What the Wind Told by Betty Boegehold and Emanuel Schongut
Published: Parents’ Magazine Press, 1974
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My favorite picture book as a child, What the Wind Told is about a little girl named Tossy who spends a week of sick days listening to stories told to her by the Wind. The book is separated into six chapters in which the Wind tells Tossy who lives inside each of the mysterious windows Tossy can see from her urban bedroom.
I have a feeling that under all that mist, the Wind is rippedThe book’s haunting illustrations are by American artist Emanuel Schongut, best known for his work in speculative fiction and still working today. Schongut’s watercolors pay homage to the flat styling of the art deco movement in the ’20s and ’30s and light up the pages with imaginative details. I don’t know, but I suspect that Tossy’s name is also a throwback to early, dreamlike stories like Little Nemo in Slumberland.
She never has to mopYou may remember writer Betty Boegehold from my spotlight on Small Deer’s Magic Tricks. If so, you remember that Boegehold is acerbic and unsympathetic to your problems. That must have been why I loved her books so much. Consider the plant family behind the second window:
I wanted to grow up and look just like the cactus on the right. I had to settle for her perpetual ennui.When Tossy expresses concern for the Plant children spending their nights on the windowsill, the Wind tells her to save it–at least they get to stay up late. Tossy is also worried the residents of the third window, the Dirters, would get sick living in squalor. The Wind tells her they like it that way. The Wind would like Tossy to mind her own damn business.
As much as I love this book, my daughter is terrified of it and there are two reasons why. The first is the owner of the fourth window, the dog man who eats his own words.
I need to learn this trick.Somewhere between dog and man, he lives with his typewriter in an uncanny valley that’s a lot less cute than Zootopia.
The other reason is the “Scary Window,” owned by Drool and Gool. They’re frightened by children and live in the dark, hiding under furniture in the middle of their room. Knowing they’re cowardly doesn’t change the fact that they look like demons from the depths of cartoon Hell.
Not too scared to suck out your soul.They frightened me when I was little, but I liked being frightened. The final story soothes over the goblin-shaped scars with the most beautiful imagery in the book.
She walks in beauty, like the night… because she literally is the night.The Wind tells Tossy about Darkness, the gentle lady who spreads through rooms and fills them with silence. It’s more comforting than it sounds. After that, the Wind jets.
This book is out of print but the demand for existing copies is so high, even used and damaged copies go for over forty dollars. If you find one at an antique store, grab it! The Wind demands it.