Customer Reviews

Tumble Tower

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Although an avid Anne Tyler fan, I just discovered this book she wrote for children and I now number it among my favorites. I find it perfectly charming to see childhood "messiness" vindicated. My grandchildren (ages 8 to 13) thoroughly enjoy the book, too. I can tell they relate to "Messy Molly," although maintaining that their own bedrooms are never as messy as the wonderful two-page spread of Molly's room.

Can you imagine a children's book about messiness which does not end with the character discovering the error of her ways and (literally and figuratively) straightening up? Instead, Molly's free-spirited approach to storing her personal possessions is celebrated. Molly, her friends, and the family pets revel in the glorious mess, and even her uptight parents and little brother come to see the advantages of disorder. A highlight is a wordless double-page spread showing Molly's room in all its splendour. Ask your child to locate different objects, a la the "I Spy" books.

This book is the perfect vidication for those of us who are hopelessly sloppy. How can we contend with the celebrated neatness of this person or that person? How can we explain that there is indeed a method to our madness? We are messy for a reason! Anne Tyler does a wonderful job championing our cause and Mitra Modarressi's illustrations are perfect to keep children rivited. I read this to my friend's 7-year old, and I finally had a valid explanation for why there are "so many things on my bedroom floor."

The story of Tumble Tower is hardly throw-away - Princess Molly the Messy is almost despised by her family: King Clement the Clean, Queen Nellie the Neat, and Prince Thomas the Tidy. Molly lives in the castle tower, where her room is beyond what most would considered "a bit cluttered." However, as we soon discover after the rest of the castle is flooded, even the messiest of rooms can be considered a safe, even comfortable haven. Seeing life through Molly's eyes gives the rest of her family a sense of understanding, perhaps even empathy.

While Anne Tyler's story is very nice, I found the illustrations to be far more engaging. There are hidden surprises in almost every page, and the characters are wittily, handsomely, and endearingly brought to life in a style that almost resembles the Saturday morning series "Angela Anaconda."

The kids will love having this book read to them again and again, and there's enough treasures spread throughout to make the parents most happy to oblige.

I am an adult who never liked picture books as a child (I fell in love with reading in fourth grade, when I finally had the vocabulary and comprehension skills to read the more appealing "Chapter" books). I came to this book because Tyler is one of my favorite contemporary novelists, and even though I love tons of other novelists both present and past, sometimes I just can't wait for Tyler's latest to hit the stores. So, I read her children's book, and I was enchanted. The story is great, the pictures are charming, but what I liked best was the book's "Child is father of man" philosophy. Modarressi, who happens to be Tyler's daughter, has written and illustrated a number of other books: don't miss "Yard Sale!" and "The Parent Thief" and even the weaker "The Dream Pillow" is worth a look-see.

The Library of Congress Cataloguing-In Data Summary found on the book's Copyright page says it best: "A very messy princess in a very tidy royal family has the opportunity to prove that there are advantages to not being neat."

The reviewer risks coming across as a fuddy-duddy by pointing out how, even amid the steady charms of the "Tumble Tower" story line and the flow of its carefully crafted illustrations, some wrong notes occur.

A minor one is this: I'm not sure many boys would agree to don their sisters' pajamas, as the little brother, Prince Thomas the Tidy, does here without a squabble.

A potentially important note is this: If you and your child still struggle over cleanliness issues -- by which I mean matters of basic sanitation -- it might be best to avoid this book, or at least be prepared to engage in lots of explaining, especially if your child absorbs messages in a literal fashion. In real life there is "cute-messy" and there is, well, let's call it "dangerous-messy." Here the significance of that distinction is mostly avoided.

Princess Molly's bed is "all lumpy and knobby with half-finished books." Oh? Are her bed sheets never changed? The princess is very happy to consume an old, half-eaten candy bar she finds hidden beneath a chair cushion. Hmmm . . . . is this, and the other abandoned food in the room, still fit to eat? The royal cat has given birth to six kittens amid the floor-tossed clothing. Is Molly's bedroom this really the best location to this activity? The room is a minefield of toys and whatnot, every square inch of its floor covered with objects. Just how far do you suppose a parent, called to this child's room in the night, would be able to walk across that floor without coming to personal harm? How soon would we hear screamed some very un-Tyleresque four letter words? Modarressi and Tyler do not see it as their job to suggest to the young reader/listener that there is anything amiss in this. It's left largely to you, the parental reader, to encourage your child to think things out.

Which is, of course, as it should be.

Aside from these nits, the book is great fun to read.

Half of the pleasure of reading a good children's book written by a great novelist comes from recognizing traces of the author's adult preoccupations. I can see why Tyler was drawn to Messy Molly. Here was a chance to add a princess (royalty: now there's a quirky line of work!) from a family tagged with funny names (Molly is the daughter of King Clement the Clean and Queen Nellie the Neat) to the author's growing list of protagonists whose personal space is full of clutter. Tyler views messiness, both the emotional and the material kind, as an inescapable condition of life. The tension between the comforts of clutter and a yearning to break free of it has been a fount of humor in most of her novels.

Veteran readers of Tyler know that when a clutterer meets an unclutterer, sparks fly. There's Martine in A Patchwork Planet (Fawcett Book), a member of the Rent-a-Back crew who, with rough efficiency, de-clutters the homes of elderly and sometimes resistant pack-rats. Think also of Delia Grinstead in Ladder of Years: A Novel, who just up and leaves her family. It is ultimate act of uncluttering one's life, no? Remember, too, the title character in Morgan's Passing, who instructs his daughter, in the stern manner of King Clement the Clean: "You would be surprised at how many things are non-essential. Throw everything away. All of it! Simplify!"

The Summer 1992 edition of The Virginia Quarterly Review contains an essay on Anne Tyler by Patricia Rowe Willrich, who for several years engaged in a correspondence and literary friendship with the reclusive author. Willrich relates that, on a continuum from messy to neat, Tyler is not a saver, let alone a hoarder: "Her old stone home in Baltimore is organized and spare. The living room and dining room, with oriental rugs and a few pieces of furniture, are uncluttered. Floor to ceiling bookcases are full, but neatly organized. When someone gives Tyler a new book, she gives one away."

(So like Queen Nellie the Neat.)

Final note: A dozen years after releasing "Tumble Tower" in 1993, the mother-daughter team of Tyler and Modarressi reunited to produce their second children's book, Timothy Tugbottom Says No!. It's also a delight.