New Arrival: Picture Book: The Adventures of Beekle the Unimaginary Friend, Dan Santat

The Adventures of Beekle, The Unimaginary Friend
Dan Santat
ISBN: 9780316199988
Lovely imaginative mixed-media panels, but a strange and meandering storyline.

I'm sadly really unappy about this one.  Spoilers ahoy, so I can ramble.

PLOT: An adipose-looking (ref. Doctor Who) blob person lives on the island of imaginary friends, where they hang about waiting for kids to imagine them, whereupon they are teleported off the island into the real world with their new best friend.  But no one imagines the blob, so he decides to take matters into his own hands and find his friend.  He travels to the real world (done in grey and taupe) where he's stunned by the boring and sad nature of all the grownups, until he finds a park with children, happily accompanied by their imaginary friends (the park is a lovely, but confusing, illustration - it's difficult to tell which constructs are imaginary friends and which are park play equipment) but still no friend.  He climbs a tree to see further, but still no dice, until a little girl comes by, and they sort of awkwardly ease into friendship, she names him Beekle, and they play happily together forever, the end.

Hokay.

First issue - a jungly "exotic" island of creatures who have their own lives and presumably interests and dreams, but live there just waiting for someone they don't know to essentially capture them and spirit them away to a different "civilized" world where they get assigned a name, and are stuck there as best friends forever with no escape is a little Curious George gets kidnapped by the Man in the Big Yellow Hat, yes?  Colonialism is not a cool concept to reference, and while kids are innocent and won't get it, lots of parents (especially parents of color) WILL, and that isn't a great way to start off.  It just - between the "rapture beam" illustration of the imaginary friend who was chosen, and the idea that they don't even have names until a kid names them, but they do have lives and imaginations and willpower and enough determination to take a difficult journey - but no name?  Just... really offputting.

Second issue - I am the first person to sing the praises of picture books with no drama.  Nothing happens, no conflict, everything is peaceful or fun, life is good - I love those books.  But, they have to have a structure that supports the lack of drama or conflict.  This book isn't like that.  It's a journey - an ADVENTURE!  It's in the bloody title already!  But our little blob friend just meanders through everywhere, looking vaguely nonplussed, but not afraid or menaced, or really even very sad, even though the text assures us he is.  If you're going to have an adventure, perhaps it should be adventurous?  I just can't see this holding the attention of a room full of little ones.

Third issue - it's pretty obvious that the intended "moral" of the story is that finding and making friends is sometimes a slow process, and can be awkward.  I got that, and it's a great moral, especially for shy or socially-anxious kids.  However, I think that the framework of the imaginary friend isn't so hot for this message, and in fact, I think that it's sending entirely different messages through the choices of text and illustrations.  Here's why.

First off, since the imaginary friend is our "hero character" for most of the book, that's who the readers will most likely identify with.  He wants a friend, so he looks for one, and then he does a favor for someone, they stand around awkwardly, sort of toe-into the idea of hanging out, then what do they do?  She NAMES him, and they proceed to do everything that she wants to do, in her world, by her rules.  Now our moral message is "find someone that you like, and make them like you by doing everything they ask" which is a great way to keep that book about co-dependency on the re-print list for decades to come.

Secondly, an imaginary friend by nature only has ONE human person that sees them, knows them, and is friends with them.  So not only is our protagonist blob-person stuck with the herculean task of finding the ONE SINGLE RIGHT person, then once found, that's the only friend there is.  And that isn't how it works with kids, nor is that a healthy concept.  Again, the implied message there is that "there's only one bestfriend/soulmate for you, and once you find them, everything will be perfect forever" which is wrong on so many levels that I really don't know where to start.


So - sadly, because it's awfully cute, and I'm especially vulnerable to adorable little almost adiposes - I have to vote to give this one a miss because it just twigs too many weird uncomfortable issues for me to be able to recommend.