Little Boy with a Big Horn: 02/12/24

Little Boy with a Big Horn by Jack Bechdolt and Aurelius Battaglia (Illustrator) (1953) is one of those foundational books of my childhood. It's a story that has stuck with me even though I am not particularly musically inclined. For me, it was how Bechdolt's story was interpreted visually by Aurelius Battaglia and how I misread / misremembered one key piece.

Ollie plays a big bass horn. He's young and he's only managed to learn one song so far, "Asleep in the Deep." He plays it a lot. He plays it loudly. His mother needs a break from listening to him practice. Each place he goes he's ultimately asked to leave because of the song until he finds a way to put it to good use.

How and more importantly where Ollie saves the day is where my childhood memory went astray. Ollie's world is confined to where it's plausible for a child of approximately ten to go under his own power while carrying a large instrument. He goes to town, he goes to the fields, and he goes out to the harbor in a rowboat.

At the start of the last act of the book, the set up for Ollie to be a hero, is an illustration of some rocks at the edge of the harbor. The book published in 1953, while full color, made some choices in how to represent things. Ink is expensive. Multiple passes for details ultimately ends up being more effort and money than is needed for the final product.

Take for instance the rocks. The lightest bits of rocks, in other words, the highlights, are left white. They are the color of the paper. It saves ink and time. When I was a child, I saw while rocks in the sea and thought Ollie had somehow rowed all the way either north or south to where there are icebergs. As an adult that detail had morphed into me remembering Ollie in Antartica in his rowboat serenading penguins. There are no penguins in this book.

Despite a forty year old memory gone astray, I still love the book. I love Aurelius Battaglia's illustrations. They firmly set Ollie in a world that's contemporaneous with the song he's playing. Because, yes, the song that causes Ollie so much trouble is a real song and in the public domain if you're so inclined to make your own version of it.

"Asleep in the Deep" was published in 1897. The words are by Arthur J. Lamb and the music is by Henry W. Petrie. The title refers of course to those who have drowned, and by playing the song, Ollie saves a ship from running afoul of the rocks and possibly drowning its passengers.

The same year the book was released, UPA did an animated short.

In a future post I will discuss the 2008 release with art by Dan Yaccarino.

Five stars

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