Keep Your Eye On the Kid: The Early Years of Buster Keaton (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Keep Your Eye On the Kid: The Early Years of Buster Keaton Elizabeth Bush Brighton, Catherine; Keep Your Eye On the Kid: The Early Years of Buster Keaton; written and illus. by Catherine Brighton;. Flash Point/Roaring Brook, 2008; [32p] ISBN 978-1-59643-158-4 $16.95 Reviewed from galleys R 6-9 yrs Born in a rooming house to parents on the vaudeville circuit, Joe Keaton "sat on frogs' knees and . . . talked to wooden dummies while Dad and Mom did their act." An acrobatic tumble down the stairs when little more than a toddler earned him the nickname Buster ("Gee, that was some buster the kid took") from Harry Houdini himself, at least as the story goes in narrator Joe's mind, and apparently inspired his parents with a new possibility for the act—tossing the tyke across the stage, where he would land on his feet with a deadpan glance at the audience. From then on it was to be life as a trouper, with only a day of formal schooling, an early infatuation with the brand-new moving-picture craze, a parting of the ways with his father, and an eventual move to California, where he was to establish his own studio. Brighton notes that Keaton "told a good story," implying that some of the more improbable adventures related here—such as being sucked out the window in a tornado—should be taken with a shaker of salt, and the textual and pictorial references to Houdini put the audience (or at least adult readers) on ballyhoo alert. The Keaton story should have plenty of kid appeal, as he treads the boards as a child and smashes them to bits in his slapstick productions as an adult. Meticulous ink outlines are tidily filled with slightly muted color, conjuring a back-in-the-day atmosphere; narrow horizontal strips of illustration frequently appear above or below larger images to establish passage of time or distance. Add Don Brown's Mack Made Movies (BCCB 5/03) and a silent short or two for a cinema-themed storytime. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois