The Spiritual in Our Writing
Human hunger for resonant meaning
Years ago I bought an old library copy of a picturebook called Frank and Zelda. We’d borrowed it many times, and my boys loved it in the way children do: we read it hundreds of times, and it was often the requested read when they were feeling ill (reserved for only the most favourite books).
Later I bought a second copy when the book was re-titled and re-issued as Pizza For Breakfast. I would share it with the classes I was teaching as an example of a children’s book with no child characters in it. The main characters are an old couple, along with an ageless person of indeterminate magic.
Other than the obvious draw of “pizza,” I was always left a bit awed by how much my boys loved that book: the theme of the book was very “adult.”
Or was it?
It’s a story of having wishes answered and then grow out of control, with a final act of wishing the wishes had never taken place. That’s an old story-line; it’s been done many times. But in the closing image Zelda and Frank are at the beach, having given up their enormous pizza restaurant, and they have instead a no-room-to-move pizza caravan with no customers and they’re enjoying the sun in their lounge chairs. The closing lines are about their being happy: “And this time they knew it.”
