Bench George’s Revelry and the Magic Garden of Forking Paths

French chil­dren’s book author and illus­tra­tor Claude Pon­ti (born 1948) was twice short­list­ed for the Lind­gren Memo­r­i­al Award and holds a high rep­u­ta­tion on the glob­al pic­ture book stage. A pro­lif­ic writer, Pon­ti has over 30 works trans­lat­ed and intro­duced into Chi­na, with works relat­ed to “Blaze the Chick­en” being the most pop­u­lar. Pon­ti’s style is instant­ly rec­og­niz­able, blend­ing vibrant col­ors and fan­tas­ti­cal cre­ations. His images are intri­cate­ly detailed, reveal­ing a near­ly lim­it­less nar­ra­tive poten­tial, humor­ous, and rich with metaphor and sym­bol­ism. This makes his works par­tic­u­lar­ly well-suit­ed for repeat­ed read­ing, or per­haps even “not under­stand­ing” after just one or two read­ings. His mul­ti-lay­ered nar­ra­tives are par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing to read­ers of dif­fer­ent ages, allow­ing them to unrav­el mul­ti­ple mean­ings.

Here, I would like to use Georges the Bench (Georges Lebanc) , orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 2001, to demon­strate the unique charm of its mul­ti-lay­ered nar­ra­tive.

Let’s quick­ly read it first

The text begins: “George is a bench. For many years, he has lived in the Square Albert-Duron­quar­ré.” Indeed, the pro­tag­o­nist of this sto­ry is not a per­son, but a chair—a chair with a name, mem­o­ries, and expe­ri­ences. The sto­ry begins in the square, but it goes far beyond that.

Pont­ti uses images to depict the square gar­den where George lives. Pass­ing by it for the first time, read­ers might per­ceive it as just like any oth­er city square: green­ery, lawns, rock­ery, and seating—a part of the city’s pub­lic space, where peo­ple social­ize, relax, and unwind. George, on the oth­er hand, is a typ­i­cal park bench—with cast iron legs and a frame, and a long wood­en seat and back. If it weren’t specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned, read­ers might not par­tic­u­lar­ly notice the bench’s exis­tence.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, Pon­tius goes on to explain that George, as a child, was a small stool that grad­u­al­ly grew into a bench. Before the back of his chair had grown, George was a per­former in an acro­bat­ic troupe, expe­ri­enc­ing both dan­ger and laugh­ter. Today, George has grown into the fig­ure you see in the paint­ing. In oth­er words, all mem­bers of George’s fam­i­ly are chairs: they are the king’s throne, the giant’s stool, the ejec­tion seat in an air­plane, even the toi­let seat… Each chair has its own des­tiny. George, on the oth­er hand, has lived a diverse life: by the sea, under the sea, and in the old port. Today, he has cho­sen to make his home at Square Albert-Duron­quar­ré.

Why this square? Because there is mag­ic here.“When peo­ple come in, they become their favorite stuffed ani­mal or doll from child­hood. There are oth­er mag­i­cal things about the square, but this is George’s favorite.” The text con­sists of just a few sim­ple sen­tences, but the pic­tures are filled with daz­zling details wait­ing for read­ers to explore.

First, the strange crea­tures of all shapes and sizes, with exag­ger­at­ed forms and pecu­liar expres­sions, yet with authen­tic and vivid per­son­al­i­ties, imbue this bizarre world with vital­i­ty. Sec­ond­ly, the book’s unbri­dled imag­i­na­tion trans­ports the read­er into a world beyond real­i­ty. Fur­ther­more, the rich details in the images allow read­ers to dis­cov­er many hid­den sto­ries and char­ac­ters. Whether it’s the small crea­tures in the back­ground, the sub­tle changes in expres­sion, or the unique build­ings and objects, all demon­strate the author’s metic­u­lous pur­suit of detail. How­ev­er, these details require repeat­ed read­ings to grad­u­al­ly dis­cov­er…

Let’s quick­ly flip to the end of the sto­ry: from 4:25 a.m. one morn­ing to 4:01 a.m. the next, after near­ly 24 hours of bizarre and whim­si­cal rev­el­ry, every­thing returns to calm. The end­ing is neat and tidy: “There’s some­thing else about the Place Albert Square: it’s in Paris, but it’s also in oth­er cities, every­where in the world, near and far.”

What might chil­dren read?

If you ask me: What is the moral of the sto­ry of George the Bench? How can chil­dren ben­e­fit from it?—I hon­est­ly don’t have an answer. This book does­n’t seem to be try­ing to teach a moral; it’s more like a grand game of words and pic­tures, pre­sent­ing many fan­tas­tic fan­tasies while vague­ly con­vey­ing a deep­er mean­ing. For exam­ple, “At 0:00, the Great Mid­night God came to bathe in the lake in the square.” Judg­ing by the time­line, this must be the moment when the most impor­tant char­ac­ter appears, but “The Great Mid­night God is nei­ther good nor bad. He does nei­ther evil nor good.” This won­der­ful crea­ture is mere­ly a man­i­fes­ta­tion of time, span­ning past, present, and future, inher­ent­ly nei­ther good nor evil. If chil­dren could under­stand this, would­n’t it ben­e­fit them for the rest of their lives?

From a child’s per­spec­tive, I believe this book’s rich visu­als and whim­si­cal plot will undoubt­ed­ly spark their intense curios­i­ty. It’s tru­ly a feast for the sens­es and imag­i­na­tion. The fan­tas­ti­cal char­ac­ters in this book immerse chil­dren in incred­i­ble imag­i­na­tions. From pink birds to anthro­po­mor­phic dolls, from Bar­bi­ze Per­sian drag­ons to the alien Casablan­ca, each char­ac­ter pos­sess­es a unique form and func­tion. The beau­ty lies in the way these unique char­ac­ters con­nect emo­tion­al­ly with young read­ers. Emo­tion­al­ly, Anaïs P. and her doll Melanie can inspire courage in a lit­tle girl feel­ing wronged; the grand dance of life’s giants can bring pro­found com­fort to a baby feel­ing “life isn’t easy”; the pool of tears scene allows chil­dren to see that sad­ness can be accept­ed and released; and every child will res­onate with the scene where George on the bench counts sheep for all the sleep­less chil­dren.

For young read­ers, the play­ful, illus­trat­ed sto­ries eas­i­ly engage them. The Mag­ic Square’s ubiq­ui­tous nature teems with pos­si­bil­i­ties for adven­ture, allow­ing chil­dren to imag­ine them­selves in such a place and par­tic­i­pat­ing in its mag­i­cal activ­i­ties. Each page con­tains numer­ous intrigu­ing details to dis­cov­er, sub­tly cul­ti­vat­ing chil­dren’s obser­va­tion and patience. For exam­ple, the folio “16:00, Tea Time” (“After­noon Tea Time”) pro­vides a detailed index to the image on the left page, allow­ing chil­dren to play a game by search­ing for spe­cif­ic ele­ments with­in the image. This visu­al play (train­ing) recurs through­out the book. The same scene may be repeat­ed from dif­fer­ent angles, such as before and after “12:00…Mirror Moment.” The square gar­den rotates, and icon­ic build­ings (such as the glass green­house) and the chang­ing back­ground all offer inter­est­ing objects for obser­va­tion.

The sto­ry unfolds over a 24-hour peri­od, using time as a thread to present dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and events at dif­fer­ent points in time. There are won­drous hap­pen­ings in the mag­ic square, and scenes from anoth­er time and space, nar­rat­ed through flash­backs. While read­ing, chil­dren can con­nect with the rhythms of dai­ly life while also expe­ri­enc­ing the broad­er flow of time. This may help cul­ti­vate a cer­tain lev­el of time man­age­ment, but more impor­tant­ly, it enrich­es their life expe­ri­ence by con­vey­ing diverse mes­sages from dif­fer­ent stages of life. This expe­ri­ence taps into chil­dren’s inher­ent imag­i­na­tion, and eclec­tic artists like Pont­ti aim to tran­scend con­ven­tion­al wis­dom, using “imag­i­na­tive think­ing” to help them break free from stereo­types and cul­ti­vate cre­ative think­ing.

So I think the biggest ben­e­fit for chil­dren from read­ing such books is that they can real­ize through the aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing expe­ri­ence:Behind every ordi­nary scene, there may be hid­den sto­ries and mag­ic.The only ques­tion is whether we have the vision to dis­cov­er and the imag­i­na­tion to be cre­ative enough.

What might adults read?

​Take me for exam­ple. After read­ing “George the Bench and the Mag­ic Square” for the first time, I was actu­al­ly inspired to trav­el because I real­ized the mag­ic square in the book was fly­ing all over the world! If you pay atten­tion to the pic­tures, you’ll notice that the icon­ic build­ings in the back­ground are con­stant­ly chang­ing. Some of these beau­ti­ful build­ings seem famil­iar, while oth­ers seem com­plete­ly new. I was curi­ous to know where they were.

In this AI-pow­ered inter­net age, with the help of some search tools and trav­el guides with pho­tos, you can eas­i­ly find some of the main land­marks in the back­ground as fol­lows:

P3 Notre Dame Cathe­dral

P5 Notre Dame de la Patroness Church in Mar­seille

P11 Mont Saint-Michel Abbey in Nor­mandy

P17 may be the trop­i­cal green­house of the Paris Botan­i­cal Gar­den

P19 Church of the Res­ur­rec­tion in St. Peters­burg, Rus­sia

P23 The Concierg­erie in Paris

P29 July Col­umn at Place de la Bastille in Paris

P33 Cathe­dral in Stras­bourg

P35 Notre-Dame de Fourvière Cathe­dral in Lyon

There are also some scenes, per­haps in the Lux­em­bourg Gar­dens, Mont­martre Hill, Ver­sailles Gar­dens, or a port in Mar­seille. In short, this mag­ic square main­ly trav­els around France, and occa­sion­al­ly goes to Rus­sia. This echoes the hint at the end of Pon­tius Pierre: “It is in Paris, but also in oth­er cities, any­where in the world.”

Even more intrigu­ing, how­ev­er, is the con­nec­tion between the icon­ic build­ings in the back­ground and the sto­ry unfold­ing on that page. What asso­ci­a­tions emerge? For exam­ple, at 1:07 PM, the chub­by Noor Bear, owned by Yasarin Doai and Nanik Swo, meet on a bench with the Res­ur­rec­tion Cathe­dral in St. Peters­burg as the back­drop. Is this a sym­bol of love and mir­a­cles? Or a life­long bond? Or a rebirth into whole selves—they final­ly find them­selves? Or, for exam­ple, the after­noon tea scene is set against the back­drop of the Concierg­erie. Is this a play­ful ref­er­ence to the eight wolves steal­ing drinks and snacks, hint­ing that steal­ing could lead to impris­on­ment? Even more amus­ing, all the sleep­less chil­dren and the rest­less sheep appear beneath the July Col­umn in the Bastille, a sym­bol of tur­moil, change, and the spir­it of free­dom. Is this a call to action for the chil­dren to unleash their free spir­its?

In short, the mag­ic squares fly­ing around the world may just be a fun and amus­ing visu­al game for young read­ers, but for old­er read­ers, they pro­vide more room for his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al inter­pre­ta­tion, which depends on the read­ers’ life expe­ri­ence and read­ing expe­ri­ence. For exam­ple, as a super book­worm, I was deeply moved by the huge library built by the archivist mice on pages 26–27. These mice col­lect­ed every­thing that hap­pened in the square, includ­ing both extreme­ly triv­ial mate­r­i­al car­ri­ers and spir­i­tu­al car­ri­ers of emo­tions and feel­ings. This made me think of Borges’ short sto­ry “The Library of Babel” and his often-quot­ed famous say­ing: “I have always imag­ined thatPar­adise will be a kind of library”.

The bizarre and humor­ous under­ground library in Pon­tius Pier­re’s nov­el can be said to be a fairy-tale ver­sion of the Library of Babel, also sym­bol­iz­ing infi­nite knowl­edge and pos­si­bil­i­ties. Pon­tius Pierre him­self loved this idea so much that he pub­lished a sequel 15 years lat­er (2016).Le Mys­tère des NigmesThe sto­ry is about a mag­i­cal square that has stopped mov­ing due to the destruc­tion of a mon­ster. Worst of all, the doc­u­ments, words, and let­ters main­tained by the archivist mice have been mys­te­ri­ous­ly erased. To restore the lost cul­ture, the mice must embark on a detec­tive mis­sion to find the miss­ing files and clues, while also uncov­er­ing who car­ried out this destruc­tion and what their motives were. In an inter­view after the sequel was pub­lished, Pon­tius Pierre said:“Cul­ture is more than just the Mona Lisa.It’s in the expe­ri­ence we have when we look at it, the rich­ness of the object, and the val­ue we share with oth­ers through it.”

The maze of mul­ti­di­men­sion­al space-time

When I read it for the fourth time, the word “labyrinth” sud­den­ly popped up in my mind. This nat­u­ral­ly remind­ed me of the labyrinth built to trap the half-man, half-bull Mino­taur in ancient Greek mythol­o­gy, as well as Daedalus, who was respon­si­ble for build­ing the labyrinth, and his son Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell… Pon­tius might have thought of it too. If you pay atten­tion,In the upper left cor­ner of the pic­ture on pages P26-27 , there seems to be an archivist mouse falling into a small pond!

Of course, you don’t have to make such an asso­ci­a­tion. Tech­ni­cal­ly, how­ev­er, this pic­ture book does have a maze-like struc­ture. As men­tioned ear­li­er, this is a square that con­stant­ly shifts spa­tial­ly. Take a clos­er look at the front and back cov­ers: the pro­tag­o­nist, “George the Bench,” has just com­plet­ed a com­plete rota­tion; the per­spec­tives of the front and back end­pa­pers also rotate rough­ly 180 degrees. If you try to imag­ine this square gar­den scene, the entire book resem­bles a holo­graph­ic struc­ture, with the mir­ror moment in the mid­dle shift­ing spa­tial sym­me­try. Look­ing at the cor­re­spond­ing time­line, it’s rough­ly 24 hours. While the text indi­cates a time inter­val from 4:25 AM to 4:01 AM, the actu­al divid­ing time is around 4:00 PM, rough­ly the time between the “Dance of the Giants of Life” and after­noon tea. Com­par­ing the first image (P3) and the last image (P40) in the text, you’ll notice that Pon­tius adheres very strict­ly to this struc­ture. The clock in the first image indi­cates that the sto­ry begins between 4:07 and 4:08 AM.

What’s tru­ly bizarre is that, despite the clock­’s time­line, the time in the square belongs to dif­fer­ent beings: the time when the sev­en­ty birds sing, the time when the note-suck­ing Kemeni­no rats live, the time when Fer­min’s goril­la, Krizuye, comes to sleep on the bench, the time when the sev­en sis­ters come to con­fide, the time of the Moth­er of Sto­ries, the time of the mir­ror, the time when the Great Mid­night God bathes, and so on. These times revolve around George the Bench, or rather, they are based on George the Bench’s obser­va­tions and feel­ings. George the Bench also has his own life sto­ry, and each of the relat­ed beings nat­u­ral­ly has a time­line out­side the square. Even the alien Casabran­dos (plur­al) have a time in anoth­er time and space. Sim­ply put, time in this sto­ry is mul­ti­di­men­sion­al. So, why is it so dif­fi­cult for us to rec­og­nize this? Because it’s like the Great Mid­night God’s wings: “Those enor­mous wings are used to fly through future time and space, from one future to anoth­er. Are there oth­er Great Mid­night Gods? Of course there are, but we can only see one at a time.” Sim­i­lar­ly, in the book, only one Casablan­lan (sin­gu­lar) can be seen.

Pon­ti’s mag­i­cal set­ting for this square adds anoth­er lay­er of mys­tery, a sense of par­al­lel time and space—“When peo­ple enter, they trans­form into their favorite stuffed ani­mals or dolls from child­hood.” This might leave read­ers won­der­ing whether the peo­ple involved are aware of the stuffed ani­mals’ secret lives. Some­times, they might know. For exam­ple, Anaïs P. should know, oth­er­wise she would­n’t always lend her doll to the lit­tle girl who needs to become stronger. But some­times, it does­n’t mat­ter. For exam­ple, at 1:00 a.m., when the rain of tears falls, Mr. Habis­sa Peker­ou may not be aware of the stuffed bear weep­ing by the pool of tears. He leaves feel­ing relieved, and that’s enough, right? And at 10:10 a.m., when the sev­en sis­ters are shar­ing their sto­ry, nei­ther they nor their dolls care. Sev­en means the same thing, and their hap­pi­ness has been mul­ti­plied sev­en­fold. Who cares? How­ev­er, the most melan­choly moment is at 1:07 p.m., when Nuer Bear and Erdo embrace on a bench. Their own­ers are unaware: “The secret of their lives is that they nev­er knew each oth­er, yet they always loved each other.”—What a pity! But per­haps this is also the regret of many peo­ple’s life?

Does­n’t Fer­mín Térão’s (6:48) seem­ing­ly bril­liant life epit­o­mize many mod­ern peo­ple? He achieved such remark­able suc­cess at such a young age, liv­ing an effi­cient life to the point where he could “sleep, eat, and pee while run­ning”! Yet, he com­plete­ly lost his sense of direc­tion. No mat­ter how fast he ran, he would always end up back where he start­ed. Even his house would fly away out of bore­dom… From a cer­tain per­spec­tive, isn’t life a bit like a maze? Those trapped with­in it can nev­er see the full pic­ture, and may not nec­es­sar­i­ly find the cen­ter or the exit—“I don’t know the true face of Mount Lu because I am with­in it.” Casabran­do, from out­er space, flew even faster, “the space­craft mov­ing at the same speed as my thoughts.” Yet, they con­stant­ly “for­get” as they “find” some­thing, which seems to embody a near­ly absurd log­ic:Too fast a speed is equal to a com­plete stop.

The Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths

​In an inter­view, Pon­tet explained that after the pub­li­ca­tion of “George the Bench,” the direc­tor of the land­scap­ing depart­ment of the city of Nantes, France, was so impressed by the book that he want­ed to incor­po­rate the con­cept of “George the Bench” into the botan­i­cal gar­dens of Nantes. Con­se­quent­ly, he was invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in an art project relat­ed to the botan­i­cal gar­dens, which last­ed near­ly four years. He cre­at­ed a series of sculp­tures, art instal­la­tions, and oth­er small works with­in the gar­dens. I can’t help but won­der if a phys­i­cal mag­ic square were actu­al­ly designed, it would be very pop­u­lar. But from anoth­er per­spec­tive, could this pic­ture book be a paper “maze” game designed by Pon­tet for read­ers?

As I read it for the umpteenth time, I sud­den­ly remem­bered a short sto­ry col­lec­tion I’d read in my youth, “The Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths” by Borges. I don’t know why, but I dug it out and reread it, return­ing to “The Library of Babel,” includ­ed in the col­lec­tion, and, of course, the final sto­ry, “The Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths.” For me, Pon­ti’s enchant­ed square is the very embod­i­ment of Borges’s fairy­tale-like labyrinth. The abstract, cos­mic reflec­tions of Borges’s nov­els are expressed in a visu­al, fan­tas­ti­cal way in Pon­ti’s pic­ture books, evok­ing a sim­i­lar sense of “infin­i­ty” and “unknown pos­si­bil­i­ties.” Visu­al­ly, “George on the Bench” uses lay­ered details and exquis­ite com­po­si­tion to present a dynam­ic, com­plex world, much like Borges’s vision of a “labyrinth of labyrinths.” Togeth­er, they con­vey a core idea:The world we live in is mul­ti-lay­ered, and each lay­er holds end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties..

Albert, the sinol­o­gist in Borges’s nov­el, said:“The Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths is a vast rid­dle, or para­ble, the solu­tion of which is time; and this obscure rea­son does not per­mit the word time to appear in the man­u­script.”

“George the Bench” can also be seen as a huge rid­dle or fable. Although it uses time as a clue, if you go back to the front end­pa­pers, you will find that the clock on the clock tow­er in the pic­ture has no hands (time has been erased); although the book marks many time points of the day, it nev­er explains what day it is!

Pon­ti may have been fas­ci­nat­ed by “time” since he was a child. He always proud­ly intro­duces his father as a “chrono-analy­seur” from Italy. In fact, he was a spe­cial posi­tion in the Pom­peii Steel Plant, respon­si­ble for mea­sur­ing the time required for work­ers to com­plete tasks in order to opti­mize pro­duc­tion process­es and effi­cien­cy. I believe that part of the inspi­ra­tion for “George the Bench” must come from Pon­ti’s fas­ci­na­tion with “time”. He also has a strange descrip­tion of time in “The Won­der­ful Night of the Elves” pub­lished in 2006. The whole sto­ry takes place in “Between 12:05 am and 12:05 am”.

I can’t be sure whether Bon­nie was influ­enced by Borges, but read the imag­i­na­tion of the maze in the nov­el -

“I imag­ined it to be vast, not just a col­lec­tion of octag­o­nal pavil­ions and wind­ing paths, but com­posed of rivers, provinces and king­doms… I imag­ined itA maze of mazes, an intri­cate, ever-evolv­ing maze that encom­pass­es the past and the future, and in a sense even involves oth­er plan­ets.”

In fact, the maze revealed in the nov­el is actu­al­ly “that chaot­ic nov­el” (claimed to be writ­ten by Peng Yu, a retired gov­er­nor of Yun­nan in the Qing Dynasty), the cre­ator:

“It is believed that there are count­less series of time, diverg­ing, con­verg­ing, and par­al­lel times weav­ing an ever-grow­ing, intri­cate web. This web of times that con­verge, diverge, inter­twine, or remain for­ev­er undis­turbed encom­pass­es all pos­si­bil­i­ties.Most of the time, we don’t exist; at some times, there is you but not me; at oth­er times, there is me but not you; and at still oth­er times, both you and I exist.”

——This seems to be the best philo­soph­i­cal com­men­tary on “George of the Bench”.

Of course, this could be pure coin­ci­dence: a short sto­ry writ­ten in 1941 and a pic­ture book writ­ten and illus­trat­ed 60 years lat­er, sim­ply coin­ci­den­tal­ly shar­ing sim­i­lar themes. The plot itself is bizarre. The pro­tag­o­nist, Yu Zhun, is a descen­dant of Peng Yu and a Ger­man spy dur­ing World War I. He is deeply grate­ful for the research and unre­served shar­ing of his ances­tor’s mys­ter­ies by the sinol­o­gist Albert. How­ev­er, in order to prompt­ly inform the Ger­mans of the loca­tion of a British artillery posi­tion in the north­ern French city of Albert, he is forced to shoot the man and allow him­self to be arrest­ed so that he can pass the news of the mur­der to head­quar­ters via news reports—because the sinol­o­gist’s sur­name hap­pens to be the same as the city’s name (just pro­nounced dif­fer­ent­ly in French and Eng­lish)! Well, what a des­per­ate coin­ci­dence.

But wait, what’s the name of the mag­i­cal square where George the Bench is locat­ed? Albert-Duron­quar­ré. Anoth­er “Albert”? What a coin­ci­dence! Is it real­ly just a coin­ci­dence?

Ajia, Writ­ten in Bei­jing on Feb­ru­ary 15, 2025