R.I.P. Russell Hoban, author of Riddley Walker, The Mouse And His Child, and the Frances series
Russell Hoban, author of children's books The Mouse And His Child and the Frances series, as well as many novels, including Riddley Walker, died Tuesday at his home in London. He was 86. Though not much more than a cult figure in his native United States, outside of the highly popular Frances books, Hoban was slightly better known in his adopted home of the United Kingdom, where various celebrations of his work have been held. The cause of Hoban's death was undetermined, but his daughter, Phoebe, told the New York Times that he had recently been diagnosed with congestive heart failure.
Born in 1925 to Ukrainian immigrants in Lansdale, Penn., Hoban began his career as an freelance illustrator, notably for Time and Sports Illustrated. Before that, he fought in World War II in Italy, earning a Bronze Star. His first published books were all for children, and of these, the most famous remain the Frances stories, beginning with 1960's Bedtime For Frances. Frances, a little badger, goes through many routines familiar to both children and their parents. (In Bedtime, for instance, she spends the whole book trying to delay going to bed.) Hoban's prose was spare but gentle, and Frances was a terrific character, a sweet little girl who, nonetheless, didn't mind pushing her limits and testing her parents. The books, illustrated by Garth Williams and Hoban's then-wife, Lillian Hoban, and including sequels like Bread And Jam For Frances and Birthday For Frances, have remained in print to this day.
Hoban wrote many other children's books throughout his long career, including Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, a melancholy little book about an otter and his widowed mother, who risk everything on winning a talent show that they might have a good Christmas. The book, a rough adaptation of The Gift Of The Magi with a few twists along the way, was turned into a TV special by Jim Henson in the late '70s, and was illustrated by Lillian Hoban. (Russell and Lillian Hoban divorced in the early 1970s, and he married Gundula Ahl in 1975.) His other children's works include The Marzipan Pig, a whimsical tale of a lost candy pig eaten by a mouse, whose love for a grandfather's clock passes along up the food chain, and the raucous yet whimsical Captain Najork books, which involve a young boy's encounters with the borderline-mythical Captain Najork, purported to be incredibly fearsome, among other things.
Hoban's finest work for children was the haunting The Mouse And His Child, published in 1968 before falling out of print for many years. (It was republished in 1990 and has remained in print ever since.) The book tells the story of a wind-up mouse and his son. The two are attached at the hands, and when wound up, they do a dance where the father swings his son in the air, around and around. The book begins in an idyllic toy shop at Christmastime, but the mice are soon purchased and stored away, only to be brought out at Christmas. When broken and thrown away, the two set out on a journey to find their old friends from the toy shop and return to the perfect world of the past, as well as become "self-winding." Filled with philosophy and surprising darkness (characters are killed brutally and suddenly), the book, which was later turned into a movie, has gained a reputation as one that's fine for children but even better for their parents, containing ruminative passages about the nature of identity and the role of conditioned programming in the self, such as this:
"We're toy mice," said the child. "Is it Miss or Mr. Mudd? Please excuse my asking, but I can't tell by looking at you."
"Miss," said the little creature. She was something like a misshapen grasshopper, and was as drab and muddy as her name. "I'll be your friend if you'll be mine," she said. "Will you, do you think? I'm so unsure of everything."
"We'll be your friends," said the child. "We're unsure too, especially about the little dogs."