Mr. Waf­fle,” he did­n’t use many pages, only the usu­al 32 pages for a pic­ture book, but very clear­ly pre­sent­ed a sci­ence fic­tion block­buster with fairy-tale ele­ments. The book brings togeth­er many ele­ments that chil­dren are famil­iar with and love, mak­ing a thrilling alien sto­ry take place in what seems like an ordi­nary home.

Let me try to tell you the sto­ry in the book. As I always say, for excel­lent word­less books, the sto­ries with­in the illus­tra­tions are rich, mul­ti-lay­ered, and com­plex, mak­ing them dif­fi­cult to sim­ply retell. The best way to read them is through shared read­ing with your child. Adults and chil­dren work togeth­er to dis­cov­er the details in the illus­tra­tions and find the clues to the sto­ry’s devel­op­ment. Chil­dren are often bet­ter at notic­ing details, while adults usu­al­ly have more back­ground knowl­edge and a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the sto­ry’s inter­nal log­ic. There­fore, col­lab­o­ra­tive sto­ry­telling or dis­cussing while read­ing is prob­a­bly the best read­ing method.

Mr. Waf­fle is actu­al­ly the name of a cat, a black cat with white spots. If you’re famil­iar with David Wies­ner’s work, you might rec­og­nize him; this cat appears in his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal pic­ture book *The Hur­ri­cane*, where he’s called Han­ni­bal, and also on the last page of *Dream Fac­to­ry No. 7*. Mr. Waf­fle seems to be a very spe­cial cat. His own­er dotes on him, con­stant­ly buy­ing him new toys, and even before the price tags are removed, new ones are bought. How­ev­er, Mr. Waf­fle is quite aloof, show­ing dis­dain for these toys. From the pro­logue page to the title page to the first illus­tra­tion inside, you can see the cat arro­gant­ly walk­ing past a row of toys…

But wait, what’s that lit­tle thing near the cat’s hind leg? Zoom­ing in, zoom­ing in, it turns out to be a tiny space­ship, with aliens inside wear­ing robes and look­ing like bean sprouts.

It turns out it’s about minia­ture aliens fly­ing into your home. Isn’t that a thrilling con­cept? David Wies­ner has always been a sci­ence fic­tion enthu­si­ast. In the 1980s, he had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate with renowned direc­tor Steven Spiel­berg, illus­trat­ing the nov­el adap­ta­tion of *E.T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al*. The idea of aliens com­ing direct­ly into Earth­’s lives—this con­cept may have bor­rowed some log­ic from the movie *E.T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al*, but David Wies­ner’s use of minia­ture aliens is arguably his own orig­i­nal cre­ation. In fact, in that book, *Secrets of the Sea*, these minia­ture aliens live along­side sea­hors­es on the ocean floor.

Back to the green bean sprout aliens in “Mr. Waf­fle,” they seemed to be cheer­ing, per­haps because they had dis­cov­ered a new plan­et and were cel­e­brat­ing a safe land­ing. But on the next page, they saw Mr. Cat’s big eyes through the space­ship win­dow! To the enor­mous cat, the alien space­ship was like a tiny ball of yarn, which the cat nat­u­ral­ly want­ed to play with. The aliens inside were toss­ing and turn­ing, get­ting com­plete­ly dis­ori­ent­ed, but worst of all, the space­ship start­ed smoking—what hap­pened? It turned out that the cru­cial flight instru­ment had mal­func­tioned. What to do? —The aliens trapped inside the space­ship decid­ed to take a des­per­ate gam­ble, and togeth­er they grabbed the dam­aged flight instru­ment and escaped, hid­ing in the radi­a­tor com­part­ment by the wall.

Thus began the first excit­ing chase and escape scene in the sto­ry. Pay spe­cial atten­tion to the five aliens wear­ing robes of dif­fer­ent col­ors. The one in the green robe with a small light­bulb on his head must be a tech expert; he was the one car­ry­ing the flight instru­ment, and it was he who even­tu­al­ly fixed it. Because the instru­ment was too heavy, the one in the green robe was left behind. But when Mr. Cat spot­ted them and pre­pared to swat them down, he lay down to pro­tect the instru­ment, while the oth­er two crouched behind him, shield­ing him. This shows how unit­ed and self­less these aliens were.

At the last sec­ond, a fly­ing bee­tle dis­tract­ed Mr. Waf­fle, and the alien final­ly man­aged to escape into the com­part­ment behind the heat sink. There, they were sur­prised to find a mur­al on the wall depict­ing bee­tles and ants team­ing up to fight a cat. When the bee­tle and ants arrived, the bean sprout alien imme­di­ate­ly took to them, and they chat­ted and laughed. They then took pho­tos togeth­er, shared food, and talked about every­thing under the sun…

By the way, isn’t this a word­less book? How do the char­ac­ters com­mu­ni­cate? That’s pre­cise­ly the most inter­est­ing part of the book. David Wies­ner designed four lan­guages for this sto­ry: the first is human lan­guage, which is the few words the cat own­er says to Mr. Waf­fle; the sec­ond is the lan­guage of the green bean sprout alien, rep­re­sent­ed by var­i­ous geo­met­ric shapes; the third is the lan­guage of bee­tles and ants, which is almost like a lot of small scratch­es spread­ing like smoke; and the fourth is the cat’s lan­guage, with only one angry “meow.” The sto­ry is set up so that the cat can under­stand human lan­guage, but the aloof Mr. Waf­fle almost com­plete­ly ignores it, while the alien can com­mu­ni­cate with the bee­tles and ants, and can even be said to have a pleas­ant con­ver­sa­tion.

In the fol­low­ing sto­ry, the bee­tle and the ant pro­vid­ed cru­cial help, help­ing the alien repair the space­craft. They also joined forces to evade Mr. Waf­fle’s pur­suit and suc­cess­ful­ly sent the alien back to the space­ship and start­ed it up. The alien pilot­ed the space­ship and flew out of the win­dow at the last moment before Mr. Cat was about to pounce on him.

David Wies­ner, who has been cre­at­ing word­less books for over twen­ty years, has suc­cess­ful­ly pre­sent­ed the thrilling expe­ri­ence of a minia­ture alien’s tri­umphant escape. Using a series of illus­tra­tions to depict this process was not dif­fi­cult for him. The most fas­ci­nat­ing chal­lenge for him was cre­at­ing a unique alien lan­guage. To this end, he con­sult­ed a pro­fes­sor spe­cial­iz­ing in lan­guage, who sug­gest­ed using graph­ic sym­bols as basic let­ters, com­bin­ing them into sen­tences like math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las, and using frac­tion­al expres­sions like numer­a­tors and denom­i­na­tors to enrich the lan­guage. David Wies­ner read­i­ly accept­ed this advice, and after some explo­ration, he cre­at­ed an alien lan­guage. The graph­ic sym­bols are some­times upright, some­times side­ways, and some­times upside down; dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of sym­bols pro­duce rich vari­a­tions. The alien in the green robe in the book is like­ly a space­ship engi­neer; note that his speech is quite neat, with com­plete numer­a­tors and denom­i­na­tors, indi­cat­ing that he speaks log­i­cal­ly, with a high infor­ma­tion con­tent, and has the demeanor of a sci­en­tist. Of course, what exact­ly the aliens in the book are say­ing is left for the read­er to fig­ure out.

This minia­ture Star Wars sci-fi sto­ry demon­strates the var­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties of com­mu­ni­ca­tion through visu­al lan­guage. For exam­ple, the ant and bee­tle murals are clear­ly a trib­ute to cave paint­ings by prim­i­tive peo­ple. Prim­i­tive peo­ple used murals to record events, and so did the ants and bee­tles. The aliens under­stood this at a glance and quick­ly real­ized that the ants and bee­tles shared a com­mon enemy—a cat named Mr. Waf­fle!

After the aliens leave, in the final illus­tra­tion, the ants and bee­tles con­tin­ue to enrich their mur­al while using the aliens’ equip­ment, record­ing their thrilling sto­ry of fight­ing along­side the aliens. Where do the ants’ and bee­tles’ language—those tiny scratch­es in the dia­logue bubbles—come from? They actu­al­ly rep­re­sent the way Snoopy, the goofy lit­tle bird from the Peanuts com­ic strip, speaks. David Wies­ner is unwit­ting­ly pay­ing homage to Charles Schulz, the cre­ator of Peanuts. Whether through comics, pic­ture books, or word­less books, the goal is to show chil­dren the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­mu­ni­cat­ing through visu­al lan­guage, a con­cept that dates back to pre-writ­ten times and might even become a pri­ma­ry means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with extrater­res­tri­als in the future.

Here, I want to empha­size the val­ue of sci­ence fic­tion for chil­dren’s devel­op­ment. We all know that chil­dren love to fan­ta­size, to start with every­day things and let their imag­i­na­tions run wild. But as chil­dren get a lit­tle old­er, some adults become less enthu­si­as­tic about their chil­dren’s flights of fan­cy, even when they’re exposed to sci­ence, they pri­or­i­tize the acqui­si­tion of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and wor­ry that chil­dren will waste time on sci­ence fic­tion and neglect their stud­ies. If you care­ful­ly con­sid­er a sci­ence fic­tion sto­ry like “Mr. Waf­fle,” you’ll find that it actu­al­ly con­nects to a lot of knowl­edge; its fan­ta­sy is built on a sol­id foun­da­tion of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. You could say it’s using sci­ence as a game, expe­ri­enc­ing things through sci­ence-based fan­ta­sy. This is because of a cer­tain dis­sat­is­fac­tion, a desire to con­stant­ly push bound­aries.

In the his­to­ry of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment, human imag­i­na­tion has always pre­ced­ed inven­tion. Humans dreamed of fly­ing, and only then did air­planes come into being. The famous Amer­i­can fairy tale *The Wiz­ard of Oz* fea­tures a tin man who roams freely; the sto­ry was writ­ten around 1900, and it was­n’t until almost half a cen­tu­ry lat­er that the first robots appeared. Fur­ther­more, the three laws of robot­ics orig­i­nat­ed from the idea in Isaac Asi­mov’s sci­ence fic­tion nov­el *I, Robot*. The first human land­ing on the moon was in 1969, while Jules Verne’s sci­ence fic­tion nov­el *From the Earth to the Moon* was writ­ten a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er. Even the com­ic strip *The Adven­tures of Tintin* con­tains detailed descrip­tions of the moon land­ing, and the book *Explor­ing the Moon* was pub­lished 15 years before the Apol­lo moon land­ing…

There are many exam­ples like this. What I want to say is that excel­lent sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries not only don’t waste chil­dren’s time, but they can also help them apply their knowl­edge to the fullest extent, gain­ing excit­ing and enjoy­able expe­ri­ences through sci­ence. More impor­tant­ly, in that immer­sive par­tic­i­pa­tion, their imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty are con­stant­ly stim­u­lat­ed, allow­ing chil­dren to dare to go fur­ther and fur­ther with­out restraint. David Wies­ner’s sci­ence fic­tion pic­ture books con­stant­ly chal­lenge chil­dren’s imag­i­na­tions in this way, and chil­dren become engrossed in them, respond­ing with even wilder imag­i­na­tions. This is pre­cise­ly the most antic­i­pat­ed state of read­ing.

—That’s all for now. We’ll con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sion in the next episode.