Combing the library stacks in the children’s section will often return drivel. Fuzzy illustrations of anthropomorphized bears who speak only in monosyllables, dull little children who exist on the page to embody the social cause du jour: the pickings are slim.
In such dreadful books, the only thing worse than the illustrations is the text. There seems to be a rule in the publishing industry: every mediocre author must find a way to fit in rhyming “more” and “door,” sometimes “more” and “four” in the clumsy and uninteresting couplets on the sparsely worded page of every children’s book now released. Seriously, keep an eye out: the “more/door” and “more/four” rhymes always make an appearance.
Far too many books in the children’s section of the library are simply ugly and dumbed down.
Take this as context for the electrifying excitement of discovering that “Weird Al” Yankovic wrote a children’s book, published in 2011, and his still reigning celebrity as a renowned parody song writer and performer ensures the library kept it on the shelf. Dedicated to his daughter, Nina, Yankovic’s When I Grow Up is an engaging read about what a little boy, Billy, thinks he might pursue in his future professional life.
Beginning with a chef of haute cuisine and barreling on to machine operator, gorilla masseuse, deodorant sniff tester, sumo wrestler, and part-time tarantula-shaver, the inventive book has some of the verbal excitement of a Weird Al parody song. That is, after all, the source of Weird Al’s enduring fame.
The book is not perfect, and some pages have three times the text needed. The pages on which Billy imagines himself as the Master of Snails is particularly drawn-out and unimpressive. However, most of the book remains punchy and unexpected, and the scathing reviews of Yankovic’s book are undeserved.
Visually, the book has much to offer, somewhat in the genre of Yankovic’s beloved Mad Magazine. Wes Hargis’s illustrations are realistic and whimsical at once, pairing well with the fanciful wordplay.
Several readers compare Weird Al’s verses to Dr. Seuss. But no, Weird Al doesn’t cheat by inventing nonsense words and make-believe creatures. He remains tethered to reality and introduces words that children can learn and use in real life. Much better and more impressive! Dr. Seuss enjoys unquestioned dominance in the children’s lit category, but whether that is justified remains questionable for precisely this textual laziness.
Even when outlandish and moments over-the-top, the word choice in Yankovic’s text offers an air of precision. Unexpected rhymes mixing high diction and foreign words with curt, simple words stimulate the reader. “Gotten” paired with “au gratin,” “rigatoni” with “pickled baloney.” There is simply a degree of verbal interest that one does not often find. Though obviously a first foray into the children’s book world and lacking in finesse, the text benefits from the lifelong dedication to the craft of parody in rhyme. As one writer observed of Yankovic’s method, “Songs that may seem dashed off are in fact the product of months of self-imposed hard labor — lonely, silent, obsessive world-building.”
More than anything else, When I Grow Up is enjoyable because it genuinely surprises. The reader cannot possibly predict the range of zany career options; surprise without grotesque shock is something few children’s books are capable of anymore.
Interestingly, Yankovic’s verbal acuity is seen as a detraction by some. People mistakenly believe that picture books should be read by small children just learning to read, which is not the case. The point of picture books is to engage children while they encounter language beyond what they are capable of reading and comprehending on their own. When a curious child encounters “haute cuisine,” and words like “vocation” and “oration,” he is likely to ask about them. If we feed young ‘ins a diet of only simple words they already know, how exactly will they ever command spoken and written language? The child routinely exposed to a wide variety of incomprehensible vocabulary can, overtime, tell you confidently that “villain sounds bad and evil,” and “mournful means sad.” How he discerns this through the haze of mystifying utterances proclaimed to him from the printed page is a mystery, but the results speak for themselves. No, we should not dumb down kiddie books; we should raise literate children.
Check the local library, Weird Al might be waiting for you. Unless you were somehow aware of the bizarre biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” you likely hadn’t thought of Weird Al in a decade or more.
“Weird Al” was the mean-spirited nickname given to an odd young man who was a social outcast in his dorm in college. Instead of being defined by other people’s derision, Yankovic coopted the moniker and made it his own. Though reportedly still shy and courteous even into his 60s in the present day, his humor and verbal dexterity have made him a lasting if subtle American legend.
A tribute to Weird Al’s genius worth quoting at length from the New York Times:
Weird Al has now been releasing song parodies for seven presidential administrations. He has outlasted two popes and five Supreme Court justices. He is one of only five artists (along with his early muses, Michael Jackson and Madonna) to have had a Top 40 single in each of the last four decades. Yankovic has turned out to be one of America’s great renewable resources. He is a timeless force that expresses itself through hyperspecific cultural moments, the way heat from the center of the earth manifests, on the surface, through the particularity of geysers. In 1996, after Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” became a national earworm, Weird Al took its thumping beat and its heavenly choir and turned it into “Amish Paradise,” a ridiculous banger about rural chores. When Chamillionaire’s “Ridin.” hit No. 1 in 2006, Weird Al took a rap about driving in a car loaded with drugs and translated it into a monologue about the glories of being a nerd. Whatever is popular at the moment, Yankovic can hack into its source code and reprogram it.
What a fabulous summary of a fascinating man. Bravo for When I Grow Up, an engaging and worthy effort in the children’s lit department that will remind a generation of parents to get their daily laughs in with witty people of Weird Al’s caliber. And he is funny! Answering how he could, as a committed vegetarian, possibly try to justify singing at events like the Great American Rib Cook-Off, Yankovic responded, “The same way I can rationalize playing at a college even though I’m not a student anymore.” That’s gold!
