Books: Dillweed's Revenge

[vcmw]

Perhaps you were saying to yourself, "Self, what the world needs is more picture books that are *like* Gorey, but not exactly Gorey.  We already have Gorey, so that is nice, but something similar-but-different would be delightful."

If that is the case, the odds are very good that you will be charmed by Dillweed's Revenge: A Deadly Dose of Magic.  This picture book is by Florence Parry Heide with pictures by Carson Ellis.

The pictures are done in a sort of ink-and-watercolor looking style, with a lot of white space, and an old-fashioned look that has something very "early american folk portraiture" about the faces, and something sort of 1890s-1920s [to my uneducated eye] about the furnishings and fashions.

Here is the text of the first page:

"Dillweed liked to go places.
He liked to have adventures.
He liked to have a good time.

His parents went places.
HIs parents had adventures.
His parents had a good time.

The parents.  Not Dillweed."

The whole book is paced like that.  The names are great - Dillweed, Skorped, Umblud.  Either this all sounds good to you, in which case it is just as you would imagine and will delight, or it doesn't, in which case similarly it is just as you would imagine and likely won't.

I've already re-read it once since I got it home from the library.