The small town of Dublin, Texas, is primarily known as the home of the first Dr. Pepper bottling plant. Dublin Dr. Pepper is still made with pure cane sugar instead of nasty high fructose corn syrup. But now we’re in the news–local, national, even international–because several people have seen UFOs in our skies.
I like to imagine the skies filled with half-knitted sweaters, which is the kind of UFO I have in several totebags around the house, but apparently the Dublin UFOs are the ‘unidentified’ variety.
In honor of UFOs of all types, I offer a review of two books by Susan Docherty The Unlikely Flying Object and Lelooni. Both are illustrated with clever and funny three-dimensional knitted characters.
The Unlikely Flying Object opens on the Planet Intarsia, where a knitted Mothership learns that she can fly. She goes to Earth and picks up various people to replicate in knitting. The story is about how the Mothership populates the Planet Intarsia.
The replica people are Sweaterheads: headless figures whose faces are on the front of their sweaters. I love the eyes and the expressions on these characters. The knitted objects are photographed within scenes, or placed into space or earthly landscapes or computer-generated backgrounds. I know what kind of work went into these well-done illustrations–a lot!
Lelooni is the silvery moon of Planet Intarsia. This book is a series of situations that showcase the knitted moon, sun, wind, and the Sweaterheads of the planet below. It doesn’t have a plot, but I was distracted from this by the ingenious knitting of the character Lelooni. His eyes are expressive, his mouth is perfectly shaped. The north wind is fabulous, too, with his curly, cloudy locks.
These stories are cute and full of puns, but they occasionally get bogged down in unnecessary description, and the odd scene that doesn’t fit.
But five-year-old Ella wasn’t bothered. She enjoyed the stories when we read them yesterday. She giggled at the foolishness in The Unlikely Flying Object and asked for a ‘reading supper’ so she could study the pictures in Lelooni. Today she said, “Mom, let’s read Loony-Moony. He’s so funny.” When we sat down to read, she decided to read The Unlikely Flying Object first, saying, “Loony is funny, but the one with the Mothership is cool.”
I am glad to support textile illustrators by buying their books. I hope Susan Docherty will expand her portfolio by illustrating stories by other authors as well.