The Planet in a Pickle Jar
by Martin Stanev
2022
The Planet in a Pickle Jar is a children's picture book about a couple kids staying with their grandmother. Initially they're bored, but then warm up to her. The book is playful about the space between what the words say and what the pictures show. And while the title image is obviously a metaphor, it's not one with a straightforward interpretation.
The text in this book adopts the kids' perspective; the art, I think, shows their grandmother's. So we're told that her house is boring, her stories are too long, and she spends all her time sewing and making pickles. What we see is a tableau that rewards a closer look.
The house is full of interesting-looking knickknacks and tchotchkes. The word-bubble showing the grandmother's story appears to illustrate the big bang and formation of the solar system. And her pickle jars aren't full of pickles, but of tiny images representing sights and memories from her travels. Kids who like to stop and spot all the details on the page will have a lot to look at here.
The grandmother tells another story, (again shown as an illustrated word bubble,) about how we are wrecking the environment and it won't still be there to enjoy if we do. Then, in the night, the kids wake up and discover she's missing. They search the whole house, then find a secret passage that leads to a tunnel that leads to a secret second basement where the grandmother keeps all her pickle jars, lots more than we saw earlier. She'd gotten tangled up in her own knitting, so the kids 'rescue' her pretty easily. But they are awestruck by the sight, and decide to get off their phones, touch grass, and join her in filling pickle jars.
I feel like I would've liked this book as a kid. Even today, I dream all the time of a giant version of my childhood home, with extra high ceilings, bookshelves like libraries, an attic like an airplane hanger, a basement like a dungeon, and everywhere cardboard boxes of interesting stuff, and tunnels or secret staircases connecting it all. It's part of why I like the film Inception, and playing D&D. And while the art isn't Where's Waldo or Find Freddie level detailed, there's still a lot going on that, when I was younger especially, I'd have liked poring over, admiring, and noticing new things.
As an adult, the one thing I find confusing is the grandmother's story about pollution and deforestation. Because the pickle jars seem like they represent photos or memories. One has a tiny sun in it, another a tree, another a leopard. So is her advice basically 'gather ye rosebuds while ye may?' Like, get out there and enjoy this stuff now, kids, cause it won't still be here when you're older? That seems a little bleak!
Or is this intended as an environmentalist message? But if so, 'saving' the memory of something is very different than saving the thing itself. Whatever essence of leopard you're preserving in whatever thing the glass jar is a metaphor for won't do anything to help the real live leopard itself. So while I know my kid self would've liked this, my adult brain kind of gets hung up on the logic of it.
The text in this book adopts the kids' perspective; the art, I think, shows their grandmother's. So we're told that her house is boring, her stories are too long, and she spends all her time sewing and making pickles. What we see is a tableau that rewards a closer look.
The house is full of interesting-looking knickknacks and tchotchkes. The word-bubble showing the grandmother's story appears to illustrate the big bang and formation of the solar system. And her pickle jars aren't full of pickles, but of tiny images representing sights and memories from her travels. Kids who like to stop and spot all the details on the page will have a lot to look at here.
The grandmother tells another story, (again shown as an illustrated word bubble,) about how we are wrecking the environment and it won't still be there to enjoy if we do. Then, in the night, the kids wake up and discover she's missing. They search the whole house, then find a secret passage that leads to a tunnel that leads to a secret second basement where the grandmother keeps all her pickle jars, lots more than we saw earlier. She'd gotten tangled up in her own knitting, so the kids 'rescue' her pretty easily. But they are awestruck by the sight, and decide to get off their phones, touch grass, and join her in filling pickle jars.
I feel like I would've liked this book as a kid. Even today, I dream all the time of a giant version of my childhood home, with extra high ceilings, bookshelves like libraries, an attic like an airplane hanger, a basement like a dungeon, and everywhere cardboard boxes of interesting stuff, and tunnels or secret staircases connecting it all. It's part of why I like the film Inception, and playing D&D. And while the art isn't Where's Waldo or Find Freddie level detailed, there's still a lot going on that, when I was younger especially, I'd have liked poring over, admiring, and noticing new things.
As an adult, the one thing I find confusing is the grandmother's story about pollution and deforestation. Because the pickle jars seem like they represent photos or memories. One has a tiny sun in it, another a tree, another a leopard. So is her advice basically 'gather ye rosebuds while ye may?' Like, get out there and enjoy this stuff now, kids, cause it won't still be here when you're older? That seems a little bleak!
Or is this intended as an environmentalist message? But if so, 'saving' the memory of something is very different than saving the thing itself. Whatever essence of leopard you're preserving in whatever thing the glass jar is a metaphor for won't do anything to help the real live leopard itself. So while I know my kid self would've liked this, my adult brain kind of gets hung up on the logic of it.
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