Goodbye Ziggy Stardust…

It’s another picture book, you guys, so buckle up. I have Opinions.
Some of you may be familiar with Melanie Watt from her Scaredy Squirrel series, although I don’t know how popular she is outside of Canada. Scaredy Squirrel is a good series for kids who are a little hesitant about new things. Childhood is scary. That series is fine but has never caught my interest particularly.
This book however! This book is gorgeous. The illustrations are beautiful and detailed with a uniquely 60s aesthetic. There are little interstitial adverts of products to introduce the book’s sections. I remember the look of that vacuum from when I was a kid! The front page of the book defines both Bug (an insect/ an unexpected glitch) and Vacuum (a cleaning machine/ a void left by a loss). It’s detailed and complex and has very few words, which is perfection in a picture book.
A great picture book allows both the words and the pictures to tell the story. The pictures can’t just reflect the text, they need to add to the story (don’t get me started on those damn Berenstain Bears and their shoddy pictures that exactly duplicate the dumb sanctimonious text, ugh). In this case, the pictures tell more of the story than the text. It’s wonderful.
Watt presents this story of a bug that is tragically sucked into a vacuum through the lens of the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief. (yes, this is true. It’s labelled in the book and everything) We lost David Bowie this week, so a book about grief seemed appropriate. The bug experiences denial, anger, bargaining, despair and finally acceptance. Each stage is introduced through product placement, like Acceptance Brand tissues. Bug refuses to believe whats happened, rages at the world, tries to make deals, gets sad and then adapts to the new situation. He makes friends with a chew toy! Its all going to be alright.
In each stage, we see Bug explore the new surroundings and interact with the other objects in the vacuum bag. On the outside, there is the family dog, who has lost a beloved chew toy to the vacuum and also goes through the stages.* Eventually there is a light at the end of the vacuum hose and (spoilers) Bug escapes into the Dump. It’s a happy ending! But is it? There’s an ambiguity at the end that I loved as an adult but that I doubt kids will catch. My squishies didn’t notice but they are both under 5, so… they don’t understand about the danger of Birds.
Full Disclosure: this book was $25 CDN when I bought it. That’s expensive. It’s cheaper on Amazon though and I actually think it was worth every penny. It’s gorgeous and wonderful. My squishies love it.
*You guys, there were no gender indicators in this book so I’m deliberately not adding any but it is making my writing awkward as heck and revealing to me the old problem of Male as Normative. Why do I think that Bug and Dog are he/him? I am problematic.