The Cartoonist

by Betsy Byars

A re-read from my childhood. It's about a boy named Alfie who likes to draw, especially cartoons. He's proud of his work and daydreams about becoming famous, but mostly keeps the drawings secret, working in a private attic space in his small home. Shared with his mother, older sister and grandfather, this house sounds really tiny. Alfie learns suddenly one day that his married brother lost his job and might come back home with his wife, to stay in the attic. His mother, indifferent to Alfie's need for private space, has big plans to spruce up the attic for them. Alfie protests, and when no one listens, locks himself in the attic and refuses to come out.

I had remembered vividly a lot of the details about Alfie's drawing- how he gets caught in class drawing instead of doing his math, how he imagines ideas and reworks them on paper- frustrated sometimes when they don't come out right. I had forgotten how much of the story is about Alfie's family dynamics- the older sister seems the most sympathetic and responsible, the mother feels overworked and exasperated by the grandfather, who bemoans his feelings of uselessness and tells the same stories over and over again. The family spends a lot of time arguing or sitting in front of the television- all the programs sound really inane and annoying- no wonder Alfie preferred to spend time alone attic- but it really makes me wonder if the author had something against tv viewing. I guess this is on my mind because my nine-year-old has been reading Roald Dahl's Matilda with her class, which also has a dysfunctional family with the parents really enamored of their television.

SPOILER In case you're wondering, Alfie does finally come down from the attic, not because of his mother's threats, his grandfather's cajoling, his best friend's attempts to get him to join activities, or his sister's expressions of understanding. For another reason entirely that erased the conflict. The sad thing is that the whole experience made Alfie realize he was avoiding things by spending so much time in the attic with his daydreams and his cartoons, and he made a motion to change that. It isn't clear at the ending if he stopped drawing altogether, but it did seem like his attitude towards his artwork had changed.

Rating: 3/5         119 pages, 1978