A picture book that is both modern and original (a review of the translation of “Tyke: A Modern Caveman Boy”)

   
The first moment I held “Tek: A Mod­ern Cave­man” in my hands, I felt a strange sense of time trav­el. There were dinosaurs and a cave­man child in the pic­ture, but—why did that child look like he was look­ing down at his phone?! And the fun­ni­est thing is, the cov­er does­n’t look like a book, but more like a tablet. From a dis­tance, it real­ly is an iPad. And notice the top right cor­ner of the “screen”: there are even net­work sig­nal and bat­tery indi­ca­tors! The illus­tra­tor was incred­i­bly thought­ful, even going so far as to cre­ate a real­is­tic-look­ing home but­ton right below the cov­er. I could­n’t help but press it while flip­ping through the pages, and I imag­ine lit­tle ones would be even more tempt­ed.

 
 
Read­ing “Tek” isn’t as engag­ing just by look­ing at the images; you have to hold the thick paper­back, with its card­board cov­er. Just how thick is it? If you have an iPad, you can mea­sure it—it’s rough­ly the thick­ness of the iPad plus the cov­er. Just how big is this book? Let’s mea­sure it again. Hmm, it’s just the right size—the same size as an iPad! So, car­toon­ist and chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tor Patrick McDon­nell cre­at­ed a book that’s a near-per­fect repli­ca of the iPad. That’s a prob­lem, and adults might be won­der­ing: We’re already strug­gling to get our kids to use screens less. Why did the cre­ators cre­ate a book that’s a near-per­fect imi­ta­tion of the iPad?

 
 
This is the extra­or­di­nary qual­i­ty of the car­toon­ist and sto­ry­teller. He clear­ly intend­ed to offer advice, but first he com­plete­ly “appealed to the child’s taste.” Chil­dren born today seem irrev­o­ca­bly dig­i­tized. They eas­i­ly become fas­ci­nat­ed by all things high-tech, using them as if they were experts in a past life. This isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing, but it’s cer­tain­ly not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good thing either. There’s only a fine line between good and bad. Chil­dren are nat­u­ral­ly curi­ous. Spend­ing time out­doors eas­i­ly makes friends with ani­mals, and they often enjoy play­ing in the mud and sand, which adults con­sid­er “dirty.” We now know that these activ­i­ties are cru­cial to a child’s devel­op­ment and even to their life­long hap­pi­ness. But when they are trapped indoors for var­i­ous rea­sons, and locked in front of var­i­ous elec­tron­ic devices vol­un­tar­i­ly or invol­un­tar­i­ly, they seem to be firm­ly stuck to them, and their curios­i­ty about the real world and the nat­ur­al world is worn away bit by bit, until it seems incur­able… McDon­nell cre­at­ed this high-imi­ta­tion IPAD book, and in a fic­tion­al sto­ry that seems to have spanned tens of mil­lions of years, he stuffed in ele­ments that chil­dren of this era par­tic­u­lar­ly like — IPAD, mobile phones, tech­no­log­i­cal gad­gets, games, dinosaurs, and crazy prim­i­tives, solemn­ly recre­at­ing a hilar­i­ous “dis­as­ter”, and actu­al­ly show­ing dif­fer­ent pos­si­ble choic­es. The final right of choice is still returned to the young read­ers.

 
 
This book is broad­ly told in two modes. The first half can be described as “iPad-style,” requir­ing a pass­word to enter. It then unfolds the sto­ry of a cave­man boy named Tyke, seem­ing­ly revealed through a swipe of an iPad screen. This sto­ry has its own num­bered pages, inter­spersed with emo­jis as the plot pro­gress­es. As the pages turn, the bat­tery lev­el indi­ca­tor in the upper right cor­ner changes col­or, even­tu­al­ly turn­ing red and then dis­ap­pear­ing into a black screen. After a vol­canic erup­tion, a black screen, and a dis­con­nect­ed con­nec­tion, Tyke escapes the iPad book and enters the con­ven­tion­al “pic­ture book” world of the sec­ond half. Upon return­ing to this world, Tyke becomes a liv­ing per­son again (albeit a lit­tle sav­age), curi­ous about every­thing around him, full of love and enthu­si­asm for his par­ents and friends, and his vibrant ener­gy rekin­dled through the games he plays.


   
Is this car­toon­ist’s “admo­ni­tion” tru­ly unique? Per­haps the most remark­able thing about it is that it can make both the advis­er and the one being advised burst into laugh­ter. It’s said that this sto­ry took him eight years from con­cep­tion to pub­li­ca­tion. It first came in 2008, when he drew a lit­tle prim­i­tive boy in his sketch­book, with the words “Cave Boy” writ­ten on it. The boy was hold­ing a large wood­en stick and say­ing “Uh-huh.” So, back then, his name was­n’t “Tek,” but “Uh-huh.” McDon­nell found the boy hilar­i­ous and amus­ing, and began to won­der if he deserved a sto­ry. The ini­tial humor and amuse­ment prob­a­bly came from the boy’s image, with his full beard and adorable expres­sion. Yes, since he’s a prim­i­tive man, even the boy has a full beard, which is quite amus­ing. How­ev­er, we imag­ine prim­i­tive peo­ple spend­ing their days in nature, strug­gling against the harsh envi­ron­ment, or liv­ing a sim­ple and care­free life. The “Cave Boy” image, on the oth­er hand, evokes the image of a boy who spends his days in a cave, nev­er leav­ing. Why is he so reclu­sive? If you jump to the present, you might imag­ine the image of a lit­tle game fan who stays indoors all day. When the big stick in the cave boy’s hand is replaced by a mobile phone or game con­sole, this fun­ny sto­ry is about to unfold.

 
 
The first pic­ture book by McDon­nell I encoun­tered was “I… Have a Dream,” pub­lished in 2011. It’s a biog­ra­phy of the renowned pri­ma­tol­o­gist Jane Goodall and win­ner of the 2012 Calde­cott Medal. I learned then that McDon­nell was orig­i­nal­ly a renowned car­toon­ist, renowned world­wide for his com­ic strip “Mutts.” It was­n’t until 2005 that he began exper­i­ment­ing with chil­dren’s pic­ture books. “I… Have a Dream” was prob­a­bly his most suc­cess­ful work after sev­er­al attempts. He sub­se­quent­ly became increas­ing­ly active in this new field. He explained that he had been pas­sion­ate about comics since the age of five, draw­ing con­stant­ly. His start­ing point for cre­at­ing pic­ture books for chil­dren was to make them find draw­ing enjoy­able. He would start by cre­at­ing a bunch of fun draw­ings and then decide to weave them into a play­ful sto­ry. As for the sto­ry of “Tyke,” McDon­nell would draw relat­ed sto­ries every once in a while when­ev­er he had a fun idea. For exam­ple, Tyke’s best friend was a dinosaur. The prob­lem was that the dinosaur was so big it could­n’t get into Tyke’s cave, so he had to call out to him from out­side, but he would­n’t come out. It was quite amus­ing to think about it. Then there was Tyke’s par­ents, who were cave dwellers too, of course, but the fun­ny thing was that his dad was an inven­tor, claim­ing to have invent­ed every­thing, even the inter­net, which Tyke was obsessed with! McDon­nell kept draw­ing and think­ing like this, and by 2015, he had a ton of images relat­ed to this boy’s sto­ries. After anoth­er year of design­ing and orga­niz­ing them, the book “Tyke” became the fun book we see today.

 
 
McDon­nell also pub­lished anoth­er pic­ture book, “Thank You, Good­night,” around the same time. It’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly heart­warm­ing bed­time sto­ry, and at first glance, it might seem unlike­ly to be from the same author, but it is. It’s like­ly a trib­ute to Mar­garet Wise Brown’s “Good­night Moon,” where the bun­ny from “Good­night Moon” hosts a “slum­ber par­ty” in “Thank You, Good­night.” How­ev­er, McDon­nell has anoth­er iden­ti­ty and a sense of pur­pose that gives him more room for expres­sion. Like Jane Goodall, he is a pas­sion­ate ani­mal rights activist and envi­ron­men­tal­ist, which has led him to main­tain a veg­e­tar­i­an diet for over 20 years. The bun­ny’s good­night rit­u­al express­es grat­i­tude for all cre­ation.

 
 
Beneath the comedic veneer of “Tek,” McDon­nell seem­ing­ly casu­al­ly slips in the prin­ci­ples of envi­ron­men­tal change and ani­mal evo­lu­tion, con­nect­ing humans (even those who invent­ed the inter­net) with the nat­ur­al world as one, with no dis­tinc­tion between supe­ri­or and infe­ri­or. This, in fact, serves as a sub­tle alle­go­ry for human­i­ty’s obses­sion with high tech­nol­o­gy. When Tek is eject­ed from his iPad, his first words are “Tek is awake”—perhaps sym­bol­ic. Undoubt­ed­ly, as Tek opens his arms to embrace this “wide, beau­ti­ful world,” he is also filled with grat­i­tude.

 
 
In “Thank You, Good­night,” there’s a scene where Lit­tle Rab­bit and two friends stand by a win­dow, “gaz­ing up at the night sky and see­ing a shoot­ing star.” Tyke, on the oth­er hand, expe­ri­ences two star­ry skies: one ear­li­er, while engrossed in a game in a cave, “a strange light emanat­ed from the cave, obscur­ing even the twin­kling stars in the sky,” and the oth­er, at the end, when he and his good friend Lar­ry the Dinosaur are at night, “reach­ing out to touch the twin­kling stars.” The artist’s atti­tude could­n’t be more obvi­ous.

Ajia …
Writ­ten on August 29, 2017