There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry . . . .

My copy of this book is a rare one – in fact, it’s unique! The verse was written long ago by the English Romantic poet John Keats. It was never, ever meant to be published, but was a bit of nonsense included in a letter to his sister Fanny, a youngster, whom he was writing while he and his friend were on their famous walking tour through northern England, bound for Scotland. This edition (Viking, 1965) was illustrated by Caldecott winner Ezra Jack Keats (Keats illustrating Keats, get it?). That might be enough to make it a rare book (though there are currently nine copies available through ABE for $15 or less), but what makes this copy unique is a third dimension. It was once, over forty years ago, a gift to our young son, also named Keats (for the poet, not the illustrator!). So it’s a book written by Keats, illustrated by Keats, and scribbled in by Keats (or another one of our five children or five grandchildren). Ezra Jack illustrated it in two colors: red and black. The scribbling is done – on a good many pages and the end papers, front and back – with a blunt, blue crayon. Unique! Rare book dealers would have to label it fair (it does have a good dj and the binding is reasonably tight), but in our family it is priceless.

Even without such a personal history, the book is delightful. If you’re interested in children’s books – or book illustrators – you should grab one of these while they’re still available at such a bargain price. At the time, Ezra Jack had just won the Caldecott medal for The Snowy Day, the first of a series of books that show Peter growing up. Peter is a black kid at home in a city, making his way around city streets – unusual in children’s books in the early 1960s, one might almost say “unique.” These books were also unusual in that Keats chose collage as his medium, usually combined with gouache painting. Hence, it was the subject matter, the medium, and Keats’s distinctive style that won him widespread readership, and probably the attention of the Caldecott judges. He had not intended to become an illustrator of children’s books. He worked on WPA art projects during the Great Depression; then on the Captain Marvel comic books in the early 1940s, and eventually illustrated books including the popular Danny Dunn series for children. He was almost fifty years old when he came out with The Snowy Day, which he had written himself. Born Jacob Ezra Katz in 1916, he had changed his name after World War II because of the prevalence of anti-Semitism at the time. It was his name, no doubt, which prompted his publisher to let him do the John Keats nonsense verse as a little book for children.

It is a little book for little hands (4’x5’), just right for the tinkling tripping of the verse. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately, depending on how you feel about the illustrations), he publishers did not have him exploit his usual four-color collages, but this did not prevent him from achieving his inimitable style. The illustrations are whimsical – matching the nonsense of the verse.

He took
An ink stand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other.
And away
In a potcher
He ran.

The dull gray inkstand is bigger than the naughty boy’s head, and the bright red feather pen longer than he is tall. Even in black and white, Ezra Jack uses collage with its tactile sense of texture: a piece of linoleum, or bathroom tile, for a Scottish castle, swirly paper for the earth (“he found / That the ground [in Scotland] / was as hard”), a piece of wood for a door (“a door / Was as wooden / As in England”), even black and white striped paper for the naughty boy’s coat and trousers. (Regrettably, Ezra Jack chose to make the boy a prim little dandy in a suit with a red vest – hardly the rugged, frolicsome young outdoorsman John Keats had in mind – himself, of course – but Ezra Jack’s version is at least plucky and daring.) On a few pages the illustrations feature a simple black silhouette; for example, in a very small silhouette of the boy with his inkstand and feather running across and the top of a white, double-page spread with the words of the repeated chorus:

Och, the charm
When we chose
To follow one’s nose
To the north,
To the north,
To follow one’s nose to the North!

This design is notable, one of my favorite pages in this book. An equally dramatic page, also a favorite of mine, has splotches of red ink in the background with a silhouette of a hag on a broomstick (“ghostes / And Postes / And witches / And ditches”) with the naughty boy perched, confidently, right behind her.

The little book has only thirty-two pages, but the verse is delightful, the illustrations and design appealing, and the boy just pert enough to engage young readers. They may be tempted by the implicit motion across the pages to pirouette across the room, book in hand. Oh, and to add a little color with copious blue scribbling. Keep the crayons handy!

Our young Keats did NOT become a poet – nor even a reader of poetry, to my knowledge. He’s now a biochemist in Melbourne, Australia, and he’s gone through life having to spelling his name (“no, not Keith, but Keats, K-E-A-T-S . . . yeah, like the poet”); however, he is a painter on the side, his art work clever and adept, not unlike Ezra Jack’s. In the verse, the adventuresome young lad finds out that “the North,” even Scotland, is not that different from his home in England, after all. It’s the imagination that makes it so.

So he stood in
His shoes and he wonder’d.
He wonder’d,
He stood in
His shoes and he wonder’d.