Module 1 : The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore  by William Joyce is a children’s picture book of fantasy.  Published in 2012, it takes the reader on a journey to a place where books have a life of their own.

Summary
Morris Lessmore leads a solitary life which he chronicles each day in his journal.  It is a basic, dull existence until one day when a terrible wind swirls up and whisks him away, along with his journal and his home.  His entire town is left in shambles.  As he contemplates what to do now that his life has completely unraveled, he looks up to see a lady fly by, carried by a bunch of flapping books.

His real journey begins when he follows the books and they take him away to where they “nest”, in a building that is quite reminiscent of a library.  He proceeds to enter, and when he does, he becomes part of a magical place where books are more like characters.  He is transported to all of the places in the books. He also becomes the caretaker of the books and he shares the books with other people too.  Each day ends with all of the books sleeping, except for the journal that Morris is still writing about his own life.

Days, weeks, months, then years pass until, finally, he finishes writing his book.  He is old and he tells the books that it is time for him to leave and he does so just like that.  As he takes his leave, he is young once again.  The books are sad until they realize that he left the book of his own life behind to keep them company, and then they hear a little girl at the door and their adventure begins anew.

Impressions

This is an enchanting book that has elements of melancholy, nostalgia, surprise, adventure, and a definite nod to infinity.  The story begins in a black, white, and gray world where things are very bleak, and progressively become more colorful as Mr. Morris Lessmore is transported into the world of books. This is a clear reference to The Wizard of OZ and works to the advantage of the story in this case too.  

I was eager to turn each page because the illustrations are artful and colorful, but also because the story was compelling.  Readers are reminded throughout that “everyone’s story matters” (Joyce, 2012).

The use of a relatively new technology, called augmented reality, is the added feature that takes this book to the next level.  The pages come to life as the reader encounters characters and scenes that virtually spring from the pages.  Readers are able to interact via a smartphone or tablet app that also has the option of reading the text.  Although I already loved the book, once I was able to experience it in this heightened reality, it made me see it in a whole new way.

Professional Reviews

It may be telling that “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore,” a kind of totem to the unmatched joys of reading, appeared in two different screen adaptations before making the transition into print. Winning an Oscar earlier this year for best animated short after appearing, last summer, as a lauded animated app, William Joyce’s story of a natty Southern loner was a feat of digital imagination, a dazzlingly polished animation and a wordless tribute to a fading literary age. Now, realized at last as a children’s book, his tale gains elegance but loses depth. The print-edition “Morris Lessmore” is a stylishly paced, vividly illustrated parable for young readers, yet it somehow lacks the dreamy creativity of its animated precursors. Ultimately, Joyce’s book tells us something we may already suspect: that storytelling these days has a broader canvas than the hallowed space within the ­library doors.

Morris Lessmore, a young bibliophile with a dapper brown suit and an unconquerable cowlick, spends his days on a porch piled high with books and his spare time jotting down his private concerns in a journal. (“His life was a book of his own writing, one orderly page after another,” Joyce charmingly puts it.) But when a storm sweeps through town — toppling houses, scattering the letters of Morris’s beloved texts — the world as he knows it is violently upended. Parched of narrative, Morris wanders through a black-and-white landscape, lost among ruins and disordered pages.

Then, books re-enter his life. Out walking one day, Morris spies “a festive squadron of flying books” (Joyce’s illustrations are, helpfully, a good deal more precise here than his diction) guiding a beautiful young woman through the air. Seeing Morris’s sad state, she offers him her favorite member of the squad, a two-legged volume who promptly leads him toward the local library. Morris is enthralled by what he finds. Books line the walls and flutter through the air like butterflies; when he starts reading, all color returns to his world. “Morris found great satisfaction in caring for the books,” Joyce writes. Our hero performs restorative surgery on fragile hardback spines; when gray boys and girls and men and women visit, he offers stories to imbue their lives with vibrant hues. Each night, after composing in his journal, Morris falls asleep across the pages of a large French tome. And so it goes, up through the winter of his life. “The days passed,” Joyce writes. “So did the months. And then years.”

“Morris Lessmore” is filled with such elegant and well-worn turns of phrase — narrative refrains that seem imported from the land of right and proper children’s books, and that give the story a sage poise. 

Heller 2012

First it was an Academy Award-winning animated short. Then it was an intuitively interactive iPad story app. And now it’s a regular old book, which is fitting given that the story is all about the lasting power of books to transport and nournish the soul. Our hero is a bibliophile modeled after legendary childrens’s-literature advocate William Morris (in spirit) and Buster Keaton (in looks), whose gray-colored world is colorized when he sees a woman fly past, pulled by “a festive squadron of flying books.” One such book leads mm to take custodianship of a house full of rambunctious stories. As the years pass, he writes one of his own, which in turn inspires a young girl after he is gone. The message-heavy narrative is lifted by Joyce’s superb artwork, presenting nostalgic, picket-fence scenes with a modeled, dimensional feel built on the animation but given a lustrous polish for the printed page. Perhaps most fascinating, the move, app, and book taken together present an entirely kid-friendly opportunity to talk about the interplay between content and format.

Chipman 2012

Library Uses

This would be great for a children’s story time as an introduction to the library for younger students.  It would also be a wonderful way to inspire older students to begin a regular practice of journaling by emphasizing the idea that everyone is unique and has their own story to tell.  The interactive version is wonderful, but would be difficult to share with large groups.  It could be a great tool for a one on one reading time with a reluctant reader or in a smaller group setting with 2 or 3 students.

References

Chipman, I. (2012). The fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Booklist, 108(21), 70. 

Retrieved from: http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2114/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=a604bcfb-06c2-4e7b-9b7a-d069485ede93%40sessionmgr4005&vid=9&hid=4110

Heller, N. (2012, August 23). Hanging on every word. New York Times. Retrieved from:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/books/review/the-fantastic-flying-books-of-mr-morris-lessmore.html

Joyce, W. (2012). The fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.